(308a) Design of Heat Transfer Media Components for Retail Food Refrigeration

High levels of emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases from supermarkets around the world can be attributed to leakage of hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) and generation of electric power required for retail food refrigeration. Indirect refrigeration loops are ideally suited for reductions mandated by regulation standards as they reduce leakage and can lead to significantly lower total energy consumption. Hence, the design and identification
of fluids that boost refrigeration performance while meeting safety and environmental guidelines is of considerable interest. Using a recently developed molecular design methodology as our starting point, in this work, we develop a model and search technique for identifying ideal secondary refrigerants. Accurate property models that predict characteristic refrigerant properties guide the search for molecules. We also include environmental and safety metrics (biodegradability and lethal concentration (LC50)), along with performance criteria for heat transfer efficiency to analyze the candidate molecules. We identify a number of novel molecules as well as known compounds that have not been used as secondary refrigerants.