Chemical and Pharmaceutical

Industrial Refrigeration refers to cooling used in a wide variety of manufacturing processes and storage of products both frozen and chilled.  Key sectors covered by this project are:

The Chemical Industry generated, in 2016, £11.3bn of GVA, which accounted for 6.6% of total UK manufacturing GVA and 1% of gross domestic product (GDP). This sector employed approximately 100,000 people in that year. In 2012, it was estimated that the chemical industry consumed 16.5% of all the energy used by UK industry, being responsible for 18.4 MtCO₂e emissions (2^nd largest industrial emitter). The energy used for cooling in the chemical sector is largely unknown and our project aims to work with the industry to identify the associated carbon emissions.

The Pharmaceutical Industry had a turnover of £36.7bn and employed 63,900 people across the UK in 2019. The GVA from the pharmaceutical industry is estimated at £14bn. In the UK, the net zero strategy for the National Health Service (NHS) has identified that 20% of the NHS’s carbon emissions are attributable to the supply of pharmaceutical.

There are also many other industrial process applications that depend on product cooling or freezing.