New Version of Epta CO2 Rack Includes FTE and ETE Efficiency Technologies
Italian OEM Epta announced the availability of a new version of its Eco2Large commercial transcritical CO2 rack that includes integration of its FTE (Full Transcritical Efficiency) 2.0 and ETE (Extreme Temperature Efficiency) technologies during a recent webinar on the Life-C4R – Carbon 4 Retail Refrigeration project.
Life-C4R, co-funded by the EU and coordinated by Epta, was created to accelerate the dissemination and implementation of very-high-efficiency CO2 refrigeration systems as a way of reducing GHG emissions and cutting energy.
“The two technologies at the heart of the Life-C4R project are FTE and ETE,” said David Wirth, Product Manager for Epta, who spoke about the ECO2Large system during the webinar. The technologies have already been individually used over the past three years in “hundreds of installations,” he added.
The Eco2Large rack is designed for applications in medium-to-large size retail stores. The cooling capacity can be adjusted from 80kW (23TR) to 180kW (51TR) for medium temperatures and from 12kW (3.4TR) to 60 kW (17TR) for low temperatures. The rack offers heat recovery and backup units as standard options.
Both FTE and ETE allow transcritical racks to perform efficiently in warm ambient climates; ETE goes an extra step, enabling efficient operation in temperatures higher than 40°C (104°F), said Epta.
The FTE system, Introduced in Europe in 2017 (with version 2 released in 2020), employs a low-pressure liquid receiver to flood medium-temperature evaporators with liquid CO2. This eliminates superheat and allows the evaporation temperature in the cabinets – and ultimately the efficiency of the system – to increase.
Introduced in Europe in 2020, ETE uses a heat exchanger to subcool a portion of the CO2 coming out of the gas cooler, and delivers the refrigerant – expanded to an intermediate pressure level by the EEV (electronic expansion valve) – to the high-pressure line.
“FTE 2.0 takes up no additional space in the mechanical room,” said Wirth. “ETE is also fully integrated in the [Eco2Large] rack.” The combination of the two technologies provide “better energy efficiency than a parallel compressor” and allow stores to “run CO2 in any location of the world, regardless of ambient temperature.”
The Eco2Large rack includes three low-temperature Bitzer compressors and four or five medium-temperature Bitzer compressors. The rack comes with pretested and preinstalled electrical boards that accommodate all common controllers.