VATIS UPDATE Article

A research supported by the US Energy Department’s Building Technologies Office has led to a major breakthrough in refrigeration systems’ efficiency, and the result may yield big energy savings for supermarkets nationwide and greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The department-funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) cooperative research and development agreement with Honeywell, the United States, to develop an alternative refrigerant that minimizes the environmental footprint of supermarket refrigeration systems.

Honeywell and ORNL have developed Solstice N40, a non-toxic hydrofluoroolefin (HFO)-based refrigerant alternative for R-404A, the most common refrigerant used to cool supermarket refrigeration systems in the U.S. Sold under the trade name Solstice N40, it offers a lower-global-warming potential, energy-saving replacement for R-404A. Using Solstice N40, grocery stores will have the ability to retain their existing hardware and simply replace their current refrigerant with this option, greatly reducing the threat of environmentally harmful greenhouse gas emissions at a modest cost.

Currently, there are about 37,000 supermarket refrigeration systems in use nationwide that could benefit from this replacement for R-404A without incurring the significant cost of replacing equipment. Honeywell’s refrigerant also significantly improves system performance. In fact, ORNL’s research using an actual operating supermarket refrigeration system has shown Solstice N40 creates energy savings of 10 percent compared to R-404A.