INDUSTRIAL COOLING
Who decides what?
Marta San Román, marketing leader refrigerants, Honeywell Fluorine Products, looks at refrigerants within the industrial sector.
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any factors impact the decision making process for industrial refrigeration. Operating principles, refrigerants, and equipment type can vary drastically between different segments of industrial refrigeration, whether that’s oil and gas, chemical and pharmaceuticals, or food processing. Although food processing is the closest to commercial refrigeration, the process is never easy. Regulation, decision factors and end users needs all play a key role.
In commercial refrigeration, choosing the right refrigerant increasingly involves several layers of decision makers. It starts with the refrigerant manufacturer and the end user, but can also extend to compressor or rack manufacturers, consultants, distributors, and wholesalers. If the retailer is a large one, sometimes different business areas including energy, maintenance, purchasing and refrigeration may have a say, and they are all motivated by different business interests.
Retailers are more involved than ever before, due to the pressure from the F-Gas requirements, increasing energy costs and, eventually, taxes on leaked refrigerants. In fact, retailers have partly taken over from the equipment manufacturers or
contractors as the key decision maker. But for smaller sites, contractors still have a large role to play, and equipment manufacturers and installers are still essential to large industrial installations.
So what are the right options for industrial refrigeration?
As is so often the case, there is no right or wrong choice when choosing an industrial refrigeration system. The decision maker must evaluate a range of options in terms of sustainability and compliance, especially regarding direct and indirect emissions, as well as economic viability for the end user. Key economic considerations are usually the cost of investment for the equipment, the refrigerant and licenses, and operational costs such as energy consumption, fleet management, safety measures, and disposal. This is where the size of the installation may make a difference, and where options like direct expansion, process chillers, cascade architecture or flooded systems need to be properly evaluated and managed. Ammonia is widely used in large systems, where the cost of the extra risk mitigation, due to safety considerations, is compensated by high operational efficiency. But for smaller plants, this compensation may not cover the cost of safety measures, so other possibilities need to be considered. Ammonia also cannot reach the higher temperatures required in some food processes, so may not be suitable for those environments either. There are already several examples of innovative installations in the food industry where contractors and equipment manufacturers have pioneered successful
48 June 2017 results.
One example, at Clauger,(1) focused on how heat recovery linked to refrigeration systems can deliver hot water at temperatures that enable vegetables to be processed. However, there is a limit on the temperature that can be achieved through condensing and desuperheating via compressors – typically around 35ºC. The process requires much hotter water, so processing typically involves ammonia-based refrigerants capable of supporting heat recovery system temperatures reaching 80ºC. Desired water temperature is 97ºC (minimum 100ºC of condensing temperature) and ammonia (NH3) cannot reach temperatures above 80ºC of water temperature. At the same time, CO2 does not have enough efficiency at high temperatures. New ultra-low GWP refrigerants can be used for designing heat recovery systems that are capable of processing foodstuffs around 100ºC, while also rapidly cooling products through chilled water at 2ºC.
Ultimately, small-size installations may still opt for direct expansion refrigeration systems. The F-Gas prohibition related to the use of refrigerants with GWP≥150, or GWP≥1500 in indirect cascade systems (Annex III.13 of the F-Gas) does not apply to industrial installations where end users cannot access the sale of the product, meaning HFC/HFO blends like Solstice N40 (R448A) or Genetron Performax LT (R407F) will be key for replacing the high GWP traditional 404A or 507. After 2022, these blends will still be able to be used in new industrial installations. All these factors should be considered when choosing the most suitable refrigerant / refrigeration system. Throughout the decision making process, it is essential for everyone involved to have a complete view of the pros and cons of each alternative. It is only by sharing information across the whole value chain than an installation can be successful for all.
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