Mobile Military CO2 Refrigeration

Refrigerant phase-out schedules for currently used HFC refrigerants are being put in place globally and affect commercial and military cooling applications. Being a natural, non-toxic, non-flammable refrigerant with a much lower Global Warming Potential, carbon dioxide (CO2) is seen as a promising future refrigerant candidate. In Phase I, Creative Thermal Solutions (CTS) provided a successful proof-of-concept demonstrating that CO2, with a properly designed system, meets even the most demanding US Army performance requirements (efficiency, cooling capacity) for multi-temperature refrigerated container systems (MTRCS) at 135oF ambient temperature. In this Phase II effort CTS will continue to develop innovative transcritical CO2 refrigeration technology and design and build a full-size, fully-functional CO2 MTRCS. Its performance will be evaluated in a comprehensive series of tests resembling realistic operating conditions encountered in the field.