6.2 Transcritical CO2 Racks and Condensing Units

Background

Europe has long been a major source of natural refrigerant innovation in the HVAC&R sector. It is thought that Norwegian scientist Gustav Lorentzen created the modern age of natural refrigerants in the late 1980s when he developed the modern transcritical cycle for CO2.

By the 2000s, supermarkets were beginning to use CO2 refrigeration systems. In 2001, Sergio Girotto, now president of Italian OEM Enex (which he founded in 2004), installed the first transcritical CO2 multi-compressor system at a Bingo supermarket in Cornuda, Italy.111

But Europe’s natural refrigerant development did not take off until the arrival of the EU’s F-gas Regulation, first announced in 2006, revised in 2014, and under revision again. (Read more about this regulation in chapter 1.3.)

An important trend supporting the growth of transcritical CO2 in Europe and worldwide is the development of technologies that enable efficient operations of the systems in warm-ambient climates, including ejectors, parallel compressors, adiabatic gas coolers, subcooling devices, pressure-exchanger devices and Epta’s FTE and ETE systems. (See chapter 3.2.)

The Market Today

According to data collected by ATMOsphere, there were 140 stores with transcritical CO2 systems in Europe in 2008. By 2013, that number had grown to 2,885 and then almost doubled to 5,500 in 2015. In 2017, the number had more than doubled to 12,000, and almost doubled again to 23,000 in 2019.

Of the 29,000 transcritical CO2 installations in Europe as of March 2020, 27,550 (95%) were estimated to be food retail stores. Of these installations, 3.9% (1,074 stores) were using transcritical CO2 condensing units. The rest employed a centralized system (one or more racks). There were 1,450 industrial sites using transcritical CO2 systems.

As of March 2021, the number of food retail stores using transcritical CO2 systems in Europe was estimated to be 38,400. There were 1,640 industrial sites using transcritical CO2 for a total of 40,000 transcritical CO2 sites in Europe.

Based on a survey of key OEMs in 2022, we determined that the estimated number of food retail stores employing transcritical CO2 refrigeration had grown significantly. We now estimate that, as of September 2022, there are 55,000 stores with transcritical CO2 systems in Europe, including 50,000 using a centralized system (racks) and 5,000 using condensing units. There are an estimated 2,000 industrial sites using the technology, for a total of 57,000 total transcritical CO2 sites.

This equals a food retail market penetration of 18.4% – the percentage of all food retail stores in Europe estimated to feature transcritical CO2 installations, up from 14.1% last year.