A comparative study on the environmental impact of supermarket refrigeration systems using low GWP refrigerants

Supermarket refrigeration systems have high environmental impact due to their large refrigerant charge and high leak rates. Consequently, the interest in using low GWP refrigerants such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and new refrigerant blends is increasing. In this paper, an open-source Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP) framework is presented and used to compare the environmental impact of four supermarket refrigeration systems: a transcritical CO2 booster system, a cascade CO2/N-40 system, a combined secondary circuit with central DX N-40/L-40 system, and a baseline multiplex direct expansion system utilizing R-404A and N-40. The study is performed for different climates within the USA using EnergyPlus to simulate the systems' hourly performance. Further analyses are presented such as parametric, sensitivity, and uncertainty analyses to study the impact of different system parameters on the LCCP. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.