An Evaluation of the Environmental Impact of Different Commercial Supermarket Refrigeration Systems Using Low Global Warming Potential Refrigerants
- University of Maryland, College Park
- ORNL
Commercial refrigeration systems consumed 1.21 Quads of primary energy in 2010 and are known to be a major source for refrigerant charge leakage into the environment. Thus, it is important to study the environmental impact of commercial supermarket refrigeration systems and improve their design to minimize any adverse impacts. The system s Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP) was presented as a comprehensive metric with the aim of calculating the equivalent mass of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere throughout its lifetime, from construction to operation and destruction. In this paper, an open source tool for the evaluation of the LCCP of different air-conditioning and refrigeration systems is presented and used to compare the environmental impact of a typical multiplex direct expansion (DX) supermarket refrigeration systems based on three different refrigerants as follows: two hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants (R-404A, and R-407F), and a low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant (N-40). The comparison is performed in 8 US cities representing different climates. The hourly energy consumption of the refrigeration system, required for the calculation of the indirect emissions, is calculated using a widely used building energy modeling tool (EnergyPlus). A sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the impact of system charge and power plant emission factor on the LCCP results. Finally, we performed an uncertainty analysis to determine the uncertainty in total emissions for both R-404A and N-40 operated systems. We found that using low GWP refrigerants causes a considerable drop in the impact of uncertainty in the inputs related to direct emissions on the uncertainty of the total emissions of the system.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); Building Technologies Research and Integration Center (BTRIC)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- EE USDOE - Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1150900
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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