Refrigeration 101:Indirect or Direct?
In cooling systems the distribution of refrigeration can be either direct or indirect.
Indirect refrigeration (also called secondary refrigeration) has gained popularity in supermarkets. A refrigerant needs to be delivered from the “machine room” where the primary cooling system is located to all the various display cases for various fresh, frozen, and packaged food products. The machine room system will use one refrigerant to generate cold (and it might be one you wouldn’t want circulating throughout a public place), which is then transferred to a secondary, safer refrigerant that is piped to the display cases all over the store where cooling is needed.
A direct refrigeration system, as you can probably figure out, doesn’t rely on a secondary refrigerant but instead uses the primary refrigerant to directly transfer the cold into the area that needs to be cooled. Direct refrigeration systems, also known as a centralized direct expansion (DX) system, continues to be dominant in the supermarket industry.
At Samsun Mechanical, our expertise covers both direct and indirect commercial refrigeration equipment and cooling systems. Whether you are choosing a system for energy efficiency, or to reach environmental or sustainability goals, we can help.