The ATMOsphere (ATMO) LATAM conference, which took place March 9 and 10 in Bogotá, Colombia, featured numerous examples of end-user installations of natural refrigerant systems in the Latin American market on day one, particularly CO2 (R744)-based systems
“For new projects the market is demanding CO2 or considering the option in both industry and retail,” said David Osma, Project Engineer for TEKO Americas, a Bogotá-based manufacturer of CO2 racks, in a market-trends session. “Several end customers and installers have already ventured into CO2. Those who have not yet have a real interest in learning and being prepared.”
In his keynote presentation, Raúl Troncoso Urquiza, Regional Sustainability Manager for Cencosud, a leading Chile-based retailer, noted that his company has converted 22 stores to transcritical CO2, including 17 in Chile, two in Colombia and one each in Peru, Argentina and Brazil. This year 10 to 12 more stores will be converted to transcritical CO₂, which will also be used by all new stores.
On an end user and contractor panel, Melchor Ramos, Procurement, Maintenance & Energy Director, Iconn (7-Eleven), and Guillermo Piloto, Project Director, Icebox, described the migration from R404A/R22 to CO2 in a Monterrey, Mexico distribution center.
As a result of the switch, Iconn mitigated 1.8KtCO2e/year in emissions, reduced energy by 188,000kWh vs. baseline, saved annually MXN$544,000 pesos (USD$31,600), reduced average monthly energy consumption 2019 vs 2025 from 126,290 kWh in 2019 to 110,632 kWh in 2025, and reduced machine area space from 115.5m2 to 45.5m2 (1,243 to 490ft2; 2.5 times less), the speakers said. “What began as a strategic implementation in Monterrey in 2023 became standard in 2024. The new distribution center in Tijuana was designed from the start to operate with CO2.”
Harald Wilke, Operations Manager, Coldmaster, a Chilean contractor, observed that “CO2 refrigeration systems have established themselves as a solution with a wide range of applications and have become increasingly reliable, efficient and competitive. There are different options that allow the energy consumption of CO2 systems to be optimized, obtaining energy savings of between 18% and 25%.”
“For new projects the market is demanding CO2 or considering the option in both industry and retail.”
David Osma, Project Engineer for TEKO Americas
David Alonso Ovares Cordero, General Manager, Refrigeration, and Cesar Berrios, Engineering Manager, Dicoma Refrigeration, offered details on Walmart’s 10,491m2 primary distribution center in Costa Rica, which they called the largest transcritical CO2 facility in Central America, with 420TR (1,477kW) of cooling power and 54TR (190kW) of heat recovery. “It achieves a 19% energy savings with the combination of parallel compression and an adiabatic system,” they said, adding that the desuperheater “saves 7.5% in energy in medium-temperature compressors by extracting heat from the discharge of low-temperature compressors.”
In a refrigeration case studies panel, Luis Gustavo Garcia, Sales Manager, Mayekawa Colombia and Gabriel Gómez, Engineer for Dorin, said that transcritical CO2 refrigeration with Dorin compressors and parallel compression was installed in three supermarket distribution centers in Colombia: Cerritos, Medellin and Bogatá. In Cerritos, CO2 was found to be 21% more efficient than R507; in Medellin, 40% more efficient and in Bogotá, 48% more efficient.
Beyond costs, operational flexibility is key to the selection of CO2, said Maria Jose Gallego, Executive Director, Avo-Pak, a Colombian avocado producer. “Avo-Pak’s project premises were efficiency, operational safety, sustainability, ease of operation, operating costs and installation cost,” noted Diego Yepes, Commercial Director, Sutrak.
Fernando Grisales Castro, General Manager and Founder of Grivan Ingenieria, and Juan Pablo Cardenas, Manager of Product Line at Güntner, described a transcritical CO2 system installed in an agribusiness facility in Colombia, 1,018 meters (3,339 feet) above sea level. Permanent magnets were found to increase annual efficiency by 7%, parallel compression by 5% and ejectors by 5%, they reported, adding that heat recovery produces 377kW (107TR) of water for free at 85°C (185°F). Tax incentives were used to finance the CAPEX of the CO2 project in relation to synthetic refrigerants.
Ammonia projects
Raúl Arriaga, Project Engineer at Nestlé Gerber, and Fernando Rios, Systems Design Consultant at Sistemas de Refrigeración Totales (SRT), described a Nestlé plant in Mexico that already had ammonia but transitioned to low-charge ammonia/glycol chiller for comfort cooling and food processing. It uses a microchannel condenser as well as an adiabatic condenser instead of a cooling tower – the first such condensing configuration with low-charge ammonia in Latin America, said Rios. The system was designed with 1kg (2.2lbs) of ammonia per TR (3.51kW) of capacity. The system has a higher investment cost but lower operating cost, they said.
Patricio Albornoz Cruz, Industrial Refrigeration Engineer and Project Leader, Sofrisur, offered a case study on a Marine Farm fish processing plant in Chile that transitioned from R22 to ammonia. “We eliminated the use of more than 1,000kg [2,200lbs] of R22, reduced electricity consumption by approximately 360,000 kWh per year, achieved an estimated savings of USD $60,000 per year in maintenance costs, eliminated the expense of operating and supervising the previous unit, which represents a savings of USD$10,000 per year,” he said.
