Performance comparison between shorter and conventional air curtains in retail display refrigerators

© 2018 International Institute of Refrigeration. All rights reserved. Refrigerated Display Cabinets constitute a large portion of the energy consumption of retail stores. They have been thoroughly investigated over recent years, in an attempt to reduce their energy consumption and improve temperature performance. Despite these investigations, open cabinets still exhibit poor performance and consume more energy than door cabinets. However, retailers are reluctant to use doors as they dramatically reduce sales. This paper investigates the use of AirCell, an airflow technology that divides the retail space into individually refrigerated cells. Each cell uses its own short air-curtain and eliminates the need for pack panel flow - enhancing temperature and energy performance. An AirCell cabinet has been compared to two conventional cabinets by testing the cabinets to the ECA ISO 23953: 2015 standard. The findings reveal that the AirCell technology is able to reduce the product temperature band by 4.8°C and the energy consumption by 24.5%