Food retail: carbon dioxide and humidity monitoring

In brick-and-mortar food stores, it is necessary to monitor carbon dioxide (CO2) and maintain it at a certain level to protect the health and safety of customers, staff and contractors.

Moreover, CO2 is commonly regarded as the ideal natural refrigerant. It is a non-toxic, non-flammable, odorless, colorless gas, however, its high concentrations can cause unconsciousness and even death, so accurate, reliable monitoring is necessary for safety reasons and for the rapid detection of potential leaks. Synthetic refrigerants can be powerful greenhouse gases and have a global warming potential (GWP) that is thousands of times higher than that of carbon dioxide.

Recently, more and more countries recognize the need to turn to the use of environmentally friendly refrigerators in supermarkets and make respective regulations for retail. As a result, there is a growing number of transcritical CO2 stores that use carbon dioxide to replace the synthetic refrigerants in all supermarket refrigeration, in store and back of house.

The use of CO2 in the refrigeration systems allows to lower greenhouse emissions whilst lowering operational costs as well. This is possible with Vaisala's carbon dioxide probes based on the unique CARBOCAP® technology which help to identify and reduce possible refrigerant leakage.