Securing safety, energy efficiency and long-term investment along the food cold chain by using natural refrigerants: a comparative market, policy and technology analysis of North America, Japan, China and Viet Nam.

Natural refrigerants are gaining increasingly more attention from the global HVAC&R industry in various applications. The use of ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and to a lesser extent air as refrigerants in industrial cooling and refrigeration equipment has been successfully proven up to a mainstream level in the food cold chain, including along the entire food cold chain food production and cold storage, especially in Europe, North America, China and Japan. However, other, mostly developing countries, such as Viet Nam have yet to adopt such technologies in an attempt to leapfrog high-GWP solutions that are expected to increasingly become subject to international and national use restrictions. Market trends and technology developments related to natural refrigerants in the food cold storage sector in four different regions are analysed while considering the impact of regulatory initiatives on current and future technology choices.