Natural refrigerants for a sustainable future: the CAREL experience

As part of a fellowship award of the International Specialised Skills Institute of Australia Kirkland Kaldor-Bull has conducted research among the main professionals and manufacturers in the rapidly-growing European CO2 industry.

CAREL, together with other businesses, was among the international companies chosen for the study. The research carried out at CAREL was focused on understanding the perspective of one of the main suppliers of control solutions and expansion valves.

Under the guidance of Alessandro Greggio, Group Head of Marketing Retail and Refrigeration, Kirkland Kaldor-Bull recognised how the choice of a natural refrigerant, such as CO2, and the type of system (transcritical) are fundamental in reducing emissions and protecting the environment, aspects of vital importance for CAREL. System energy consumption and efficiency are key criteria that have influenced commercial refrigeration in recent years. CAREL, specialists in high-efficiency solutions, is particularly sensitive to this issue, and through its innovation-based approach has made the use of CO2 possible in all systems. The cutting-edge solution for the management of carbon dioxide systems is the pR300T, part of the pRack family, which allows complete management in single or multi-board configurations of transcritical CO2 systems, both small and medium-large.

This research highlighted the thermodynamic differences between synthetic refrigerants and CO2, investigating the range of applications in which CO2 can be used, and establishing relationships across a network of experts that can provide support for the development of CO2 technology in Australia and develop processes to speed up its adoption of CO2 technology.