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This research aims to address the increasing regulatory and environmental challenges associated with refrigeration systems by fostering innovations. Refrigeration systems, as socio-technical entities, present a challenge due to their complexity, diverse stakeholders, and evolving regulatory constraints. Identifying opportunities for innovation in such intricate systems is further complicated by various performance-contributing factors. The Radical Innovation Design (RID) methodology, designed for aligning design solutions with activities, proves effective in pinpointing and prioritizing innovation targets across the lifecycle of a complex system. In this study, data from interviews and practices in the retail refrigeration sector inform the RID methodology. Two sets of results are presented. Firstly, a knowledge book of the socio-technical system is categorized into four RID dimensions: usage situations, user profiles, current problems, and existing solutions. The second set includes outcomes from two RID decision-support tools: the RID Comparator evaluates the effectiveness of existing solutions, while the RID Compass identifies three improvement areas – poor adaptation of new technical clusters, disrupted stakeholder interaction processes, and a lack of common tools. These results underwent validation through expert iterations, leading to a recommended hybrid solution involving the development of an integrated model-based platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preservation of perishable food via refrigeration in the supply chain is essential to extend shelf life and provide consumers with safe food. However, electricity consumed in refrigeration processes has an economical and an environmental impact. This study focuses on the cold chain of cooked ham, including transport, cold room in supermarket, display cabinet, transport by consumer, and domestic refrigerator, and aims to predict the risk for human health associated with Listeria monocytogenes, the amount of food wasted due to the growth of spoilage bacteria, and the electrical consumption to maintain product temperature through the cold chain. A set of eight intervention actions were tested to evaluate their impact on the three criteria. Results show that the modification of the thermostat of the domestic refrigerator has a high impact on food safety and food waste and a limited impact on the electrical consumption. Inversely, the modification of the airflow rate in the display cabinet has a high impact on electrical consumption and a limited impact on food safety and food waste. A cost–benefit analysis approach and two multicriteria decision analysis methods were used to rank the intervention actions. These three methodologies show that setting the thermostat of the domestic refrigerator to 4 °C presents the best compromise between the three criteria. The impact of decisionmaker preferences (criteria weight) and limitations of these three approaches are discussed. The approaches proposed by this study may be useful in decision making to evaluate global impact of intervention actions in issues involving conflicting outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A great deal of attention is paid to secondary refrigeration as a means of reducing excessively high emissions of refrigerants (most of which have a potent greenhouse effect) due to leaks in large cooling units. Among the environmentally friendly fluids that can be used in secondary circuits for transporting and storing cold, hydrate slurries offer the advantage of significant latent heats of fusion associated with good fluidity. Research programs have focused attention on hydrate systems, including CO 2 , TBPB (tetra- n -butyl-phosphonium-bromide), and mixed CO 2 -TBPB hydrates. In addition to feasibility concerns, energy efficiency is also a crucial concern requiring an objective analysis of the improvements likely to result from these new materials. An impartial framework was thus constructed based on the principles of optimization methods. This approach was applied to these three hydrate slurries as well as to the well-known ice slurry for comparison purposes. A numerical model of secondary refrigeration system in steady state was built, on the basis of which optimized systems subjected to common external constraints can be designed for each slurry according to its thermophysical properties. Global performance can then be compared on a sound basis, which also makes it possible to identify the hydrate property that is most influential on energetic performance. Part 2 of this study is dedicated to exergy analysis and phase change kinetics. Highlights • Global optimization must be conducted with explicit constraints. • Energy efficiency can be optimized only globally, i.e. including the primary cycle. • The process design is optimized independently for each slurry. • Each slurry presents an optimum for the maximal solid mass fraction in the process. • Energy efficiency mainly depends on melting temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]