Refrigeration and heat pumps
Description
Refrigeration is of crucial importance to our society, and its role is growing day by day. It involves many sectors, including: process, storage, transport and sale of food and raw materials; temperature and humidity controlled storage for perishable products (e.g. flowers, pharmaceuticals, vaccines); residential and vehicle air conditioning; and cooling in industrial applications.
In addition to refrigeration, heat pumps are increasing in number and applications, providing heat in a more sustainable way. The heat pump market is expected to grow in both residential and industrial applications in the coming years.However, it should be noted that refrigerators and heat pumps may have a negative impact on climate change due to the use of electrical energy (still partly from fossil fuels) and synthetic refrigerants with high GWP or source of pFAS. The selection of new low environmental impact refrigerants and the optimisation of system configurations for their best exploitation are key research priorities, with the aim of guaranteeing the expected performance at the lowest energy use.
This initiative is being pursued in close collaboration with national and international research groups through joint projects.Additionally, the region boasts a thriving HVAC industry, with which the research group has cultivated strong ties, facilitating the technology transfer.
Research subjects
- Commercial and industrial refrigeration systems
- Integrated solutions for refrigeration and HVAC
- Low environmental impact and pFAS source refrigerants
- Carbon dioxide as natural refrigerant for refrigeration and heat pump systems
- Innovative system configurations, components and control for the energy efficiency improvement of refrigerators and heat pumps
- Refrigeration in food technology processes
- Refrigeration for perishable products storage
ERC panels
- SH1_11 Innovation, research & development, entrepreneurship
- SH2_7 Humanitarian assistance and development
- PE2_13 Quantum optics and quantum information
- PE6_12 Human computer interaction, multimedia and virtual reality, computer games
- PE7_3 Simulation engineering and modelling
- PE8_6 Energy processes engineering
- PE8_11 Environmental engineering, e.g. sustainable design, waste and water treatment, recycling, regeneration or recovery of compounds, carbon capture & storage
- LS9_5 Food biotechnology and bioengineering