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FROM R&D, MARKETABLE TECHNOLOGY
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Brian Fricke with the Advansor transcritical CO2 booster system.
lobal calls have been heard to replace inefficient HVAC&R technologies as well as refrigerants that contribute to global warming, and the search for better alternatives is in full swing.
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To that end, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tenn., working on behalf of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Building Technologies Office, is helping to deliver marketable HVAC&R technologies that address energy consumption in existing and new buildings. Specifically targeted are equipment categories that have high greenhouse gas emissions, such as commercial refrigeration. A good example of these technologies is Hillphoenix’s Advansor transcritical CO2 booster refrigeration system, which uses only CO2 as a refrigerant, in food retail and industrial applications.
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Accelerate America September 2016
Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped OEM Hillphoenix bring the Advansor transcritical CO2 refrigeration system to the North American market. – By Marlene Taylor
In 2011, Hillphoenix purchased Advansor A/S, a Denmark-based company that makes transcritical CO2 systems and continues to sell thousands of these systems to food retailers in Europe. Following this acquisition, Hillphoenix modified the design of the system for the North American market; this means complying with safety regulations, providing equivalent or better energy performance in southern climates, and doing all of that at costs that provide a lower total cost of ownership than the traditional synthetic-refrigerant-based systems it was replacing. Hillphoenix also began a partnership with ORNL whereby the lab tested the new design to make sure it met these criteria. Hillphoenix and ORNL collaborated through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). A CRADA is formed between a national laboratory and a non-federal entity,