Sobeys Supermarket - St-Félix-de-Valois, QC, Canada

Out of concern for the environment, the Sobeys Québec inc. Corporation has built a supermarket that is innovative in terms of environmentally friendly refrigeration. The new IGA supermarket in St-Félix-de-Valois is equipped with a refrigeration system that minimizes the risk of synthetic refrigerant leaks, which constitue an important source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from supermarkets.

Opened in May 2009, the new supermarket is among the first ones in Canada to install a refrigeration system using CO₂ as the primary refrigerant. The use of CO₂ instead of hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) or fluorohydrocarbon (HFC) helps to reduce the environmental footprint of this supermarket by at least 50%, compared with that of a conventional-design supermarket.

The supermarket is also equipped with a system that intensively recovers and reuses the heat rejected by the refrigeration units. The system fulfils nearly all of the building’s heating requirements, and the resulting reduction in energy consumption contributes further to the environmental and economic benefits.

Since the supermarket opened, a data acquisition system continuously processes and records the operating data, which we uses to analyse the performance of the refrigeration units and heat recovery system.