Italian OEM CREA Spa has joined some of the HVAC&R industry’s leading CO2 (R744) manufacturers as a silver partner on R744.com.

CREA has manufactured refrigeration equipment since 1983 and started developing, manufacturing and installing CO2 products in 2004. The company’s core business is the production of CO2 refrigeration systems for large-scale distribution in the food sector, logistics, air-conditioning and industrial cooling systems.

The refrigeration systems made by CREA boast “high standards in the design, production and management of the entire refrigeration system, respecting the environment.” The company has a special focus on R&D, seeing it as a crucial activity for a company that wants to be competitive and improve new technologies.

In addition to single-circuit transcritical booster systems, CREA also manufactures cascade systems. These systems have a cooling circuit in which the low-pressure and medium-pressure parts are physically separated. The refrigerant circuit in these systems is designed so the same heat exchanger is the condenser of the low-temperature unit and the evaporator of the medium-temperature (MT), CREA explains in a brochure introducing its technologies. “The heat absorbed by the evaporators is then discharged into the water recovery heat exchanger and into the gas cooler.” The medium-temperature units can be used as a backup for each. This ensures “full service continuity, even in case of failure of an MT unit,” CREA said.

An innovative transcritical CO2 refrigeration system developed by CREA was installed in a supermarket in central Milan in late 2019. The supermarket uses groundwater, instead of air, to condense the CO2, allowing the system to run in subcritical mode even during the hottest summer months when the ambient air temperature is 27–28°C (80.6–82.4°F) or more. This reduces the electricity consumption of the compressors.

In the winter months the system is designed to run in transcritical mode to satisfy the supermarket’s need for hot water. To achieve the needed hot water, the system employs heat recovery, which can recover up to 42kW in winter, equaling “total” system heat recovery, and increasing the system’s COP to 4.2.

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