Supermarkets Sold on Ammonia as a Refrigerant
Richard Heath, a senior manager for the Supervalu/Albertsons line of grocery stores, says his company’s ammonia-based refrigeration system is “operating like a champ.”
The ammonia refrigeration system was one of the first to be installed in the United States. The grocery chain has implemented the technology in one of its stores in Caprinteria, California, Heaths says in an article in Supermarket News. “For anyone who’s concerned about ammonia, many of the hurdles we were afraid of turned out not to be hurdles at all,” he adds.
Ammonia, like other natural refrigerants (propane, carbon dioxide, and other gases), have little or no effect on global warming or the ozone, according to the Supermarket News article. Because of their “gentle touch” on the environment, they are being looked at as replacements for R-22 and HFCs – each known to have a negative impact on the ozone layer and global warming – for use in chiller tubes, air conditioner coils and cooling towers.
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Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons – Follow Up
(Editor’s note: The Just Venting blogging team identified the top three Just Venting blog posts since launching in 2008. The next three posts will be a follow up to each.)
It’s no surprise one of the blog’s most popular posts is Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons.
In a 2010 newsletter published by Alfa Laval, a heat transfer, separation and fluid handling technology company, Dr. Risto Ciconkov claims ammonia is on the rise as an energy efficient refrigeration choice.
Ciconkov is an expert on ammonia refrigeration technology from the University of Skopje in Macedonia. He explains that the ongoing challenge is to create environmentally safer products without affecting quality or operation efficiency.
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Innovative Energy Solutions: Ammonia as a Refrigerant, Cogeneration, Concentrating Solar Power
Every building needs an HVAC system. Whether you’re heating, cooling, or ventilating, you need a system that will work efficiently and also save you money.
But different facilities require different systems. As technology develops, and green buildings become the norm rather than the exception, there are some innovative energy technologies you might want to consider to meet your HVAC needs.
Ammonia as a Refrigerant
Ammonia as a refrigerant is growing in popularity in large industrial applications, according to A. Bruce Badger, president of the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration (IIAR).
Ammonia is a natural refrigerant that doesn’t deplete the ozone nor does it contribute to global warming, Badger says. Applications for ammonia as a refrigeration include large food and beverage processing companies, cold storage warehouses, district cooling, the pharmaceutical industry, as well as ice rinks.
Ammonia used without water (anhydrous) is used in industrial applications because of its environmental advantages; it’s also very energy efficient and offers a fast return on investment, according to IIAR. Most of the food consumed in North America, including meat, dairy, fish, frozen food, fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as beverages are stored or processed in facilities that use ammonia as a refrigerant, Badger says.
“The risks associated with using ammonia as a refrigerant are no greater than the risks associated with other common refrigerants,” Badger says in the article. “The primary difference is that ammonia has a pungent odor that serves as a very effective safety alarm.”
However, only qualified technicians should handle ammonia refrigerants, because working on an ammonia refrigeration system is different than working on other refrigeration systems, he says. For example, while copper tubing is commonly used in smaller HVAC systems, it should never be used in an ammonia refrigeration system. (Editors Note: Check out our popular post on this topic: “Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons“).
Cogeneration
Large facilities can also become more energy efficient using cogeneration, which is a process that allows a system to produce both heat and power.
Cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power (CHP), is one of the most effective approaches to energy conservation because it produces two types of energy at once – electric power and thermal energy.
The heat that would otherwise be vented into the atmosphere is recovered and then used wherever it’s needed. A facility can generate electricity onsite and then use the heat that would be lost from that process to create steam. So, rather than pay twice for electricity and heat, you just pay to generate the electricity.
Separate heat and power systems are often only 33% efficient because up to 67% of the fuel energy is wasted in unused heat. Even the most efficient power plants are only about 60% energy efficient. But CHP systems can achieve efficiencies of 80% or higher, while they also save on electricity line losses – the electricity that’s lost being delivered to a distant location.
The perfect time to consider installing a cogen system is during a major plant renovation.
Concentrating Solar Power
Some experts say that concentrating solar power (CSP) technology is the only renewable resource that can harness the sun to produce “reliable, cost-effective, and dispatchable electricity.”
CSP uses mirrors to focus concentrated beams of sunlight onto an area where the heat converts a liquid to steam that can be used to power a turbine that generates electricity. Additionally, some of that energy produced by the heat can be stored in tanks of oil or molten salt and used later to generate power after the sun sets.
Today, the US has more than 500 megawatts (MW) of CSP power generation, with another 1,300-plus MW in the development pipeline. And worldwide, CSP plants produce more than 1 gigawatt of energy. With sufficient investment and the right government policies, more than 10% of the world’s electricity demand could be met by CSP by 2050, according to a study by the International Energy Agency.
So if you’re thinking of replacing your old HVAC system, check out these innovative alternatives — they’ll help you save energy and money.
Next Step:
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Goodway Presents: Innovation Poised To Positively Impact Our Industry
Once again, Goodway and Just Venting are pleased to present information which will help to educate and inform our valued readers. According to the consulting firm Pike Research, in the next 5 years, the HVAC industry will see a significant and continuing emphasis on energy management. As noted in an executive summary of the report, rising energy prices and increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are driving many building owners to manage energy as an asset rather than treating it as a fixed cost.
According to Pike, until recently, the largest single energy cost in most buildings had been lighting. But a concerted focus on reducing lighting costs, coupled with technological innovations, has driven down lighting costs to the point where HVAC has replaced it as the largest building management cost item.
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Goodway Presents: Your Building is Calling — Web-Enabled Building Management
Goodway and Just Venting would like to give you a glimpse of web-enabled building management that can pull you headlong onto the energy technology fast track! Imagine: You’re walking on the eighth fairway and your smartphone chirps to tell you the occupants on the 14th floor of your building have turned the thermostat down big time and energy consumption levels are increasing faster than you would like.
A little later on in the day you get a reminder that you need to change the filters on the 3rd and 9th floor air conditioners. You send a quick text to your maintenance manager and get back to the business of your short game. In the evening you check in to see if the programmable thermostats in your building have switched to their night settings to help keep energy costs down.
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Clean Your Air Ducts! (A Subtle Hint)
Clean your air ducts! Was that subtle enough?
One of the great debates raging in the environmental community is the question of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and how to improve it. Research has demonstrated that, without a doubt, a building’s HVAC system is a primary path those contaminants take to work their way through your building and into the lungs of its occupants. So cleaning your ducts with, say, Goodway’s AQ-V2400 duct cleaning system, can help you improve your IAQ.
It used to be that good IAQ was a nice-to-have, but it is rapidly becoming a must-have. As more and more people become aware of the importance of indoor air quality, they will begin to insist that you, as a building owner and/or operator, offer them an environment free of HVAC-borne contaminants.
VOC’s, mold, dust, dander, bacteria, pollen, bugs, cleaning products and even ink and copier toner are coursing through your ductwork even as you read this post. Every time your forced-air heat kicks on this winter it will be circulating those contaminants through your ductwork. Every nook and cranny of your building will be affected.
An increasing number of people are claiming that contaminants in the air are giving them headaches and making them nauseated, causing them to feel fatigued and even to suffer seizures. Increasingly, tenants are associating poor IAQ with decreased productivity, increased medical costs and higher absenteeism. And they are beginning to demand that you, as the building owner or operator, do something about it.
While you can switch to low-VOC carpeting and paints or experiment with various low-emission products, you can never eliminate the contaminants completely. So, again, we say – keep your ducts clean and dry.
Refining your operating practices and maintenance procedures to reduce the formation of moisture in ducts and in and around coils, drip pans and other areas of your HVAC gear can be very helpful. You can manage the issue but you can never eliminate it completely. To prevent the spread of mold and bacteria, you should regularly clean your ducts and treat them with a chemical such as Oxine, a broad-spectrum biocide, to kill any bacteria present in your HVAC gear.
The technology available for cleaning your ductwork has evolved and improved over the years. With the introduction of products such as Goodway’s RVB-100 Rotary Cleaner for smaller vents and ducts, the AQR-1500 Rotary Duct Cleaner and accessories such as inflatable bladders for isolating sections of ductwork as you clean, it is now possible to incorporate duct cleaning into your maintenance program in a cost-effective manner.
Not only will this enable you to satisfy existing tenant requests for better IAQ, but you can use your improved environment as a marketing tool to attract additional clients. You may be surprised to learn that a certain segment of clients are indeed willing to pay more to operate in a building that will help them maximize their productivity.
Rich Silverman
Goodway Blogging Team
Image courtesy of Goodway Technologies
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RAM-5 Tube Cleaner – Come Take A Test-Drive at the AHR
If you are a regular reader of this blog – and we hope you are – you know that we normally use these pixels to talk about what’s happening in our industry – the trends that affect how you will be doing business next week, next month and next year – and to pass along what we learn from our friends in the industry. But on the occasion of one of the largest events in the HVAC industry – AHR 2010 in Orlando – we’d like to tell you about a product we’ve been offering for more than a decade – the Ream-A-Matic RAM-5SF tube cleaning system.
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GDS-15-PH Scale Removal System Featured at Goodway’s AHR Booth
Our working philosophy at Goodway has always been of the “build a better mousetrap” variety as we’ve gone about the task of re-envisioning how industrial cleaning equipment might be improved. We like to think this puts us in line with the tenor of the times. For over a year now you’ve seen us talking incessantly here at our blog about the dramatically changing market and historical period that we live in. Innovation is in. Stodginess is out. User-friendliness is in. Awkward interfaces are out. Efficiency is in. Wastefulness is out. Hi-tech is in. Low-tech is out. “Green” is in. Whatever’s the opposite of green is out. (Red is green’s opposite on the color spectrum, but we thought “red is out” would sound weird.) So one of the major questions we keep asking ourselves is: How can we bring all of this to bear in the design of our industrial cleaning equipment?
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Goodway Shows Cooling Tower Vacuum at AHR
In today’s business environment, we are all faced with the challenge of doing more with less. We are feeling the pressure of reducing the costs of even routine preventative maintenance functions, such as cleaning cooling towers.
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Florida HVAC Coil Cleaning Business Draws Attention of U.S. Department of Energy
A Tallahassee, Florida businessman who owns an HVAC coil cleaning service has convinced the U.S. Department of Energy to dispatch a researcher to observe the process and benefits of coil cleaning.
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