Star’s CO2 system sets new industry standard
4th October 2023
UK: A CO2 refrigeration system installed in a Glasgow cold store is said to be consuming just half the energy suggested by UK best practice guidelines.
The installation by Star Refrigeration for Bidfood, one of the UK’s leading foodservice providers, involved two dual temperature CO2 cooling systems at its new cold store in Glasgow.
According to Star, the systems set a new industry standard in energy performance, consuming 49.5% less energy than the best practice benchmark for similar size facilities in Britain.
The CO2 refrigeration systems are located externally, adjacent to the building, and provide cooling to a freezer, chill store and marshalling area. The site’s core freezer system maintains a temperature of -25ºC, with a design cooling duty of 245kW, while the chill areas operate at +2ºC and have a combined cooling duty of 268kW.
The multiple coolers installed are equipped with efficient EC fans. Running at a speed of 50%, these fans are said to offer savings of up to 87.5% over their traditional counterparts.
The cooling plant has also been fitted with a heat recovery system which repurposes waste heat for underfloor heating and provides warm glycol defrost on the air coolers.
Its control system offers real-time data monitoring, fault dial out and remote access capabilities to allow for swift performance adjustments, and ongoing maintenance.
Energy data recorded for the 37,500m3 facility has been collected and analysed since it came online in November 2022. The results reveal that the specific energy consumption at Bidfood’s Glasgow site stands at 10.2kWh/m3/year – an energy consumption that is half of that of the UK’s best practice industry standard of 20.4kWh/m3/year.
