COMPRESSORS
Refrigeration trends drive innovation
In a world facing global warming and an energy crisis, the cold chain industry is accelerating the pace for creating innovative, smaller, more silent and greener products based on technologies like variable speed and natural refrigerants. In this interview, Guilherme Almeida, president of Nidec Global Appliance, explains the global context and trends that are pushing the refrigeration sector to put innovation at the service of sustainability.
W
hat are the technological trends impacting the refrigeration market? Since concerns about sustainability
are more and more present in governmental policies and businesses strategic plans, it has become a key impacting factor in the cold chain industry. One of the main aspects related to it is that the refrigeration industry can have a significant participation in the fight against global warming. This participation can be on many fronts.
One is to be strategically engaged in pushing the limits of energy-saving products, considering that energy generation is responsible for a significant percentage of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to that, we have a current energy crisis in Europe, with energy prices soaring, which is forcing the food retailers and the HoReCa (hotels, restaurants and cafes) sector to adopt more energy efficient solutions, to reduce their operation costs.
24 May 2023 •
www.acr-news.com
This takes us to a technology trend that is the migration from fixed speed compressors to variable speed compressors, which is more energy efficient and, thus, tackles both concerns: the environmental ones and the ones regarding costs.
The compressor with variable speed technology has a specific kind of motor that works connected to an electronic device named inverter, and these two elements allow the compressor to adjust its running speed according to the refrigeration equipment’s demand without constantly turning on and off, like a fixed speed compressor does. It can reduce energy consumption from 10% up to 40% in commercial refrigeration, depending on the application and the fixed speed compressor you are comparing it with. Another front in the fight against global warming that is connected to the refrigeration industry is the refrigerant fluids, because, as
everybody is already aware of, the traditional HFCs refrigerants used since the 1980s have a high global warming potential (GWP). In this case, our view at Nidec Global Appliance is that the technological trend is towards migrating from HFCs to natural refrigerants like R290 and R600a, which have ultra-low GWP (close to 0) and are also more energy efficient than the HFCs. In Europe, it is a reality already, and in other parts of the world it is growing fast. A third technological trend that we see getting stronger in the refrigeration industry and can also be connected with sustainability is miniaturization, which means developing compressors that are smaller than predecessors, but offer the same cooling capacity, thanks to the use of technology. A smaller compressor allows more internal space in the refrigerator or refrigeration equipment, enables reduction of materials used in the production flows and optimises the transportation.
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