How supermarket freezers are heating the planet, and how they could change
Climate-conscious shoppers may buy local food and try to cut packaging waste, but those efforts could be negated by potent greenhouse gases leaking from supermarket fridges.
Climate-conscious shoppers may buy local food and try to cut packaging waste, but those efforts could be negated by potent greenhouse gases leaking from supermarket fridges.
Global research into demand for air conditioning systems has identified the impacts of climate change as being a major driver for increased cooling system demand for a range of purposes
Walk-in refrigerators are employed to store and preserve food, grocery, and pharmaceutical items from the harmful effects of bacteria and fungus. Walk-in refrigerators ensure and provide more space than standard conventional refrigerators. The large and convenient storage space of walk-in refrigerators makes them suitable for storing food and grocery items. Walk-in refrigerators can be widely seen in supermarkets and large restaurants. The increasing number of supermarkets and hypermarkets is also increasing the need for storing food and decaying commodities in a single preserving facility. The increasing number of restaurants and hotels is boosting the demand for walk-in refrigerators in the market. The need for preserving food items on a large scale is now growing on a daily basis, which also provides scope for the growth of the walk-in refrigerator market. Pharmaceuticals and medicinal equipment are also things, that have to be stored in a well preserved and protected manner. Walk-in refrigerators are also efficiently used in the pharmaceutical and medical fields.
A new whitepaper from Danfoss, the Danish family-controlled engineering group, titled ‘The neglected demand side of the green equation’, delves into the details of how energy efficiency is an enabler of electrification.
The Montreal Protocol didn’t just preserve the ozone layer, it helped save Earth from a climate change time bomb.
Italian OEM Epta has released results from its Life-C4R (Carbon 4 Retail Refrigeration) project, summarizing three years of data from seven European supermarkets testing commercial CO2 (R744) refrigeration systems.
Nuclear power is one way of sustainably producing ammonia, Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have modeled how much it would cost to use more environmentally friendly methods that emit less carbon to produce ammonia, finding nuclear-powered and renewable ammonia (NH3) production to be feasible, despite costs still being high.
An annual analysis of air samples collected at remote sites around the globe that is tracking a continued decline in the atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting substances shows the threat to the ozone layer receding below a significant milestone in 2022, NOAA scientists have announced.
A new paper in Environmental Research Letters by [Natural Resources Defense Council] NRDC experts and our colleagues lays out a pathway for India to phase down super climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, without infringing on the nation’s effort to scale up access to cooling for millions.
A-Gas Managing Director – Europe, John Ormerod, explains why being inflexible about the use of high GWP HFC refrigerants in the short term may do more harm than good.
A-Gas Group Commercial Director, Ken Logan, explains why the latest F-Gas proposals in the short term may do more harm than good.
This summer’s heatwave in the UK has created havoc for many supermarkets with multiple stories of refrigeration system failures, lost stock and lost sales. All refrigeration technologies have been affected by this extreme weather, but now, with so many retailers using CO2 systems, Daniel Clark owner and MD at Preston-based CO2 systems manufacturer Isentra, asks whether 130bar transcritical systems have now become a necessity?
At the meeting in December of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), glaciologists released some alarming observations: the Antarctic Thwaites glacier is torn by cracks and risks of crumbling completely at time intervals estimated from 5 to 10 years. The news is alarming because this glacier – more or less, as big as Florida – contains enough water to raise sea levels around the world by about half a meter. Already today, the melting of the glacier contributes to 4% of the current annual rise in sea level. Not fortuitously, this glacier is also called “Doomsday glacier”.
The F-gas regulation is continuously progressing with two new bans having come into effect from 1st January 2022 but most of the implications of the legislation are still hidden by the apparent abundant supply of higher GWP refrigerants.
We are all aware of the F-Gas legislation and the drive to low GWP refrigerants but this is only a small part of the overall solution to reduce climate changing emissions. Choosing a low GWP refrigerant does not guarantee a better energy efficiency and in some cases, it may even lead to an increase in the lifetime total emissions from the system if a lower efficiency option is selected. As well as refrigerant choice, there are other actions that can be taken to maintain or improve energy efficiency, reduce total emissions and in most cases they will even pay for themselves over the lifetime of the equipment.
A further cut of 29% in the availability of HFC refrigerants in Europe next year will accentuate the importance of recovery and reclamation, says Climalife UK’s head of sales Dave Richards.
We’ve known for years that HFC refrigerants are on borrowed time, and that businesses involved in food production, distribution or retail will need to adopt new ways of working.
In the light of the worldwide phase-down of high GWP refrigerants, Dave Richards, UK head of sales at refrigerant supplier Climalife, looks at the various options available for HVAC chillers.
In both technical and non-technical literature, fluorine-containing (HFC) refrigerants are increasingly referred to as ‘chemical’ or ‘synthetic’ refrigerants in contrast to the so-called ‘natural’ refrigerants. Generally ‘chemical’ is now seen by some as being ‘bad’ and is contrasted with ‘natural’, which implies ‘good’.
The global air conditioning market contracted again in 2016, a new BSRIA report reveals, but growth is expected to resume this year.