Helping the shipping industry find increasingly sustainable solutions for refrigerated transport, Carrier Transicold has presented the world's first natural refrigerant technology for container refrigeration at Intermodal Europe 2010.

Carrier's newest container refrigeration unit design, to be known as NaturaLINE, incorporates this breakthrough technology.

Carrier Transicold is a unit of Carrier Corp., the world's leader in high technology heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration solutions, improving the world around us through engineered innovation and environmental stewardship. Carrier Corp. is a business unit of United Technologies Corp.

Carrier's natural refrigerant technology has been used to create a container refrigeration system incorporating carbon dioxide (CO2) in place of conventional synthetic hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, which have higher global warming potential (GWP). The system is being engineered to deliver efficiencies currently only achieved by Carrier's best-in-class performer, the PrimeLINE unit.

Carrier has already placed demonstration units in service for around-the-world tests with Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd. In 2011, Carrier will extend the program with full field trials.

The natural refrigerant CO2, also known as R-744, is non-ozone depleting with a global warming potential (GWP) of only one, compared to conventional container system refrigerants R-134a and R-404A that have GWPs of 1320 and 3260, respectively. The use of CO2 adds no new environmental risk in the event of a leak.

Carrier's natural refrigerant container technology incorporates numerous innovations, some of which are new to container refrigeration applications. For example, the system includes a new gas cooler/condenser coil that wraps around the fan and has enhanced surfaces to maximize heat transfer.

It also takes advantage of a new marine-duty multi-stage compressor.

New power electronics and an advanced software control system combine to efficiently optimize fan speeds and compressor capacity to match cooling loads and temperature control.