Reducing energy demand in production environment requiring refrigeration—A localized climatization approach

Abstract

Food and pharmaceutical refrigeration areas place significant demands on air temperature and air humidity control. This leads to high energy requirements on the HVAC system. In the majority of cases, the entire production hall is “over conditioned” with fresh air. However, very often the products are located in a small part of the overall production area (hall). From an energy efficiency and sustainability point of view, it makes sense to only air condition that area in which the products require refrigerated temperature control. One approach to reduce the refrigeration energy demand is to house the product in localized product cooling systems. In this study, localized product cooling systems are analyzed in order to identify the saving potentials associated with a localized HVAC refrigeration system. Experimental systems were built and evaluated. The simulation analysis highlighted that smaller localized refrigeration housing can reduce total energy demand by up to 65%.