While refrigeration in supermarkets information ran throughout sessions at the Food Marketing Institute Energy & Store Development Conference, it also found itself as a stand-alone topic during several concurrent breakout sessions and as a front and center focus of a general session.
A recurring theme in refrigeration over the years has been efforts to bring equipment running on hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants to the United States market. The first foray in this regard has been to establish a beachhead in domestic refrigerators, as such equipment running on the HC propane is common in Europe.
With each passing day, more laws around the world are prohibiting the venting of refrigerants during service work. This requires contractors and technicians to update and educate themselves about the latest refrigerant recovery machines, especially when planning to purchase one.
With the approach of 2010, the industry will be faced with a shift in both refrigerants and system lubricants. The impending phaseout of chlorine-based refrigerants mandates that the industry move to lubricants that work satisfactorily with the new hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants.
This is the first in a series of advanced basic articles on the refrigeration cycle. All of these articles deal with refrigerant pressures, states, and conditions as applied to a refrigeration system with a refrigerant like R-134a that is not a blend.
This fourth of a series of articles on CO2, after a brief review of CO2 characteristics, comparing subcritical and transcritical cycles, presents a functioning transcritical system with a hermetic CO2 compressor and discusses design considerations.
Many times technicians will have the tendency to overcharge refrigeration systems. Many symptoms for other system problems look similar, but they are not exactly like an overcharge of refrigerant.