Providing transcritical CO2 systems for industrial refrigeration

Discussing the current refrigeration trends, Eason Cheng, Marketing Manager – Refrigeration – APAC, CAREL mentions of increase in natural refrigerants and conversion in redefining thermodynamics designs in refrigeration system.

The increasing demand for industrial refrigeration systems in the FMCG industry majorly drives the growth of the market, owing to the increased use of packaged and processed foods and beverages. Furthermore, increasing trend of upgrading cold storage infrastructure across emerging economies, drives the market’s growth. However, high energy consumption for operation and high investments in maintenance of industrial refrigeration systems hamper the overall growth performance of the sector.

Industrial refrigeration market trends
With the growth of middle class consumers, the demand for food quality and food safety will increase significantly, and this relates mainly to the commercial refrigeration industry. In this scenario, it’s easy to imagine how critical both energy consumption and the quality of goods preservation on the shelf or during transformation processes can be. Therefore, high efficiency solutions will certainly be an important trend for the refrigeration industry. Energy saving is always linked to operating costs, and it is easy to calculate the return on investment as first steps, 20 percent- 30 percent energy savings can be achieved by implementing ExVs and variable speed compressors in the refrigeration industry.

Remote management is also an important trend in India; with the boom in cold chain construction, how to manage cold chain infrastructures with a limited number of skilled technicians, may pose a major problem in the near future. Remote management, such as remote alarms, data logs, system analysis and centralised monitoring systems with machine learning and system diagnosis will be the best response.

Future projections for natural refrigeration
With the regulations on R290 becoming clearer, R290 will be increasingly used in plug-in cabinets and freezers. This is the uncomplicated conversion in terms of changing the thermodynamic design. It also requires refrigerant leak detectors and ventilation systems, managed by the supervisory system.

CO2 is another important trend in the Indian market, considering the warm climate, sub-critical CO2 systems with cascade refrigeration systems or advanced trans-critical CO2 with ejectors will be the answer for large scale commercial or industrial refrigeration.

Energy Efficient offerings by your company
Electronic expansion valves and controllers with drivers. Rack controllers to automatically manage all of the compressors and the condenser. A supervisory system managing data coordination between cold rooms/cabinets and the rack can also help reduce system energy consumption, with dynamic parameters.

Considering the warm climate, subcritical CO2 systems with cascade refrigeration systems can address the problems of industrial refrigeration.
Eason Cheng,
Marketing Manager –Refrigeration – APAC, CAREL