Anyone who has ever eaten in a hot, humid restaurant would agree – comfort is critical to enjoying any dining experience. Restaurants face tough air conditioning challenges. Food preparation areas produce significant humidity from dish washing, cooking and hot beverage service. Just a few feet away from the kitchen, customers and staff want a comfortable environment. This imbalance often creates humidity control problems, temperature swings, and over-cooling by traditional packaged rooftop units that cycle on and off. To function effectively, the air conditioning system must closely match a range of latent and sensible loads.
Restaurant operators understand that the comfort of the customers and staff is important to creating a desirable environment. But they also have to keep a close eye on the budget. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, restaurants use about 5-7 times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings, such as office buildings and retail stores. High-volume quick-service restaurants may even use up to 10 times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings. Next to refrigeration, heating and cooling systems account for the largest portion of a restaurant’s annual energy use.
In restaurants, both a comfortable environment and energy costs matter a great deal. Restaurant operators cannot afford to waste their operating budget on high energy costs driven by oversized mechanical equipment. Recent advances in HVAC controls technology and capacity modulation methods are now featured on equipment that can closely match variable loads that are common in restaurants. These facilities require equipment that can effectively and efficiently cool or heat large spaces when they are filled with people, large spaces with just a few people, or during food preparation – a real design challenge. These modern HVAC systems with capacity modulation can quickly pay for themselves in restaurants simply through the energy savings generated from modulating back in off-peak conditions. These systems also provide optimum comfort during both peak and non-peak periods.
HVACR compressor manufacturers strive to deliver high levels of efficiency, comfort, and reliability in a market that also demands affordability and compliance with environmental laws. Today, a complicated combination of regulatory requirements and customer preferences is driving manufacturers to achieve unprecedented levels of compressor efficiency without sacrificing reliability and comfort.
Compressor suppliers have responded to this demand by providing innovative products that can help air conditioning original equipment manufacturers improve system efficiency. This is achieved through modulating capacity technologies where the cooling capacity of the system is tied to the load, not an application’s peak requirements. Modulation makes it possible to tailor compressor performance to changes in ambient and varying load conditions, which eliminates big swings in temperature and relative humidity levels throughout a building.
These innovative products address the key needs of facilities where comfort and operating costs are critical to the success of the organization. Ask your equipment distributor or contractor about new modulating capacity cooling systems for the most comfortable environment and the lowest energy costs.
Supermarket, grocery, and many retail operations must balance refrigeration loads with shopper comfort while keeping an eye on electricity usage and operating budgets. One way that operators are reducing energy costs is by retrofitting open refrigerated supermarket display cases with transparent doors. While this retrofit can save significant energy costs, it must be planned carefully both from a refrigeration standpoint as well as air conditioning. Overlooking the impact on the HVAC systems when reconfiguring refrigeration equipment can lead to problems.
It is obvious to most people that open display cases consume more energy than cases with doors. Anyone walking down the dairy aisle at the supermarket can notice that the entire space is significantly colder than the rest of the store. The largest consumption of refrigeration system energy in a supermarket is from the open display cases, because they are subject to much higher heat loads than cases with transparent display doors. To say that the frozen food case is air conditioning the entire store has a hint of truth to it!
To reduce energy consumption, many retailers are now either retrofitting the open display cases with transparent doors, or replacing the cases altogether. Many retailers opt for lighting and fan motor upgrades at the same time, which bring additional energy savings. However, open refrigerated display cases remove large amounts of heat and humidity from the surrounding store space as cold, dehumidified air escapes the case through infiltration. This results in a net increase in the building heating load during the heating season and a net decrease in the building cooling load during the cooling season. When the refrigerated cases are reconfigured with doors, the level of infiltration is greatly reduced and thus changes the total HVAC loads.
In supermarkets and other retail buildings, the HVAC system was originally sized and designed to account for the interaction with the refrigeration equipment. Changing the heat load on the HVAC equipment requires a reassessment of the HVAC system configuration to ensure continued optimal performance. As part of the planning of the retrofit or reconfiguration, it is important to analyze the performance of the HVAC equipment, taking into account the contribution of the retrofitted cases on the system, for both winter and summer operation. A qualified HVAC contractor can determine if changes to the system are needed.
Besides cooling and dehumidification on the sales floor, many refrigeration systems impact the air conditioning system in another way. If the refrigeration system includes heat reclaim, calculations should be performed to evaluate the new heat output of the refrigeration system when operating in conjunction with the newly retrofitted cases. A smaller refrigeration load and system often reduces heat output. Heat reclaim systems need to be evaluated, and additional heating load requirements should be taken into account.
Refrigeration system improvements can result in significant energy savings, but the impact on air conditioning systems must also be taken into account. Including a qualified HVAC contractor in the planning process will help.
Commercial & Residential Solutions is a global innovator of energy-efficient heating, air conditioning and refrigeration solutions for residential, industrial and commercial applications. www.climate.emerson.com
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