26 Energy-Saving Equipment Into the future and beyond
Hawco looks at some of the new and upcoming products that are helping supermarkets and retailers increase their energy efficiencies.
HITACHI, ONE OF the world’s largest technology companies, together with its exclusive European wholesaler of scroll compressors, Hawco, has noticed a dramatic increase in interest for its latest energy efficient solution – inverter scroll compressors. The compressors, set to be adopted by retail refrigeration systems, as well as transport refrigeration systems, have sparked interest in as many as 80% of Hawco’s existing OEMs in an attempt to combat rising energy bills across the UK. The Hitachi invertor – which is due to be launched in early 2014 – is expected to be one of Hawco’s highest selling products.
“Refrigeration alone accounts for over 35% of the energy consumed in a typical supermarket and it has become the object of increasingly stringent legislation targeting the vast energy-saving potential of commercial refrigerators and freezers,” says Hawco’s sales director, Chris Hodges. “With the majority of industry refrigeration units currently using fixed speed control compressors that are adjusted by a repeated on-off operation and resulting in a higher consumption of power, the need for large retailers to switch to the energy-saving inverter is imperative.”
The inverter delivers small torque fluctuations, low vibration and quiet operation as well as high efficiency due to its high precision process.
Unlike a fixed speed compressor, the Hitachi invertor can easily maintain a set temperature, saving power and eradicating the need for other more costly energy saving components.
Motoring on
Another product making waves across the refrigeration industry for eradicating the need for additional temperature controlling components is the ECplus motor. Typically, motors used in refrigeration systems offer a 15% efficiency rate, which means 85% of their energy consumption
is transferred as waste heat into the environment; subsequently having to be removed or cooled down by a refrigeration and air conditioning system. With the ECplus, motor efficiency is increased to a staggering 70%, dramatically reducing direct energy consumption and increasing energy saving by reducing local heat waste.
The ECplus motor is an electronically commutated motor, which can replace hundreds of OEM shaded-pole evaporator and condenser fan motors found in OEM refrigeration equipment. The result is an energy saving for a typical supermarket equivalent to thousands of pounds. The ECplus motor which is described as ‘compact but powerful’ is increasingly sought after for use within bottle coolers, vending machines, walk-in cold rooms, display cases, freezer cabinets and ice machines to name but a few.
These developments alongside the LAE Flexicold feature that uses adaptive logic to enable a system to automatically adjust the set point depending upon the required system load are an indication of the advancing technologies being deployed across the industry.
The Flexicold feature is such that the controller automatically senses periods of low demand on the cooling cycle, such as night set back, and will switch to a second set of
user defined parameters and reduced defrost frequency with a higher set point, reducing energy output and resuming normal operation/parameters as soon as demand increases.
Hydrocarbons and beyond
The decision to focus on the efficiency of retail refrigeration systems was highlighted in 2011 in a White Paper prepared by the Institute of Refrigeration, which focused on the use of hydrocarbons in refrigeration systems.
Generally speaking, a retailer’s refrigeration system has a negative impact on an internal store’s environment through a combination of noise and the need to regularly and locally reject heat. Replacing a traditional air-cooled condenser with that of water-cooled systems means that the heat rejected from the glycol treated water circuit can be readily reclaimed. The residual heat rejected locally can then be converted to energy providing yet more environmental benefits. Simon Barnes, head of design engineering at Hawco, comments: “Following the work we did assisting in the design and engineering of all the equipment used within the hydrocarbon project, from the simplest systems all the way through to the more complex cascade systems, we are now working with GAH to assist in the ongoing design and improvement of exciting control compressor systems to increase energy savings within consumer delivery vehicles.” The RD250e refrigeration system was designed especially for supermarket home delivery vehicles and targets some of the supermarkets’ key environmental concerns, such as using more environmentally friendly refrigerants, reducing fuel consumption and reducing the system’s weight, which in turn increases payload.
This system, as well as being quiet, gives operators better temperature control with a lighter system, therefore running a more environmentally friendly refrigerant that has less chance of leaking.
ACR News January 2014 Visit ACR News online at
www.acr-news.com
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