INDUSTRIAL REFRIGERATION
Opportunities for innovation in industrial refrigeration
By the Institute of Refrigeration’s Beyond Refrigeration initiative. T
he Government’s net zero agenda and industrial strategy is driving change and innovation throughout the UK. It aims to encourage UK investment in skills, industries and infrastructure. We all know that there is tremendous potential for our refrigeration, air condition and heat pump (RACHP) sector to help achieve not only carbon reduction targets but to provide fantastic jobs and economic growth. However, the RACHP sector itself is often overlooked by policy makers – which means it misses out on government incentives and policies that encourage investment. Cooling has been described as “a traditional blind spot in climate and development policy” by the International Energy Agency (IEA). A better understanding of emissions from our sector and the opportunities for savings these present is essential to both innovation and decarbonisation – whether that is driven by government policy or by end user Environmental Society and Governance goals.
The challenges Demand for refrigeration is growing driven by consumer expectation but also population growth and climate change and global economic development. The refrigeration sector is already thought to be responsible for 7.8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (or 4.14 Gt CO2e ) according to often quoted International Institute for Refrigeration (IIR) estimates from 2014. This includes emissions from all technologies using refrigerants, including air conditioning, heat pumps and refrigeration. Total emissions being made up of both direct emissions from
20 May 2022 •
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the leakage and indirect emissions from the energy use.
Some of those business sectors that have the highest demand for cooling are providing the most in-demand and essential services. For example, refrigeration in the cold chain (Cold Stores, Transport Refrigeration Units, Retail) helps to limit food wastage; cooling systems can enable more efficient manufacturing processes and save lives (chemical and pharmaceutical sector); and data centres are essential to supporting digital innovations and smart systems. Clearly reducing demand for cooling is not going to be the solution - we need to find ways of innovating to support existing industrial cooling processes and help businesses to grow to meet increased demand sustainably. Perceptions of low skill levels and lack of
awareness or experience of technologies have been barriers to take up of innovation in the past. The food and drink sector has one of the largest emissions footprints for refrigeration in the UK and the 2017 Food & Drink Industrial Decarbonisation and Energy Efficiency Roadmap identified refrigeration as one of the main ways for these businesses to drive energy efficiency through adoption of the state-of-the-art technologies, such as increasing heat recovery and newer more energy efficient systems. However, with many systems having a life expectancy of 20 years and an industry dominated by small or medium sized businesses with low margins, the actual investment in innovation has been limited or patchy at best. What’s more, in recent years, investment by end users in their cooling systems has been largely driven by
essential work to adapt to the phase down of F-Gases. Some promising innovations:
Q Automation and AI: Improved demand side management through increased sensor deployment and smart systems.
Q System integration: reuse of waste heat, significant potential of heat recovery, inte- gration with low grade heating systems.
Q Reducing demand to specific applications: Advanced materials (e.g. surface coatings, vacuum insulation) which are designed for increased recycling and reuse can reduce conduction and radiation losses signifi- cantly and can be applied in a variety of applications. On the other hand, better understanding of convection losses and as- sociated technological mitigations can also lower cooling demands such as aerofoils that can reduce heat loss in supermarket cabinets
Q Improvements to components: Advanced and highly efficient compressors and heat exchangers (e.g. extruded heat exchangers, surface coatings, metal foam heat exchang- ers, enhancements to the condensation, evaporation and single-phase heat transfer processes). Controls that integrate with the electricity grid and other energy vectors
Q Alternatives to vapour compressions systems: Several alternative technologies which reduce the need for refrigerants and with lower power demand exist, but their technology readiness levels are currently low due to high cost, difficulty in assem- bling, and further research in materials required (e.g. electrocaloric systems, mag- netic systems, sorption systems).
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