food factories & warehouses
23
supermarkets
24
fast food restaurants
25
Industry and special applications
26
Industry and special applications Industrial Processes & Laboratories NH3 / HC / CO2: For many years ammonia has been the refrigerant of choice for manufacturing sites, for example, Xerox and Fujifilm plants both use ammonia refrigeration, and as a secondary refrigerant for mine air conditioning. Hydrocarbon refrigeration has been used to a certain extent in the chemical industries for the liquefaction of CO2 and other gases. In oil refineries, and petrochemical plants, hydrocarbon refrigeration is used to maintain certain processes at their needed low temperatures (for example, in alkylation of butenes and butane to produce a high octane gasoline component). There are also examples of hydrocarbon and ammonia chillers in the pharmaceutical industry. Both the Roche Indianapolis campus and Roche Ireland Ltd, which produces active pharmaceutical ingredients, have invested in centralised ammonia chiller plants, whilst at its German logistics centre Roche is using a mixture of ammonia, propane and CO2. Moreover, the Roche UK headquarters two ammonia chillers and three hydrocarbon chillers provide the office air conditioning and computer server room cooling. CO2 has become an interesting option for laboratory coolers and freezers in North America and Europe, including in a laboratory refrigeration plant in Québec used for testing natural refrigerants, whilst a laboratory freezer has been converted to hydrocarbons.
Solar refrigeration: vaccine coolers & food refrigerators HC: In the last decade several companies have developed hydrocarbon (R600a) solar powered vaccine coolers, including Danish, British, as well as a refrigiration manufacturer from Swaziland, which presented its first prototype vaccine coolers in 2010. These unique coolers can operate on intermittent or poor mains supply, battery-free solar power or a combination of the two. The “SolarChill” cooler using only HCs for refrigeration and
foams was developed and supported by various manufacturers, UNEP, UNICEF and GIZ.
Special Applications: space station & Biosphere
A $2.7 US million (€2 million) grant by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) will support the installation of 75 SolarChill vaccine coolers in community clinics and 25 SolarChill food refrigerators in schools, small enterprises and hospitals in Kenya, Swaziland and Colombia.
NH3: The most prominent examples of the use of ammonia in special applications are for air-conditioning in the international space shuttle and the ecosystems of the Biosphere II research project in Arizona, which will be used in the future for climate change research.
Winter sports NH3: Ammonia has become increasingly popular in recent years for cooling ice rinks due to the HCFC phaseout. Several European ice rinks use ammonia refrigeration systems, including “Curl Aberdeen” ice rink in Scotland, Europe’s largest open-air stadium with an ice rink (Karlstad, Sweden), and the iconic Alexandra Palace in London, UK. Ammonia refrigeration has also been used to refrigerate temporary ice rinks, such as for example the outdoor rink used for the US ice hockey league in Chicago in 2009. Other winter sport applications using ammonia refrigeration include the SNORAS indoor skiing Snow Arena in Lithuania and the world’s third largest indoor snow park in Dubai, the main attraction at the Mall of the Emirates shopping centre in Dubai, which offers 5 ski slopes and is covered with 6000t of snow. The bobsleigh, luge and skeleton refrigerated tracks in Vancouver, Canada, used for the Winter Olympics and in Königssee, Germany, used for the 2011 World Cup, also use ammonia. CO2: The world’s first ice ink using 100% CO2 refrigeration was installed in 2010 in Arena Marcel Dutil in Quebec, Canada. It received ASHRAE’s Technology Award for Industrial Facilities in 2011.
27