A convenience-store retailer’s endeavor involving an alternative type of refrigeration is proving a positive experience, according to a case study shared with CSP Daily News this week.
Kwik Trip chose to test a natural refrigerant CO2 system—rather than a standard hydrofluorocarbon-based system—with the opening of a store in Dayton, Minnesota, in November 2022 as part of an effort to limit its output of greenhouse gases.
“The launch of the Dayton store was a perfect opportunity to run a pilot for CO2,” said Carl Klemp, Kwik Trip’s lead HVAC and refrigeration engineer.
Klemp and other engineering leadership said the business case for CO2 became more attractive over time and aligned with the company’s long-term refrigeration and sustainability goals.
“Knowing that a [regulatory] transition is inevitable in the next few years, and that many large retailers have successfully moved to CO2, we wanted to explore how we could use it,” saidChad Juel, Kwik Trip’s director of operations support.
- Kwik Trip is No. 11 on CSP’s 2023 Top 202 ranking of convenience store chains by store count.
CO2 refrigeration technologies have increasingly been adopted in recent years in big-box retail stores, but systems compatible with smaller-format retail were slower to emerge, according to the case study prepared by Copeland, formerly known as Emerson Climate Technologies, St. Louis.
“As refrigeration technology advances, we’re seeing applications range from traditional medium to large stores, and now into smaller retail formats,” said Adam Ciesielski, director of engineering for Zero Zone, a manufacturer of industrial refrigeration systems. Kwik Trip partnered with Copeland and Zero Zone to install the CO2 system in its test store.
The solution was sized for the smaller store format and Kwik Trip’s refrigeration load requirements, leveraging recent advancements in CO2 compression technologies and an electronic controls network dedicated to high pressure and system management.
For Kwik Trip leadership, the CO2 prototype in the Dayton store has provided the proof of concept Kwik Trip needed to move forward with CO2 as their future refrigerant, according to the study. Juel and Klemp said a Zero Zone booster system offers a combination of performance and sustainability characteristics. “The Zero Zone solution with all-Copeland components is the refrigeration footprint we want to move forward with,” Klemp said.
He added that Kwik Trip will continue its transition from HFC refrigeration to a new CO2 footprint over the next two years, with specific timing based on pending regulatory mandates. The retailer is also planning an energy-efficiency study with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) to compare the CO2 solution with Kwik Trip’s legacy HFC stores.
For Zero Zone, Pewaukee, Wisconsin, this smaller CO2 system prototype is just scratching the surface of CO2’s potential in U.S. commercial refrigeration. “When you consider that CO2 is now making inroads in industrial, large commercial and now small-format retail applications, it really paints a clear picture about the versatility of CO2,” Ciesielski said.
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