Sectors
Process cooling, food and beverage
Food and beverage production cools continuously: chilling, fermentation control, refrigerated storage and the cold chain. The duty is steady and the hours are long, so a steady gain in efficiency compounds fast.
The duty
Process cooling in food and beverage usually evaporates in the range of roughly −10 to +5 °C, against ambient condensing, with ammonia or increasingly CO₂ and propane (R290) as the working fluids. The lift is moderate but the plant rarely stops, so annual consumption is high and predictable.
That predictability is what makes the business case easy to see: a known COP gain across known running hours is a number a plant manager can put in a budget.
Why the expander fits here
Even at a moderate lift, the expansion valve still throttles the refrigerant and destroys the pressure energy. The expander recovers part of it as work and adds refrigerating effect, so the compressor delivers the same cooling for less electricity. Over the long hours a food plant runs, that is where the saving comes from.
What changes on your plant
The expander takes the expansion valve's place; nothing else in the circuit changes, and the refrigerant charge stays as it is. It is a component-level upgrade to an installed base, not a redesign of the plant, which is what makes it viable to retrofit a line that cannot be shut down for long.
What would it save on your line?
Enter your refrigerant, temperature lift and running hours and see the modelled COP gain and cost saving for your process cooling.