International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Vol. 20, No.

4 (2012) 1250017 (11 pages) World Scientic Publishing Company DOI: 10.1142/S2010132512500174

TRANSCRITICAL CO2 REFRIGERATION SYSTEMS: COMPARISON WITH CONVENTIONAL SOLUTIONS AND APPLICATIONS
JAHAR SARKAR Department of Mechanical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, UP-221005, India
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Received 12 May 2012 Revised 12 September 2012 Accepted 21 September 2012 Published 27 November 2012
Carbon dioxide (CO2 is one of the natural refrigerants which can be used as working uid in various refrigeration applications along with the ammonia and hydrocarbons due to its ecofriendliness, higher volumetric capacity, good heat transfer properties, etc. The present article consists of two parts: A detailed comparative study of CO2-based transcritical refrigeration systems with conventional refrigerants-based systems in terms of both thermodynamic and heat transfer performances, and review of both theoretical and experimental researches on transcritical CO2 vapor compression cycle for various refrigeration applications including commercial product status. Suitability of the CO2 system in specic refrigeration application is also discussed. Keywords : Transcritical CO2 cycle; refrigeration; performance comparison; application; review.

Nomenclature
COP : Coecient of performance CFCs : Chlorouorocarbons GWP : Global worming potential h : Specic enthalpy (kJ/kgK) HCFCs : Hydrochlorouorocarbons k : Thermal conductivity (W/mK) NBP : Normal boiling point (  C) ODP : Ozone layer depleting potential P : Pressure (bar) rp : Pressure ratio t : Temperature (  C) VC : Volumetric capacity (kJ/m 3  : Heat transfer coecient (kJ/m 2 K)  : Density

Subscripts
c : Critical point dis : Compressor discharge evp : Evaporator l : Saturated liquid

1. Introduction
For vapor compression refrigeration systems, the choice of refrigerants is multi-criteria selection process dependent on thermodynamic, safety and technical aspects. Before the rst round of

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uorocarbon phase out (19861995) the refrigeration market made substantial use of CFCs and HCFCs, particularly R22 and R502 and particularly in the United Kingdom and France. Ammonia retained a greater market share in other parts of the world. It seems reasonable to assume that the use of ammonia in these markets would have declined in favor of uorocarbons as a result of stricter health and safety requirements, if it had not been for the Montreal Protocol. In the early stages of the CFC phase out, some end users who would previously have used R502 switched to R22 and others accepted ammonia as the most suitable refrigerant. Within a few years however it became apparent that R22 was not likely to remain in use in the longterm and the market shifted towards ammonia. Also, to avoid the toxicity of ammonia, lot of alternative of R502 with zero ODP such as R402A, R402B, R403A, R403B, R404A, R407A, R407B, R407C, R507A, R507C were suggested for cold storage applications.1 Some of the alternative pure refrigerants are listed in Table 1 and some mixtures of these refrigerants are listed in Table 2. Within these alternatives, R32 has the lowest GWP values. There is no single component replacement for R502 the most promising, R41 and R125, has a very low critical point and so tends to be

inecient. The most promising blend, R404A, is expensive, requires an expensive lubricant, which does not tolerate moisture, and tends to leak from large, site-installed systems. Some other blends have further disadvantages, such as temperature glide, which make them unsuitable for use in ooded systems. But all these alternatives for refrigeration are synthetic and have very high GWP. This has led to the development of eco-friendly natural refrigerants such as ammonia, isobutane, propane and carbon dioxide, etc., listed in Table 3.2 Among these, ammonia is suered from its toxicity and ammability, with reluctance; hydrocarbons are generally perceived as too dangerous for use in large charge industrial systems and so have not received serious consideration. Water is another natural refrigerant but it is inappropriate for low temperature plant and air systems are far too inecient to be considered for most applications. In spite of some disadvantages (high pressure and lower coecient of performance (COP)), carbon dioxide has strong potential to use in refrigeration applications. Although carbon dioxide was used long back, it was phased out during the 1930s due to the development of synthetic refrigerants and it has now been revived by the seminal work of Lorentzen in

Table 1. Refrigerant R41 R32 R125 R143a R22 R134a

Refrigerants for refrigeration applications.1 NBP (  C) 78.12 51.65 48.14 47.22 40.81 26.07 Pc (bar) 58.97 57.82 36.29 37.76 49.90 40.59 tc (  C) 44.13 78.11 66.18 72.89 96.15 101.1 ODP 0 0 0 0 >0 0 GWP NA 650 2800 3800 1700 1300

Formula CH3 F CH2 F2 C2 HF5 C2 H3 F3 CHF2 Cl C2 H2 F4

Table 2. Refrigerant R502 R404A R407A R407C R507A R410A

Refrigerant mixtures for refrigeration applications.1 NBP 45.2 46.42 45.09 43.6 45.0 52.7 Pc (bar) 37.20 72.14 82.1 86.7 37.15 72.5 tc (  C) 77.10 37.35 46.8 46.2 70.9 49.5 GWP NA 3260 1770 1530 3300 1730

Compositions (in %) R22/R115 (48.8/51.8) R125/R143a/R134a (44/52/4) R32/R125/R134a (20/40/40) R32/R125/R134a (20/40/40) R125/R143a (50/50) R32/R125 (50/50)

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Transcritical CO2 Refrigeration Systems Table 3. Refrigerant R744 R717 R290 R600a R1270 Formulas CO2 NH3 C3 H8 C4 H10 C3 H6 Flammability No Yes a Yes Yes Yes Natural refrigerants.2 NBP (  C) 33.3 42.1 11.7 47.7 Pc (bar) 73.72 113.5 42.50 36.50 NA tc (  C) 31.1 133.0 96.7 135.0 92.4 ODP 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 GWP 1(0) 0.0 3.0 3.0 NA

a Its lower ignition limit is as high as 15.5% by volume, 37 times that of common hydrocarbons.

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1994.3 This has inspired subsequent development of transcritical carbon dioxide cycles in which heat rejection occurs in the supercritical regimes due to very low critical temperature (31.2  C) of CO2. Beside zero ozone depletion potential (ODP) and zero eective GWP, CO2 has several advantages over other refrigerants such as compatibility with normal lubricants and common machine construction materials, nonammability and nontoxicity, low compression ratio, high volumetric capacity, easy availability and very low price. Three review articles46 have been published on heating applications and one5 for cooling applications up to 2004. In the present work, a detailed thermodynamic and heat transfer-based comparative analyses of CO2 with conventional refrigerants have been carried out for several types of refrigeration applications. The review on transcritical CO2 cycle for various refrigeration applications are presented as well including both academic and industrial researches till date.

2. Performance Comparison with Conventional Refrigerants

A basic expansion transcritical carbon dioxide refrigeration system consists of evaporator, compressor, gas cooler and expansion device. Due to the low critical temperature of CO2 (31.2  C), the evaporator operates at subcritical regimes whereas the heat rejection takes place at supercritical regimes and hence the cycle is called transcritical cycle (Fig. 1). Hence, main dierence between this cycle and conventional cycle is that the heat rejection component is called gas cooler instead of condenser.5 For the analysis, the following assumptions are considered: outlet condition of the evaporator and condenser are saturated vapor, compression process is adiabatic and isentropic, evaporation and condensation/gas cooling processes are isobaric, heat transfer with the ambient are negligible. The cooling COP and volumetric cooling capacity are given by, respectively,7 h h4 COP 1 ; 1 h2 h1

(a) Fig. 1.

(b)

T S diagrams of refrigeration cycles for (a) conventional refrigerant and (b) CO2. 1250017-3

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Vc h1 h4 1 ;

For the thermodynamic and transport properties of CO2, an exclusive code CO2PROP7 has been employed, and for other refrigerants REFPROP (version 5/6.01) has been used. The theoretical analyses of CO2 cycle show that the optimum gas cooler pressure yielding maximum COP is strongly dependent on both evaporator temperature and gas cooler exit temperature. With the increase in evaporator temperature and/or decrease in gas cooler exit temperature, the optimum value decreases.7 Performance comparisons of CO2 with conventionally used working uids in refrigeration applications for evaporation temperatures of 40  C and 20  C are listed in Table 4, assuming the gas cooler or condenser outlet temperature of 40  C. It may be noted that the performances of CO2 systems are given at optimal discharge pressures, which have been evaluated based on maximum cooling COP7 for the operation conditions of Table 4. Most of the freezing processes such as preservation of meats, seafoods, poultry, eggs, fruits and vegetables require temperature more than 30  C. Some Milk products and cold drinks also require this temperature range. COP for the NH3-based system is maximum although drawback is the maximum pressure ratio. R502 and the substitutes R404a, R407a, R407c, etc. give comparatively lower COP, although these are useful for lower temperature than NH3. COP of R22based refrigeration system is better but it is ODP substance. Another natural substance R290 gives reasonable COP. But for some deep-freezing process (temperature < 50  C), NH3 is not applicable due

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to its higher NBP. Within the natural refrigerants; although COP of ammonia is better than propane but propane is applicable for lower temperature (about 45  C) than ammonia (about 35  C) and compressor discharge temperature is also very lower for propane, which will give lower irreversibility in the condenser. Although, the CO2 system gives very lower performance than other refrigerants, it is useful for low temperature (up to about 55  C) and also this system gives higher volumetric capacity and lower pressure ratio. It can be noted that CO2 is the only natural refrigerant in single-stage system useful for lower temperature, some HFC refrigerants such as R32 and R41 are applicable but will be phased out. Although Table 4 shows that the ideal COP of CO2-based refrigeration system is about 45% lower than that of R22-based system, the actual COP of CO2 will be more close to that of R22 due to the superior heat transfer properties of CO2.8 As the COP of transcritical CO2 vapor compression cycle is signicantly lower due to huge throttling loss compared to conventional cycle, researches are going on to improve the performance by various cycle modications.9,10 Heat transfer characteristic of the refrigerants is one of the important criteria for system performances. Better heat transfer properties will help to reduce heat exchanger size for same capacity and ultimately yield compact system. On the other hand, for the same heat exchanger, due to increase in heat transfer rate the required temperature difference between two uids will be less yielding higher exergetic eciency. Table 5 tabulates the

Table 4. Refrigerant Condition rp tdis  C) VC (kJ/m 3 COP Condition rp tdis  C) VC (kJ/m 3 COP 4.864 103.6 6940.9 1.766 9.751 134.5 3611 1.138 CO2 NH3

Performance comparison for refrigeration applications. R290 R22 R32 R134a R502 R407C

tevp 40  C, t3 40  C 21.69 193.9 655.0 2.047 12.333 54.53 579.3 1.852 14.582 87.03 674.9 1.981 13.968 120.1 1146.7 1.901 *Not applicable for this range 13.184 56.22 626.9 1.721 20.26 76.54 504.1 1.672

tevp 20  C, t3 40  C 8.180 135.5 1679.0 3.283 5.601 48.05 1342.3 3.012 6.254 70.47 1591.5 3.143 6.106 90.0 2615.9 3.028 7.664 48.54 883.3 3.078 5.847 50.02 1510.8 2.850 8.108 70.24 1234.4 2.785

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Transcritical CO2 Refrigeration Systems Table 5. Heat transfer coecients at saturated liquid for dierent evaporator temperatures. Refrigerants l (kW/m 2 K) at tevp 20  C l (kW/m 2 K) at tevp 40  C CO2 8.175 7.846 NH3 20.884 R290 6.715 6.398 R134a 3.488 R22 3.720 3.528 R502 3.216 3.031

values of heat transfer coecients at saturated liquid in the evaporator for mass ow rate of 0.04 kg/s and tube ID of 4.8 mm, which is given by,
:8 0:4 l 0:023kl =dRe 0 l Pr l :

However, it has to be multiplied by a vapor quality-dependent parameter to get the actual heat transfer coecient for certain quality in evaporator.11 Result shows that NH3 is superior for refrigeration application, although CO2 is better than other refrigerants. So, for the same evaporator design, the minimum temperature dierence between the two uids will have to be less for CO2, which will give lower exergy loss in the evaporator and give higher exergetic eciency. Similar deviations in heat transfer coecients can be observed in the condenser side also for other refrigerants if any text book correlation is used for condensation. Dissimilar to others, single phase heat transfer occurs for CO2 with signicant variation. One such variation of Nusselt number and heat transfer coecient with bulk temperature across the gas cooler is shown in Fig. 2 for mass ow rate of 0.029 kg/s and pressure of 108 bar. These values have been predicted from Gnielinski equation based on properties at bulk temperature.11 It is observed that the heat transfer variation is very predominant

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particularly near critical region due to abrupt change in refrigerant properties and maximum value can be obtained at pseudo-critical temperature range. Hence, CO2 can yield very superior heat transfer characteristics near the critical temperature and pressure. However, performance degrades as condition goes apart from critical point. CO2 yields similar heat transfer performance with conventional refrigerants.12

3. Application Areas 3.1. Automotive air conditioning

Mobile air conditioning applications were among the rst to be considered for application of the transcritical CO2 cycle due to various disadvantages with R22 and R134a including high leakage rate through the exible nylon or butyl rubber hoses needed for vibration protection, and through the compressor shaft seal needed to avoid the additional weight and conversion losses associated with the hermetic electric compressors used in other applications as well as high GWP. In successive studies, Lorentzen and Pettersen13 and Pettersen14 developed and tested a prototype of transcritical CO2 automobile air conditioning system. They used, as a reference, a commercially available R12 automotive air conditioning system and built the prototype of comparable cooling capacity. The CO2 system had a liquid line/suction line heat exchanger to transfer heat between CO2 leaving the gas cooler and low pressure CO2 leaving the evaporator. To match the cooling capacity, the displacement volume and speed of compressor were adjusted. The external dimensions of the air-to-refrigerant heat exchangers were nearly identical for both systems; however the CO2 evaporator had 25% larger airside surface than the R12 evaporator, and the CO2 gas cooler had 34% larger airside surface than the R12 condenser.13,14 The authors demonstrated that the CO2 system had comparable performance of the R12 system. The ideal cycle comparisons of R134a and

Fig. 2.

Variation of CO2 heat transfer properties in gas cooler.11

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CO2 for automotive air conditioning carried out by Bhatti,15 rested on assumptions that failed to account properly for the unique thermodynamic and transport properties of CO2 even though experimental data for a prototype CO2 system had already shown competitive performance to a state-of-the art R-12 system. Not surprisingly the theoretical studies concluded that the total global warming impact of CO2 systems would exceed that of R134a, considering both direct (leakage) and indirect (fuel combustion) emissions of greenhouse gases. Through improvements in system operation and control,5 compressor performance, and heat exchanger performance,16 the CO2 technology was able to compete even with the improved R134a systems that were introduced in the mid-1990s. McEnaney et al.17 presented experimental results for both steady state and cyclic operation for prototype CO2 system and a commercially available 134a automotive air conditioner. Both the gas cooler and evaporator were microchannel heat exchangers. The external volumes of evaporator were identical for both systems with the CO2 evaporator having 20% larger airside surface area. The CO2 gas cooler had 23% lower external volume and 28% lower air side surface than the R134a condenser. The test results indicated that the prototype CO2 system provided a comparable performance to the current production R134a system for both steady state and cyclic operation. Control strategy using clutch cycling, variable displacement and variable speed compressor can be applied to adjust optimum high side pressure for CO2 automotive air conditioning.18 Brown et al.19 evaluated merits of CO2 and R134a air conditioners using simulation model and considering current production conguration of a R134a system and a CO2 system, which was additionally equipped with liquid-line/suction line heat exchanger. Results showed CO2 having an inferior COP to R134a. The COP disparity depends on compressor speed (system capacity) and ambient temperature; the higher the COP and discharge temperature, the lower was the COP dierence. At the same speed and lower ambient temperature, the COP disparity was lower; however at higher speed and ambient temperatures, it was greater. Hence, better transport properties and compressor isentropic eciency did not compensate for its thermodynamic disadvantage compared to R134a when equivalent heat exchangers were used for both refrigerants, even if internal heat exchanger was

used to reduce throttling irreversibilities. The entropy generation calculation indicated that CO2 had somewhat better performance than R134a in evaporator, however poorer performance in gas cooler than R134a in condenser. Based on the results of an analysis of a large number of experiments and some new concepts, next-generation prototype systems have been designed and are serving as the focus for current research. Most are equipped with variable-displacement compressors, and heat exchangers congured to exploit the unique transport and thermodynamic properties of CO2.5 Experimental study20 showed that the CO2based Military Environmental Control unit did not perform as well as the R-22 baseline unit in either capacity or eciency. Transcritical CO2 automotive air conditioning can give good performance for proper control of optimum high pressure.21 Electrical air conditioning system with R744 using an inverter driven compressor showed better performance than that with R134a for a fuel cell electric vehicle.22 Denso23 has developed rst CO2 automotive air conditioning system. Visteon of Europe developed car air conditioning system using CO2 as refrigerant. Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. is willing to launch the fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) equipped with a CO2 air conditioning system, jointly developed by Nissan and Calsonic Kansei Corp. Danfoss A/S and Hydro Alunova have established a joint venture to develop a new generation of aluminum tubes for use in automotive air conditioning systems. Denso and DaimlerChrysler AG are working together to develop a carbon dioxide air conditioning system for a Mercedes vehicle. Konvekta (Germany) has developed CO2 bus air conditioning.24

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3.2. Residential cooling

The rst assessment of transcritical CO2 systems for residential air conditioning was done by simulating operation of an Asian-style ductless mini-split system, comparing CO2 to a baseline R-22 system. Evaporator temperatures were higher in the CO2 system, and very small approach temperatures were estimated for the CO2 gas cooler. The eects of pressure drop, particularly in the evaporator and suction line of the R-22 system and the superheat characteristics of the expansion valve, gave cooling COPs (summer operation) that were similar in both systems, even at high ambient temperatures.5

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Another extensive set of experiments was conducted on a prototype North American style ducted split air conditioning system and compared with baseline R-410A system and the CO2 prototype heat exchangers were designed to match as closely as possible to its overall package dimensions.25 Detailed literature review on residential cooling is cited in Ref. 5 up to 2004. Cycle analysis of CO2 air conditioner showed that the eect of internal superheating is very small whereas the eect of compressor eciency is signicant on system COP. The design of recuperative heat exchangers in the system is crucial, since the system COP may decrease when the recuperator is above certain size.26 The R-22 system had a signicantly better COP than the CO2 system when equivalent heat exchangers were used in the CO2 and R-22 systems, which indicates that the better transport properties and compressor isentropic eciency of CO2 did not compensate for the thermodynamic disadvantage of the transcritical cycle in comfort cooling applications.27 Adriansyah28 made air conditioning prototype. Cho et al.29 developed the CO2 air conditioner with variable speed scroll compressor, an electronic expansion valve and internal heat exchanger, and showed that simultaneous control of EEV opening and compressor frequency allowed the optimum control of the compressor discharge pressure, improving the performance of the CO2 system. Cho et al.30 used transcritical two-stage CO2 cycle with gas injection for air conditioning application and showed that the cooling COP was maximally enhanced by 16.5% over that of the two-stage noninjection cycle. Aprea and Maiorino31 developed CO2-based split air conditioning system and optimized the heat rejection pressure. Green & Cool (Sweden) has developed air conditioning units.24 Star Corporation developed transcritical CO2 air handling units for building HVAC applications.32

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studied, working with R134a. Hwang and Radermacher8 compared the water chilling performance of CO2 system with R22 system through their experimental study. Study showed that though the ideal cycle COP of CO2 is only 50% to 60% that of R22, the actual CO2 cycle performed similar to the R22 cycle within 6% when the same outside volume of the heat exchanger was applied for both refrigerants. This large deviation between ideal and actual cycles was due to benecial thermodynamic properties of CO2. Sarkar et al.34 made a transcritical CO2 heat pump prototype for simultaneous water cooling and heating, which can produce the cold water up to 8  C. Liu et al.35 have made CO2 system prototype for water cooling. However, to best of author knowledge, any attempt has not been made for commercial water cooler.

3.4. Refrigeration applications

Research interest in CO2 has also been renewed in the area of transport refrigeration for two reasons. The rst relates to the relatively high density and capacity of CO2 at low temperatures, compared to alternatives such as hydrocarbons or ammonia; the advent of lightweight compact microchannel heat exchangers presents new opportunities for system optimization. Second, the worldwide availability of CO2 and freedom from HFC-related regulatory uncertainties ts well with the global nature of the transport refrigeration industry. Studies showed that the performance of CO2 system matched with equal size systems using R502 and 507 and very similar COP values in freezing mode with R134a over a full range of ambient temperatures.5 One problem with CO2 may be its very high compressor discharge pressure. However, in shipping application, this can be reduced due to lower ambient temperature in sea atmosphere. Commercial refrigeration systems for shops, supermarkets, large kitchens, etc. have large refrigerant emissions, and the energy use is in many cases high. Thus, there is a need for ecient, safe and environment friendly refrigeration systems. New concepts based on CO2 have been demonstrated for centralized systems using CO2 as a secondary heat transfer uid or in a low-temperature cascade stage, and recently decentralized concepts with heat recovery have been shown. A two-stage CO2 supermarket system was developed in 20025 and experiments were carried out to optimize the operation and performance. Results

3.3. Water cooling

Research works related to water cooling applications are limited. Rigola et al.33 made a prototype transcritical CO2 cycle for water cooling application with hermetic reciprocating compressor. Both numerical and experimental results concluded that the transcritical cycle working with the second improved prototype present a similar cooling capacity and a volumetric eciency and COP around 10% lower than the conventional sub-critical cycle

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showed lower COP than theoretical value due to the eect of large amount of oil, additional mass ow through venturi, internal leakage and pressure drop. However, good performance could be achieved by using components specially designed for this refrigerant. Study on a decentralized supermarket system using CO2 as the only refrigerant in a system with heat recovery showed reduction of energy consumption for refrigeration and heating by 32% compared to the R22 system.5 Sasaki et al.36 did not obtain good eciency with CO2 refrigeration system compared to other refrigerants; hence they proposed simultaneous industrial heating and cooling applications. However, the better cycle eciency level was achieved with CO2 cycle using rolling piston type two-stage compressor with intercooling compared with that of conventional cycle for the application of refrigeration equipment.37 Girotto et al.38 experimentally investigated the CO2 supermarket refrigeration system to compare with a conventional direct expansion system using R404A. Results showed about 10% higher total annual energy consumption of the installed CO2 system compared to the direct expansion R404A solution. Authors stated that further improvement of eciency and approaching the eciency of present R404A systems could still be possible. Due to lack of mass production, CO2 systems were estimated to be 20% more expensive than R404A system. Numerical study39 showed that for ambient temperature range of 10  C40  C, the reference centralized system solution shows higher COP of about 421% than the reference parallel solution. Using two-stage compression in the centralized system solution instead of single stage will result in total COP which is about 522% higher than that of the reference centralized system and 1317% higher than that of the improved two-stage parallel system. The annual energy consumption calculations in three dierent climates; cold, moderate and hot, show that the centralized transcritical CO2 system is good solution for cold climates whereas the NH3CO2 cascade system has the lowest energy consumption in hot climates. Both systems proved to be good alternatives to R404A DX system for supermarket refrigeration.40 Ge and Tassou41 investigated optimized control strategies for CO2 cycles in medium temperature retail food refrigeration systems. Yamaguchi and Zhang42 introduced a novel CO2 refrigeration system to achieve refrigeration eect below triple point of CO2. Ge and

Tassou43,44 have investigated supermarket model for performance evaluation and optimal design of supermarket refrigeration systems. Cecchinato and Corradi45 developed a R744 commercial single door bottle cooler that is cost competitive and matches the performance of typical cost optimized R404A and R134a systems. Cecchinato et al.46 developed carbon dioxide transcritical air cooled chiller for refrigerating propylene glycol down to 8  C supply temperature and the optimal cycle upper pressure was maintained using a ash tanks and two electronic valves. Cabello et al.47 evaluated eciency and optimal gas cooler pressure of CO2 refrigeration plant and concluded that precise system to control the gas-cooler pressure is needed in this type of refrigerating plants, since a small error in pressure causes a strong reduction in eciency. They showed a maximum increment on cooling capacity of 12%, an increment of the eciency of the plant up to 12% and a maximum increase on discharge temperature of 10  C at 15  C of evaporating temperature by using internal heat exchanger.48 Ge and Tassou49 analyzed booster CO2 refrigeration system for supermarket application. Aprea et al.50 experimentally showed that total equivalent worming impact of CO2 is more than R134a for cold storage application. The commercial system for retail shop \CO2OLtec" by Carrier51 provides attractive energy savings as compared to conventional HFC direct expansion systems. During high ambient summer conditions, the refrigeration circuit is operated in transcritical mode; however the condensing temperature can be considerably decreased in winter, spring and in autumn resulting in better energy efciency for CO2 compared to HFC. Danfoss is also manufacturer of CO2-based food retail system.52 Danfoss Food Retail oers complete CO2 system solutions including: ADAP-KOOLr control and monitoring systems, Regulating and injection valves, Sensors (temperature, pressure, gas detectors), Filter-driers and Line components. Large numbers of CO2-based supermarket installations have been completed successfully in the United States, along with many more across the globe.53 The rst supermarket CO2 transcritical system was installed in Coop Lestans, Italy. Since then, Europe has become the unrivaled technology and adoption leader for HFC-free commercial refrigeration systems. By early 2012, industry experts estimated that around 1200 food retail stores were already using

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CO2 transcritical commercial refrigeration systems in the 27 EU Member States.54 Transcritical CO2 refrigeration plant was used for retail applications from Space Engineering Services.55

References
1. A. D. Little, Report to the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy (2002). 2. S. F. Pearson, Natural working uids, IEA Heat Pump Newsletter 22 (2004). 3. G. Lorentzen, Revival of carbon dioxide as a refrigerant, Int. J. Ref. 17 (1994) 292300. 4. P. Neksa, CO2 heat pump systems, Int. J. Ref. 25 (2002) 421427. 5. M. H. Kim, J. Pettersen and C. W. Bullard, Fundamental process and system design issues in CO2 vapor compression systems, Prog. Energy Comb. Sci. 30 (2004) 119174. 6. B. T. Austin and K. Sumathy, Transcritical carbon dioxide heat pump systems: A review, Renew. Sust. Energy Rev. 15 (2011) 40134029. 7. J. Sarkar, S. Bhattacharyya and M. Ramgopal, Optimization of a transcritical CO2 heat pump cycle for simultaneous cooling and heating applications, Int. J. Ref. 27 (2004) 830838. 8. Y. Hwang and R. Radermacher, Experimental investigation of the CO2 refrigeration cycle, ASHRAE Trans. 105 (1999) 12191227. 9. J. Sarkar, Review on cycle modications of transcritical CO2 refrigeration and heat pump systems, J. Adv. Res. Mech. Eng. 1 (2010) 2229. 10. E. A. Groll and J. H. Kim, Review of recent advances toward transcritical CO2 cycle technology, HVAC&R Res. 13 (2007) 499520. 11. J. Sarkar, S. Bhattacharyya and M. Ramgopal, Simulation of a transcritical CO2 heat pump cycle for simultaneous cooling and heating applications, Int. J. Ref. 29 (2006) 735743. 12. J. Yang, Y. Ma and M. Li, Comparative analysis of heat transfer for CO2 and conventional refrigerants, Appl. Mech. Mater. 130{134 (2012) 13061309. 13. G. Lorentzen and J. Pettersen, A new, ecient and environmentally benign system for car air conditioning, Int. J. Ref. 16 (1993) 412. 14. J. Pettersen, An ecient new automobile air-conditioning system based on CO2 vapour compression, ASHRAE Trans. 100 (1994) 657665. 15. M. Bhatti, A critical look at R-744 and R-134a mobile air conditioning systems, SAE paper 970527 (1997). 16. J. Pettersen, A. Hafner, G. Skaugen and H. Rekstad, Development of compact heat exchangers for CO2 air-conditioning systems, Int. J. Ref. 21 (1998) 180193. 17. R. McEnaney, Y. Park, J. Yin, C. Bullard and P. Hrnjak, Performance of the prototype of a transcritical R744 mobile A/C system, SAE Paper 99PC-6-7 (1999). 18. R. McEnaney and P. Hrnjak, Control strategies for transcritical R744 systems, SAE Paper 2000-0-1272 (2000).

3.5. Food processing/preservation

Due to gliding temperature heat rejection in the gas cooler, simultaneous heating and cooling is one of the most promising applications of transcritical CO2 cycle. Sarkar et al.11 simulated CO2 cycle for diary applications. A CO2 heat pump was constructed to enable the simultaneous production of refrigeration at less than 0  C and water heating to 90  C for the New Zealand food processing industry.56 The optimum heating COP of the prototype was about 3 in most trials, but increased to 3.2 when operating the heat pump compressor at part-load with no oil in the system. The addition of oil caused fouling and reduced performance in the evaporator but had minimal eect on the performance of the gas cooler. The addition of oil had little eect on compressor isentropic eciency when operating at maximum compressor speed but caused a signicant reduction in isentropic eciency when operating the compressor at reduced speed. CO2 cascade systems for food processing applications have been installed in various developed countries.57 Star Corporation developed CO2/ammonia cascade system for cold storage and blast freezing.32 Transcritical CO2 cycle can also be eectively used for food/seed drying applications.58,59

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4. Conclusion
Theoretical comparison of CO2 with conventional refrigerants based on both thermodynamic and heat transfer performances for refrigeration applications have been demonstrated. Review on various cooling applications of transcritical CO2 cycle is also presented. Although the COP for CO2 is signicantly lower than other refrigerants, it is better in terms of lower compressor pressure ratio and higher volumetric capacity. However, the CO2 refrigeration system experimentally yielded comparable performances with conventional synthetic refrigerants due to its superior heat transfer properties. Review shows that CO2 gained relatively less importance for commercial cooling applications due to lower COP. However, it expected to be a better alternative after employing cycle modications in transcritical CO2 system.

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