Shoppers don’t usually give a second thought as they reach into a cooler to grab milk, cheese or prepackaged lunches. Open-front refrigerated display cases, which make up roughly 60 percent of the refrigerated cases in grocery stores and supermarkets, provide quick access to chilled products such as dairy, meat, fish and produce. While they are popular with shoppers and grocery stores, they’re less popular with electric utilities and others concerned with energy efficiency.
Engineers at the University of Washington and Kettering University are working to cut the amount of energy used by these coolers, while enhancing product safety and quality. Results published this month in the journal Applied Thermal Engineering show that tweaking the physics can reduce the energy used for refrigeration by as much as 15 percent. Lead author of the article is Mazyar Amin, a former UW doctoral student now doing postdoctoral research at Missouri’s Saint Louis University.
