CURRENT DIRECTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT OF REFRIGERATION EQUIPMENT IN CATERING AND TRADE

Abstract

The article raises important issues of the development of refrigeration equipment and technology in catering and trade of Ukraine. The necessity of researching the problems of refrigerating equipment in the field of intelligent digital control of freezer compressor machines and the development and improvement of fundamentally new automated systems of their control is shown. The tasks that are considered in the area of refrigeration supply of enterprises are with a sufficiently large number of linear connections and different freezing temperatures and energy saving, and therefore the optimization of the quality of food storage with the stabilization of temperature regimes and the local microclimate in freezers requires the use of special and rather complex control algorithms. The most important among them is the task of maintaining the appropriate processes of heat exchange between air and products necessary to reduce the slowing down of freezing, and reducing significant losses of product mass. We considered the main directions of development of refrigeration technologies of the food industry and trade in the application of modern environmentally friendly installations that work on new working substances that reduce ozone-depleting effects and greenhouse gas emissions. New developments of refrigerating equipment and quick-freezing techniques were tracked, for a significant increase in the production and storage of quick-frozen products and the production of certain frozen semi-finished products. It is shown that the energy performance of refrigerating units is increased by improving the main equipment elements, which include compressors and heat exchangers, by using modern means of regulation and automation. The mentioned new modern developments of refrigerating machines are aimed at the use of ejector refrigerating systems, which have advantages over compressor machines, which are very common today. The direction of creation of heat exchange devices with mini-channels, with a hydraulic channel diameter of 0.5-1.0 mm, which is currently actively developing, is shown, and studies of solid-state coolers are shown. It is claimed that new materials with the use of nanotechnology will make it possible to significantly improve the energy characteristics of thermoelectric systems and expand the scope of their use.