The Helix Innovation Center, Emerson’s HVACR research facility, and the Northwest Dayton neighborhood are geographically close to each other. They sit on opposite ends of the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. But in many ways, they exist far apart. The Helix occupies a state-of-the-art building on the campus of the University of Dayton. Dayton View is an economically struggling area that has lacked a full-service grocery for the past decade.

That’s about to change, and Emerson, along with Hussmann and Chemours, played a major role in that. The Gem City Market (GCM) is slated to open soon on Salem Avenue, Dayton’s main thoroughfare. The stores will offer area residents fresh food along with community gathering spaces that include a coffee shop operated by a Black female veteran and an afterschool program for neighborhood children. It will also feature the first refrigeration system of its kind in the United States.

Emerson’s involvement started when Kevin Hallinan, an engineering professor at Dayton, came to Rajan Rajendran, vice president of systems innovation center and sustainability at Emerson. Hallinan had been working with the GCM board and wanted to know if Emerson had interest in donating some equipment to the project. Rajendran picked up the phone, and soon Chemours and Hussmann were involved.

“This is what our industry does,” Rajendran said. “I called them up, and it didn’t take more than five minutes of convincing.”

Executives from all three companies gave the GCM board a tour of the nearly completed store’s refrigeration architecture and system in mid-March. The plans for GCM’s unique, sustainable refrigeration architecture, Copeland scroll booster was concepted at The Helix. This system takes advantage of mostly existing technology but in new configurations with advanced control capabilities that are more accessible for small-format retail stores. Emerson has tested similar setups in Canada, so it’s proven, but this is the largest such project.

“A decade from now, we’re going to be talking about Gem City because there is a lot of innovation in this place,” said Andres Lacassie, Hussmann’s vice president of core and distributed cases product lines.

Transforming a Food Desert

Buzz Schaeffer, Hussmann’s principal engineer, explained during the tour that the system moves heat from the areas that require the coldest temperatures to those that require less cold, then sends it up through the building’s rooftop units. Jason Born, innovation lead at The Helix, said although the system is interconnected, it is designed so a failure in one part won’t upend the entire system. Born shared the example of a Canadian butcher shop that suffered a failure at the highest temperature section, but the medium temperature section kept operating, saving thousands of dollars’ worth of meat.

The system uses Opteon XP10, an R-513A, as its refrigerant, a refrigerant invented by Chemours. Chemours executives pointed out Opteon is the official refrigerant of the National Hockey League™. Charles Allgood, Chemours’ refrigerants technology leader, said the refrigerant was selected to provide the best overall performance, efficiency and cost and is both low-GWP and nonflammable. It should also lower the store’s energy bills.

“Utilizing a single low-GWP refrigerant throughout the store helps keep the system simple and more cost-effective to maintain over its lifetime,” Allgood said.

Opteon XP10 has a GWP 85% lower than R-404A, the legacy refrigerant which previously would have been used for a store like Gem City Market, he said. Using this refrigerant should keep Gem City Market compliant with regulation for a long time to come.

Area residents won’t know what keeps their food cool. They’ll just be happy to have access to fresh and healthy food, said Lela Klein, a HCM board member. For years, Dayton families have lacked a full-service grocery store and have instead had to depend on a patchwork of small stores that have been challenged to meet their diverse needs.

“The lack of fresh and healthy foods is affecting people’s health,” Klein said. “It’s affecting people’s ability to meet their basic needs.”

Hallinan said he hopes the Gem City Market project will serve as a model for reducing operating costs for small community grocery stores. This would allow them to eliminate food deserts in cities of all sizes, giving lower-income residents access to better food. Hallinan said he knew when he approached Emerson that the refrigeration system and its cost would prove the most challenging for the group working to set up the store. That’s why he was excited about the industry response.

“I know how hard this was and how difficult this would be to get started,” Hallinan said. “It’s good for Emerson. It’s great for Gem City Market.”

Want more HVAC industry news and information? Join The NEWS on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn today!