Food transport refrigeration is a critical link in the food chain not only in terms of maintaining the temperature integrity of the transported products but also its impact on energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. This paper provides a review of a) current approaches in road food transport refrigeration, b) estimates of their environmental impacts and, c) research on the development and application of alternative technologies to vapour compression refrigeration systems that have the potential to reduce the overall energy consumption and environmental impacts. The review and analysis indicate that greenhouse gas emissions from conventional diesel engine driven vapour compression refrigeration systems commonly employed in food transport refrigeration can be as high as 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the vehicle's engine. For articulated vehicles over 33 tonnes, which are responsible for over 80% of refrigerated food transportation in the UK, the reject heat available form the engine is sufficient to drive sorption refrigeration systems and satisfy most of the refrigeration requirements of the vehicle. Other promising technologies that can lead to a reduction in CO 2 emissions are air cycle refrigeration and hybrid systems in which conventional refrigeration technologies are integrated with thermal energy storage. For these systems, however, to effectively compete with diesel driven vapour compression systems, further research and development work is needed to improve their efficiency and reduce their weight.

The total annual CO 2 emissions associated with the energy consumption of the major retail food outlets in the UK amount to around 4.0 MtCO 2 . The energy consumption and emissions from supermarkets varies widely and can depend on many factors such as the type and size of the store, business and merchandising practices and refrigeration and environmental control systems used.This paper provides energy consumption data of a sample of 2570 retail food stores from a number of major retail food chains in the UK. The sample covers all major store categories from convenience stores to hypermarkets and includes approximately 30% of the total number of stores in the UK having a net sales area more than 280 m 2 . The data show a wide variability of energy intensity even within stores of the same retail chain. A power law can be used to describe the variation of the average electrical energy intensity of the stores in the sample with sales area. If the electrical intensity of the stores above the average is reduced to the average by energy conservation measures, annual energy savings of the order of 10% or 840 GWh can be achieved representing 355,000 tonnes annual reduction in CO 2 emissions. The paper also discusses the major energy consuming processes in retail food stores and identifies opportunities for energy savings.

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Gullo (a) , Konstantinos M. Tsamos (b) , Armin Hafner (a) , Krzysztof Banasiak (c) , Yunting T. Ge (d) and Savvas A. Tassou (b)

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