Glaciem wins engineering award for CO2 Refrigeration

South Australia’s Glaciem Cooling Technologies has won the state’s Engineering Excellence Award and been named as Sir William Hudson Award finalist.

The company was recognised for several technologies based on research at the University of South Australia.

Their air-cooled CO2 refrigeration system has been operating at The Bend Motorsport Park, about 100km southeast of Adelaide, for about 15 months, providing UniSA and Glaciem with more than a year’s worth of clean data in a commercial setting.

The technology uses natural refrigerants which are not harmful to the environment. Its system is designed to integrate with solar PV, offering energy efficiency advantages and minimising the need for grid-sourced electricity.

The Glaciem system brings together:

• thermal energy storage and discharge through a heat transfer process
• use of carbon dioxide as a natural refrigerant for transfer fluid in heat pumps, instead of harmful hydrofluorocarbonand an Advanced Control and Forecasting Algorithm (ACFA) control system which reduces costs by forecasting weather.

In 2019 Glaciem received $2 million through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to demonstrate the technical and economic value of integrating thermal energy storage with renewable energy into Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC&R) applications.

The project trialled the technology at three locations – Ceravolo Orchards at Oakbank in the Adelaide Hills, Pernod Ricard Winemakers in the Barossa Valley and the Reef HQ Aquarium in Townsville.

Picture: Glaciem Cooling Technologies

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