Executive Summary:

Following the analysis and the estimation for the refrigerated road transport market at global level, the market would reach a 17.95 % growth over the period 2014-2019, at Compound Annual Growth Rate, by increasing awareness about food safety, consumer spending on high value perishable goods and replacement of refrigerated vehicles are driving the growth in refrigerated transportation market. In the same time, the growing trend of the international transportation and handling of perishable productsfrom producers to end-users in distant market would also contribute to such natural evolvement of this market and the increasing demand of the frozen food,which is a main drive of this market. Currently, Approximately 650.000 refrigerated road vehicles are currently in use within the EU only.

The increase of fuel price is becoming a crucial aspect for cold transport companies, since the continuous growth of oil price is leading to a drastic increase of operative costs.

Refrigerated vans and trucks spend 10.000-100.000 liter offuel/year and 8% about of this amount is due to refrigeration, today performed by energy-consuming compressor-driven Air Conditioning Systems (ACS) fed by theelectricity generated by an alternator.

The HP-ACS project deals with the development of an innovative Sorption Heat Pump, based on the adsorption/desorption of a gas stream (hydrogen) on solidbeds and able to produce cold exploiting the waste heat generated by thethermal engine and thus saving 800 – 8.000 fuel liter/years for each van/truck.

Metal hybrid heat pump for waste heat recovery in vans refrigeration systems-Final Report.pdf 

[ΠΗΓΗ:http://cordis.europa.eu/]