ENERGY SAVING EQUIPMENT
A combination of technologies to save energy in cold rooms
Marino Bassi, key account senior advisor for the Embraco portfolio at Nidec Global Appliance, and Erik Venturi, section manager NPD commercial refrigeration for Daikin Europe.
W Marino Bassi.
alk-in cold rooms are essential structures in the food retail and
Ho.Re.Ca. (hotels, restaurants and cafes) businesses. Being on 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, they represent a significant share of the energy bill in these enterprises as well. Around the globe, energy savings have been on the agenda for some years now, but at this moment in Europe, with the crisis in the region, caused by the Russia versus Ukraine conflict, energy prices are pushing the demand for energy saving technologies more than ever. In scenarios like this, technology migrations get
Erik Venturi.
accelerated. The migration for R290 refrigerant in commercial refrigeration started years ago, mainly pushed by regulations but also by big end users (like supermarket and restaurant chains) that have been establishing carbon footprint reduction goals. That is because R290 has a global warming potential of 3 (with new studies concluding that it is below 1), and has been the alternative chosen to replace HFC refrigerants in many kinds of self contained refrigeration applications. In the last year, the migration to R290 has gained more speed also in niche applications such as cold rooms, already helping to save energy. R290 is by nature a very energy efficient refrigerant, when compared to other options: it has a low final compression temperature, which means that the compressor works at a low temperature regime, and this also contributes to the energy efficiency and the reliability of the compressor. Nonetheless, there is much more that can be done in
20 January 2023 •
www.acr-news.com
terms of saving energy, if we combine technologies, more specifically: to bring together the thermodynamic properties of R290 refrigerant with the capabilities of variable speed compressors into packaged refrigeration units for walk-in cold rooms, systems also known as monoblocks (compact units in which the condenser and the evaporator are placed in a single tower that is installed through a wall or ceiling within the cold room). Variable speed technology is still new for cold rooms. But we see it as a trend in formation, due to the fact that it is a technology that can take the monoblocks, already a traditional solution for cold rooms, to a new level of performance.
Almost 14% energy savings In our most recent case study, a monoblock for walk-in cold rooms with R290 and variable speed technology reached 13.6% of energy savings in comparison with a fixed speed similar (on-off) solution also running on R290, in medium temperature conditions (EN17432). This energy saving also represents a similar percentage reduction in the total equivalent warming impact (TEWI) and 13% reduction in the cost of ownership.
The study was made with Daikin’s new LMSEY series, a lineup of wall-mounting R290 monoblocks for walk-in cold-rooms equipped with Embraco FMFT variable speed compressors. The LMSEY series monoblocks are plug and play, self-contained, hermetically sealed systems with R290 refrigerant charge below 150 g. It also uses microchannel
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