Abstract
New vaccines have been developed in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic, and some of these require ultra-low temperature refrigeration (at −80 °C). After their appearance, the number of ultra-low temperature freezers of different capacities has been increased worldwide. Sustainable transition is ongoing in many refrigeration and heat pump applications following what is established in national and international regulations. However, many have not controlled ultra-low temperature refrigeration because of the challenges associated with these systems’ operation. The energy performance is low for this range of temperatures because of the distance between the heat sink and source temperatures. Moreover, a limited number of refrigerants are available because of restrictions in their normal boiling point and other challenges related to the lubricating oil. This chapter presents the main characteristics of several technologies (vapor compression cycle with element variations, sublimation, or absorption cycle) that can be applied for this range of temperatures, focusing on the constructing elements, advantages, and drawbacks. Then, recently developed configurations that can appear in commercial systems in the coming years are explored. These configurations are based on vapor compression cascade cycles, including an intermediate heat exchanger, ejector, and three-stage. It is seen that despite the increase in complexity and investment of the advanced configurations, the decrease in coefficient of performance is still notable, causing an increase in the operating cost. Apart from the additional elements or stages, working fluids used in these configurations are critical parameters for increasing the resulting energy performance and cooling capacity, ending with more sustainable ultra-low temperature freezers.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the funding provided by the program “Proyectos de I+D+I 2020” of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-117865RB-I00). Adrián Mota-Babiloni acknowledges the postdoctoral contract “Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación 2019” of the Spanish State Research Agency (IJC2019-038997-I). Carla Espinós-Estévez acknowledges the “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) fellowship under the code LCF/BQ/DR19/11740012.
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Udroiu, C.M., Mota-Babiloni, A., Espinós-Estévez, C., Navarro-Esbrí, J. (2022). Energy-Efficient Technologies for Ultra-Low Temperature Refrigeration. In: Howlett, R.J., Jain, L.C., Littlewood, J.R., Balas, M.M. (eds) Smart and Sustainable Technology for Resilient Cities and Communities. Advances in Sustainability Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9101-0_22
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