The production sectors that will most depend on cold in 2021
This year preserving the cold chain will be more important than ever to maintain health, protect food safety and guarantee the transportation and conservation of drugs and vaccines. Additionally, in 2021 there will be more installations with low GWP, new refrigerants will come out and leak detection systems with infrared technology will proliferate.
In 2021, preserving the cold chain will be more important than ever to guarantee health, food safety and the proper conservation of medicines and vaccines. As explained by Manuel Mellado, Product Manager for Coreco, “the cold chain aims to maintain food harmlessness, preserving it and preventing microorganisms from multiplying”. This is achieved by refrigerating or freezing the products along their three stages: “Storage, transportation and point of sales or service”. We must bear in mind that not all foods are the same insofar as “temperature, humidity and conservation time”, therefore, each one requires precise conditions that must be taken into account.
In the biomedical sector, preserving the correct temperature is especially important, “both during the research stage and during transportation and storage of the so-called thermolabile products, vaccines and medicines, among others”, for which constant monitoring is essential. Mellado also said that “there are increasingly more solutions based on connectivity and data analysis, that help to anticipate possible deviations from the correct temperature range, solutions that are a must in the biomedical sector”.
Dehumidifiers
Valentín Onís, Commercial Director with Fisair Ibérica, highlights how important the cold chain is in food-related industries, to preserve products and prevent them from undergoing changes and becoming harmful for human consumption. “To this end they must be stored in cold chambers at below-freezing temperatures”.
Onís explains that this type of process requires the installation of a desiccant rotor dehumidifier to prevent uncontrolled infiltrations of outside air into the chambers, which could cause ice or frost. “With dehumidifiers we achieve more stable temperature and humidity conditions, and energy savings by reducing the defrosting periods of the evaporators, as well as less work hours to reach the pre-established temperature and humidity conditions”.
Changes in the gas market
Experts forecast that in 2021 there will be an acceleration of the changes to the solutions that are implemented, due to the evolving gas market. Jordi Cabello, Commercial Director for Pecomark, forecasts that “we will see a huge increase of installations with low GWP” (global warming potential) which will lead to “a larger number of commercial cold installations with new A2L and CO2 refrigerants, while also considering energy efficiency”. For this same reason, Cabello says that “advanced refrigerant leak detectors using infrared technology will also be more widely implemented”.