CO2 vs. fluorinated refrigerants energy evaluation in a MT cabinet with DX-system.

Due to its low GWP100, CO2 is being implanted as a long-term solution in commercial refrigeration. However, the reduced direct effect of CO2 is contradicted by its high indirect effect - caused by the energy consumption of the refrigerating plants, especially in warm climates such as Spain -. The need for experimental data that compares the energy consumption of a DX-system using CO2 as a refrigerant with the current fluorinated refrigerants is the aim of this work, where two experimental facilities designed and
optimized for CO2 and R134a have been experimentally tested at three heat rejection temperatures using a cabinet for fresh product as cooling load. Results from experimental tests confirm that the performance of simplified CO2-systems is far away from HFC-systems and, therefore, it justifies the need to adopt new configurations to improve its energy consumption. In this sense, an alternative CO2 configuration based on double IHX has been presented and experimentally tested.