Objective
Commercial refrigerators and freezers are ubiquitous and are used in diverse environments such as supermarkets, grocery stores, service stations, restaurants, hotels, pubs, and cafés. The most visible are vending machines and open or closed refrigerated cabinets such as open display cabinets. Combined commercial refrigerator/freezers are estimated to consume 85TWh of electricity per annum. Although incremental advancements in refrigeration technology have been made these do not nearly offset increasing use. These trends thus pose a significant risk to the EC’s overall commitment to reduce energy use by 20% to 2020; improve overall energy security of European and reduce green house gas emissions. Beverage cooling accounts for a large proportion of commercial refrigeration covering products such as vending machines and display coolers. Compared to chilled or frozen food products, the majority of beverages have a relatively long shelf life and it is therefore not required to keep them at drinking temperature prior to consumption. However, this is currently the norm as it is often necessary to provide a chilled drink immediately upon purchase. As a result a wide range and number of beverages are kept chilled for eventual purchase. The logical consequence of cooling a drinks container efficiently and rapidly on-demand is a reduced need for chillers to run continuously. RapidCool aims to develop such a flexible, modular cooling apparatus that can accommodate drinks cans and bottles and chill them rapidly from ambient to around 6°C. The cooling chamber will be designed to be directly operated by the consumer and meet with usage demands associated with vending machines and open cabinet fridge, with both a standalone unit and multi-can variant providing a faster vending solution. The proposed system can save up to 75% of the energy currently consumed by a conventional vending machine or display cabinet, which equates to cost savings of around €250 per machine per year.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-SME-2010-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
BSG-SME - Research for SMEsCoordinator
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia