Utilization of CO2 as refrigerant for supermarket application: An energy and economic assessment
Authors :- Yadav R.; Lata M.; Kumari S.; Gupta D.K.
Publication :- Utilization of CO2as refrigerant for supermarket application: An energy and economic assessment, AIP Conference Proceedings, 2960, 040012 (2024).
Climate change is a worldwide issue, which needs to pay attention in the future for environmental balance. Many researchers have already explored the possibility of capturing the CO2 generated from various processes and industry sources, however, the storage of the CO2 becomes a major challenge. Therefore, the focus has been shifted to the utilization of captured CO2, instead of storage. On the other hand, refrigeration industries are in a transition state due to the various regulatory protocols, for stopping the use of synthetic refrigerants, which have high global warming potential (even more than a thousand times than CO2). As a natural substance with favourable thermos-physical properties, CO2 has been identified as one of the potential candidates as an alternative to synthetic refrigerants. In this paper, Energy and Economic assessments have been carried out for CO2-based refrigeration systems for supermarket applications. Subsequently, a comparative analysis has been made for two different proposed configurations and the existing (R404A) system. The life cycle cost (LCC) and annual operating costs have also been evaluated for all three systems. The result indicates there are higher LCC, but the annual operating cost has been found lower than the R404A.