Energy self-sufficiency? Yes, with CO2! -G. Pisano-
Energy consumption has become one of the most crucial aspect of our daily life. This pertains to every sector, from private to business, from household to commercial and industrial buildings.
Once again, let’s pretend I am a supermarket owner planning to open a new point of sales (one day I will open one, it’s a promise); for instance, one of those proximity shops which are becoming very popular in our today’s city centers.
As usual, I will need to freeze some kind of food, to chill other kind of food but at the same time I will need to take care about customers comfort when doing their shopping: my shop floor will have to be warm in winter and fresh in summer. And maybe my fitting rooms will need to provide some hot water for my employees deserving a shower at the end of their working day.
By the way, after the closing time my shop will have to be thoroughly clean for welcoming customers the next day. All in all, it looks like I will need a lot of equipments, such as a refrigeration system, an air-conditioning system and a heating system, which are typically installed and maintained by three different contractors (normally not speaking the same language).
However, visiting last February Euroshop exhibition in Düsseldorf, my attention was caught by a new system concept: it looks like it is possible to integrate into the same CO2 refrigeration unit also an air-conditioning module and a heating module, both for sanitary and ambient heating purposes: this was quite impressive since it was not possible with the other refrigerants I was used to!
Therefore I have double checked with several experts and it was definitely confirmed that the same CO2 refrigeration rack is obviously able to deliver my primary needs in terms freezing and chilling duties but also to provide air conditioning and heating during summer and winter respectively. And at the same time, if properly engineered, this CO2 system is able to deliver plenty of sanitary hot water, basically for free.
I have tried to document myself a bit more and met Luca Rossi, representing Biaggini, a leading Swiss company specialized in CO2 rack systems: he confirmed his company is actually producing and installing a number of such systems every month, which are being delivered, for instance, to various MIGROS point of sales; MIGROS is one of the main supermarket chains in Switzerland and seems to be extremely happy to have one single contractor commissioning and doing maintenance on his entire equipment, since the single CO2 rack system is making the point of sales completely energy self-sufficient!
