Panasonic debuted its new 80 HP transcritical CO2 rack publicly for the first time at the Bingshan Group’s booth at the China Refrigeration 2019 tradeshow in Shanghai last week.
“This system is manufactured in Dalian, China and will be brought back to Japan to be used in the Japanese market,” Manabu Onishi, general manager, cold chain business division, Panasonic Appliances Company, told this website.
Onishi explained that Panasonic had identified a need for CO2 systems in the Japanese industrial refrigeration market.
“In Japan’s cold storage sector, there are still many R22 refrigeration systems. Due to global regulations, these systems must be replaced with systems that use new alternative refrigerants,” Onishi said.
“In addition, for this sector, we thought that rack-type systems would be easier to use than outdoor condensing units. So for these customers, we thought to first offer an 80 HP low temperature-only system.”
The system was manufactured by Panasonic Appliances Refrigeration System (Dalian) Co., Ltd. (PAPRSDL). The compressors were supplied by Bitzer and the controls were supplied by Eliwell (part of the Schneider Electric Group).
PAPRSDL is a joint venture between Japan’s Panasonic Corporation and China’s Bingshan Group – one of the country’s largest manufacturers of refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment.
In addition to the 80 HP TC CO2 rack system, Panasonic was also exhibiting its 10 HP TC CO2 outdoor condensing unit, signalling an increased focus on promoting CO2 technology to the Chinese market.
Regarding next steps, Onishi said that the company is first focused on taking the rack system back to Japan to begin field tests this year.
Panasonic first unveiled its plans to manufacture the new 80 HP rack system at ATMO Japan last February.
China Refrigeration 2019 was held on 9-11 April at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.
