The impact of retrofitting doors on performance of a retail display cabinet
Tim Brown1, Alan M. Foster1, Judith A. Evans1.
1London South Bank University, Langford, United Kingdom
Open fronted retail display cabinets for chilled food are prone to infiltration of warm and moist ambient air. This increases heat loads on the cabinets, reducing energy efficiency and ability to maintain temperature control. Air curtains are employed to form a barrier to infiltration but are limited in their effectiveness. Adding doors can curtail a considerable proportion of this infiltration.
This paper describes ISO23953 test room measurement of the impact of retrofitting doors to a typical open fronted cabinet. The open fronted cabinet was found to maintain test pack temperatures between 7.4 and -1.0°C and consume 46.9 kWh/m2. Fitting doors to the cabinet reduced the temperature span to between 3.6 and ‑1.0°C and energy consumption to 51.5% of that used by the open cabinet. Maximum pack temperature was raised to a value similar to the open cabinet and the resultant temperature span was between 7.2 and 3.4°C and energy consumption only 39.4% of that used by the open cabinet.
