Commercial cabinets are natural winners
GERMANY: Carrier and Gram are amongst the winners of a European energy efficiency award for commercial refrigeration cabinets using “natural” refrigerants.
Carrier’s Optimer display cabinet, Gram’s Superior Plus K 72 G storage cabinet, the Sielaff GF Robimat XM vending machine, and Liebherr’s GTEP 3302 chest freezer and FKDPv 4503 beverage cooler were winners of ProCold awards at last week’s EuroShop exhibition.
The ProCold competition to find the best of class commercial refrigeration products is organised by ProCold – an EU-project aimed at improving energy efficiency in plug-in refrigeration cabinets and speed up the switch to environmentally sustainable refrigerants. It is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and is co-ordinated by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, ADEME (www.topten.eu/pro-cold).
Common to all winning products is their use of “natural” refrigerants and their high energy efficiency compared to others, confirmed through independent tests based on the latest standards.
The award for top chilled storage cabinet went to Gram for its Superior Plus K 72 G, which uses isobutane refrigerant. With an energy consumption of 285kWh/year, the Gram cabinet was found to be about five times more efficient than the average product in this category.
The Carrier Optima 0948LG, using propane, won the vertical supermarket refrigerated display cabinet category.
Liebherr won two awards. Its FKDPv 4503 glass door model won the award for beverage coolers and the GTEP 3302 won the top award for ice cream freezers. The FKDPv 4503, uses isobutane and consumes a yearly amount of 449kWh. The GTEP ice cream freezer, also using isobutane, consumes 589kWh per year.
The Sielaff GF Robimat XM refrigerated glass-fronted vending machine showed a measured yearly energy consumption of 1,628kWh. The adoption of CO2 refrigerant brought an efficiency increase of 8.9% when compared to using R134a.
