They suck airplanes up into the sky. They help race cars speed around tight corners. And now airfoils are coming to the fridge aisle.
Researchers at Williams Advanced Engineering in the U.K. have announced they are preparing to roll out a new kind of airfoil in supermarkets across Europe. Working with a team of researchers at Aerofoil Energy Ltd., the Formula One engineers have developed an energy-saving attachment for the front edge of open-air fridges.
Keeping products cold can eat up as much as 40% of a supermarket’s energy bill, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star, and open fridges typically consume about 1.3 times more energy than doored displays. That’s because most open-air supermarket cases distribute cold with a front-end ‘curtain’ system: chilled air is blown from top of the fridge down to the bottom along the front of the case. The efficiency of the fridge depends on two key factors: The geometry of the fridge (including the angle of that air curtain) and the fluid dynamics of the air system.
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