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Refrigerant management: the issue of minimizing refrigerant emissions. A study of Swedish supermarkets.

Author(s) : ENGSTEN K., LINDH J.

Type of monograph: Doctoral thesis

Summary

The main topic of this study is the refrigerant leakage in supermarkets in Sweden. The purpose is to make an estimation of the average leakage rate, to locate the most common leak sources and to see what can be done to reduce the leakage. The study includes all the stores in the COOP supermarket chain and some stores from the ICA and Vivo chains. Many different factors may have an impact on the leakage rate. Areas of focus in this report are: used refrigerants, different kinds of refrigeration systems, retrofits and legislation. The study shows that CFCs and HCFCs have been replaced with HFCs in super-market refrigeration, mainly R404A. The retrofit to R404A has been quite troublesome and leaks have not been unusual. It can be concluded that systems with high charge per cooling unit have a higher leakage rate in relation to total installed amount, than those with a lower charge. The leakages are due to a wide range of problems, and for the stores with exceptionally high leakage we have not been able to find a common reason to the problems.However, only few supermarkets have big problems. For COOP stores it was shown that 25 % of the stores contributed to 70-80 % of the refrigerant leakage over the years 1999-2003. Overall, COOP had an average leakage rate of between 8,2 % and 14,7 % of the total installed amount of refrigerant over the last eight years. The figures for ICA and Vivo are somewhat lower. The average leakage rate for supermarkets in Sweden is concluded to be approximately 10%.

Details

  • Original title: Refrigerant management: the issue of minimizing refrigerant emissions. A study of Swedish supermarkets.
  • Record ID : 30009589
  • Languages: English
  • Publication: KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) - Sweden/Sweden
  • Publication date: 2004

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