8 Energy Efficiency
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The battle for the human race continues
Tom Mitchener of Hawco takes a look at the history of refrigeration.
THE YEAR IS 1000BC and, while Mycenaean Civilization has collapsed, and Greece has entered into its dark ages, the Chinese were busy developing ways to cut and store ice.
Fast-forward 500 years through bloody Spartan conquests, the Assyrians uniting of West Asia, and Nebuchadnezzar establishing a Neo-Babylonian Empire and we find ourselves perusing the sand swept streets of Ancient Egypt and India. In the East, India is discovering Buddhism, while in the West, the Persian Empire has conquered Egypt. Yet, throughout this time of religious discovery, war and empire building, something else quite extraordinary was happening – both India and Egypt had started to make ice on cold nights by setting water out in earthenware pots. The practice of cooling water for storage had started, albeit on a small scale.
For the next 1500 years not a huge amount happens. Alexander the Great conquers most of the world, the Battle of Thermopylae takes place, the Roman Empire is formed, the arrival of Christ, the departure of Christ, the Crusades take place and then a few kings and queens are beheaded.
Until we reach the year of 1748 when the very first artificial refrigerant was presented at the University of Glasgow by William Cullen. Following this, and after a series of scientific breakthroughs and discoveries at the hands of various inventors, including Oliver Evans and Jacob Perkins, the first wooden refrigerators using a compressor cooled with water were made. The first use of a commercial refrigerator invented by Perkins in Australia was to cool lager – Fosters to be exact.
The refrigerators of the 1800s used toxic gases like ammonia, methyl chloride and sulphur dioxide. These were used up until
1929 when, after a series of fatal accidents, Freon was introduced as a safer alternative. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s refrigerators developed rapidly to suit the needs of the everyday consumer. Freon had become a standard for all refrigerators and it remained that way up until R134a was introduced in 1996 to reverse the negative impact Freon was having on the environment.
The Present
Similar to the way in which building empires was considered the most important way to sustain human life in 500 BC, there is no doubt that today the refrigeration industry is just as vital in sustaining the human race and our modern way of life.
With the dramatic increase in the world’s population in the last decade alone, coupled with the increasingly pressing issues surrounding global warming and
rising CO2 levels, the need for advanced energy efficient solutions to radically change the nature of our industry is becoming increasingly imperative. It’s important to note that typically, refrigeration alone accounts for over 35% of the energy consumed in an average supermarket and it has become the object of increasingly stringent legislation targeting the vast energy saving potential of commercial refrigerators and freezers. In a report produced by the IOR investigating the use of hydrocarbons in commercial refrigeration (2011), one of the steps taken by high street giant Waitrose, with the help of Hawco, is explained.
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 a water-cooled system, 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. Typically, motors used in refrigeration systems offer a 15% efficiency rate meaning 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 70%, dramatically reducing direct energy consumption and increasing energy saving by reducing local heat waste. Embraco offers a comprehensive range of dependable hermetic compressors built in order to provide durability, high performance and low sound levels to a variety of OEM market applications. Embraco’s latest NEU series, built to replace the existing NEK series, offers an EER improvement of up to 16% as well as a larger cooling capacity of up to 10%.
The future
The future of the refrigeration industry is certainly an exciting one and, with so much happening, it’s hard to choose which products or events to focus on. I will however say this: as we venture into an age of increasing technological advancements we really are privileged to be involved in an industry so fundamental to sustaining our way of life.
Over 2500 years ago when the Egyptians began the mass production of ice, they had no idea as to the extent of our universe. Today we know better and, one day who knows, the advancements in refrigeration and cooling we make today, could ultimately help the human race exist beyond planet Earth long after it’s gone.
A supplement to ACR News May 2014
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