Optimizing Operational Carbon: Reclaiming Heat From Refrigeration Systems for Space Heating

In the commercial refrigeration and HVAC industry, there’s a strong push to reduce carbon footprints while keeping up with sustainability goals and complying with ever-changing regulations. This green evolution is particularly prominent in food retail, where many are adopting advanced systems that utilize low-GWP refrigerants.

To explore this trend, Henderson Engineers and Copeland collaborated on a comparative study to examine various aspects, including heat reclamation capacity, energy usage, and carbon intensity of old versus new systems. We investigated the most effective types of heat reclaim for energy savings and considered how factors like climate, store size, and system types influence the amount of heat that can be reclaimed. Finally, we debated whether enhancing refrigeration systems for heat reclamation is worthwhile.

The study focused on a supermarket and a hypermarket across six distinct U.S. climates: Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Portland. We used typical installations—refrigeration with R-448A (an A1 hydrofluorocarbon refrigerant) and HVAC heating with natural gas—as the baseline while exploring more sustainable options.

This white paper demonstrates how heat reclamation strategies, particularly those involving heat pump technology, can support HVAC heating in food retail. We compare these new technologies with baseline systems to objectively assess their annual energy efficiency gains and their contribution to decarbonization efforts. Dive into our findings to discover what we uncovered in the Henderson and Copeland white paper.