Fostering the Development of Technologies and Practices to Reduce the Energy Inputs into the Refrigeration of Food

Abstract:

<p>This document is the final report for the project titled 'Fostering the Development of Technologies and Practices to Reduce the Energy Inputs into the Refrigeration of Food'.</p> <p>The project has used all the data that is currently available to map energy use in the refrigeration from primary chilling through to catering and retailing together with estimates of potential for improvement. This has provided a ranked order of the top 10 application areas where the largest gains can be made. The top 10 and the data used to calculate the top ten has been widely disseminated and discussed. It has stood up to intense scrutiny and is accepted by the industry as a true reflection of the current cold chain.</p> <p>It is notable that retail and catering are top of the list, followed by transport with food processing and storage applications coming much lower down. The energy saving potential of the top three sectors being almost 10 times that of the next 7 combined. There are however error bars in the estimates of current use and thus savings potential. This is mainly due to a lack of detailed metering in the industry and mechanisms for collating such information. The lack of detailed data also means that it has not been possible to benchmark actual versus theoretically needed energy in the various application areas. This is especially true in refrigeration operations such as primary and secondary chilling and freezing where there is little data relating the energy consumed to the throughput of the food being processed. In the few cases such as the primary chilling of meat carcases it is clear that the energy required to maintain an empty chill room is of the same magnitude as that required when the system is doing its job of chilling meat.</p> <p>The objectives for this project are: <bl> <li>Objective 1 - Identify and rank 10 "operations" (process/food combinations) in order of the potential by the use of improved technology and enhanced business practice to reduce energy usage in food refrigeration.</li> <li>Objective 2.1 - Develop generic technologies and business practices that have the potential to reduce refrigeration energy consumption.</li> <li>Objective 2.2 - Identify the features of the most efficient current systems and make them and their energy saving potential widely known to the industry.</li> <li>Objective 2.3 - Identify and overcome any barriers to the uptake of current technologies that have the potential to substantially improve the energy efficiency of the 10 operations identified in 1.</li> <li>Objective 2.4 - Quantify work being carried out to fill gaps in knowledge/technology identified to improve energy efficiency of the 10 operations identified in 1.</li> <li>Objective 2.5 - Develop programmes to obtain the funding required to provide the missing information if no current work identified in objective 2.4.</li> <li>Objective 3 - Carry out feasibility studies on current technologies that have the potential to achieve substantial energy saving in food refrigeration that are developed to a stage where they can immediately obtain funding from other sources.</li> </bl>

Author(s):

FRPERC