R290, heat recovery and cascade configuration: Enerblue's solution for the green transition of a food industry in Baviera

R290, heat recovery and cascade configuration: Enerblue's solution for the green transition of a food industry in Baviera

 

When a company in the food industry decides to invest in a new refrigeration system, choosing the right technology is crucial: reliability, efficiency and solutions capable of seamlessly integrating into an already defined plant architecture are essential requirements.

This is the case of a leading company in the food sector which, for its production facility, selected an Enerblue chiller using a natural refrigerant, specifically designed to operate in cascade with a new CO₂ refrigeration system. 

The project was successfully delivered in collaboration with our partner Fischer, whose technical expertise and local support played a key role in the implementation of the solution.

 

The context

The customer operates in the food production sector, where temperature control throughout the entire production chain is essential to ensure quality, safety and compliance with hygiene and health regulations.

For its production site, the company decided to install a completely new refrigeration system, designed from the outset to operate with natural refrigerants. The selected architecture is a cascade configuration: a subcritical CO₂ system on the low-temperature side, combined with a natural refrigerant chiller on the high-temperature side, responsible for condensing the CO₂. 

The requirement submitted to the Enerblue team was clear: a unit sized for a specific cooling capacity, capable of integrating with the CO₂ system and adapting to the site's space constraints, with integrated heat recovery.

 

The project

Objective	New installation of an industrial refrigeration system using natural refrigerants for food production
Installed product	Enerblue Silver 900.2 with enhanced screw compressors
Cooling capacity	537 kW cooling capacity with a supply temperature of -5°C
Refrigerants	R290 (propane)
Additional features	Integrated heat recovery

The solution selected for the production facility is an Enerblue Silver 900.2, equipped with enhanced screw compressors to achieve the cooling capacity required by the project. This configuration is not part of the machine's standard equipment range, but was custom-developed to meet the system's performance requirements, leveraging the flexibility of the Silver range as a starting point.

The chiller uses R290 (propane), a natural refrigerant with a GWP of 3, and operates in cascade with the subcritical CO₂ system installed at the production site. R290 operates on the high-temperature side, while CO₂ works on the low-temperature side: a combination that maximizes the advantages of both refrigerants, delivering high performance while maintaining an almost negligible climate impact.

The system was designed to provide a cooling capacity of 537 kW with a supply temperature of -5°C, parameters aligned with the typical storage and processing requirements of the food industry.

Among the project's distinctive features, the integrated heat recovery system allows the heat generated during the cooling cycle to be reused for other applications within the facility, reducing the need for separate heating sources. This solution significantly improves the overall energy efficiency of the system and helps reduce operating costs.

One of the main design challenges concerned space management: installing a chiller of this size required a careful study of the plant layout to ensure accessibility for maintenance operations and compliance with the safety distances required by regulations for flammable refrigerants such as R290.

 

The value of the project

This project is a concrete example of how Enerblue addresses the most specific requirements of the industrial market. The Silver 900.2 installed at the production facility is not a standard catalogue machine, but a customized configuration developed to meet a specific cooling demand and to operate as a dedicated component within a larger CO₂ system. It is precisely in this capacity for adaptation and customization that the value of the solution is measured.

The system is already aligned with the direction outlined by the European F-Gas Regulation and represents a choice consistent with the decarbonization trends of the food industry.

Heat recovery, cascade configuration and enhanced screw compressors complete a project in which efficiency, sustainability and attention to customer requirements come together in a system designed to deliver high performance and long-term reliability.