Energy efficiency solutions for commercial refrigeration

Propane has almost 12 percent more energy efficiency and has a lower TCO. 

Energy efficiency solution If you want to cool the blood to freeze the plasma or any pharmaceutical company which wants to test the efficacy of a tablet, they need to work continuously for six months, eight months, where our compressor tells you about the applicability of medical equipment for energy efficiency. In all the applications and the medical appliances, Embraco is a market leader in that particular segment. 

Challenging global trends 

The trend is towards the environment, to reduce the carbon footprint, to have clean energy, to have green energy. So these are the worldwide trends and in that particular challenge, we need to reduce the effort we need to increase the efficiency of our compressors. 

Further, due to the pandemic a lot of people are worried about their health so they want fresh food. So that is why there are a lot of new practises in food preservation. So this is another challenge. Another challenge is that we wanted to work with low GWP, like R290 in India. Recently, a lot of people are still using the high GWP like R134 or R404 compressor. We need to convert these old users to low GWP refrigerant. That is why hydrocarbon is very much the solution for commercial applications. 

Climate change COP26 So, if you see there are global agreement goals going on to mitigate the risk of climate change recently, the COP26 Climate Change Conference that happened in Glasgow in the UK. UK and India committed to be carbon neutral by 2070. So, in that context, that region represents almost 10 percent of global CO2 emission and out of this 10 percent almost 20 percent of emission comes from the refrigerant, which are being evaluated in the environment and 80 percent of this comes from products that use energy. 

GWP refrigerant and propane advantage You can understand that 20 percent of emission like if you evacuate, or discharge one kilo R404 gas in environment that is equivalent to almost 4000 kilogram of CO2 in the environment. So, that’s why people are coming to this program and going on to phase out the highly GWP refrigerant. 

So, these are all the government push towards the low GWP environment. The first advantage is excellent thermodynamic efficiency. Propane has almost 12 percent more energy efficiency and has a lower TCO, the total cost of ownership. The second advantage is that it has almost no discharge temperature. Hence, R290 will give you a higher reliability. 

Another advantage of R290 is that it has a very low refrigerant charge compared to R134a or say R 404. Almost the charge requirement reduces to say 70 percent of the overall requirement. So, almost 30 to 40 percent reduction, you get from R290. 

And natural refrigerants have a low GWP, so the contribution to the environment is very low. So, we say that our 290 is a future proof solution to comply with global regulation while delivering robustness and energy efficiency to the industry. 

Is natural refrigerant the best solution 

I think that the best solution for energy efficiency is a natural refrigerant that is R290 plus variable speed technology that can have a minimising direct and indirect impact on global warming. So, just to give you a brief idea about how this variable speed compressor works, it works on a continuous basis like if there is a high load inside the appliances, then the variable speed compressor will work at say 4500 rpm and if it is low load is there then it will work at 800 rpm; so it matches the demand resulting in more energy efficiency, we can have more than 30 percent of total saving. 

Advantages of using R290 compressor 

So, put together that variable speed compressor plus R290 will always give you almost more than 30 to 40 percent compared to the R404 system. As I told you, it is a very low noise and it has a temperature control. You can control the temperature inside the appliances to the plus or minus less than 1 percent. Also, it is fast cooling. So, the compressor will work at a higher speed. 

Typically, what happens in interior rural areas, still the voltage is 90 volts, and you will be surprised to know over 90 volts. So the compressor can handle from 90 volt to 260 volt. So, that is the proposed solution for energy efficiency for commercial efficiency.