Evaluation of total equivalent global warming impacts of supermarket refrigeration systems

Supermarket refrigeration systems are large contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, which impose ever-increasing environmental concerns. It is important to understand the greenhouse gas emissions over the lifetime of these refrigeration systems in order to establish a baseline of emissions with current common refrigerants, as well as to compare emissions with proposed replacement refrigerants. Modeling systems using software programs is an integral part of the analysis of economic and environmental impacts of various refrigerants. The software application, IPU Pack Calculation Pro, is used to model several refrigeration systems with different refrigerants and in two locations in California. In both locations, the one stage system using R404A as the refrigerant had the highest energy usage and equivalent CO2 emissions. Both of the secondary loop systems had roughly twice the amount of equivalent CO2 emissions as the one stage transcritical system, which had the lowest overall energy usage and equivalent CO2 emissions.