Cool thermal energy storage (CTES) is an advanced energy technology that has recently attracted increasing interest for industrial refrigeration applications such as process cooling, food preservation and building air conditioning systems. An experimental investigation on the performance of an industrial refrigeration system integrated with encapsulated phase change material (PCM)-based CTES system is carried out in the present work. In the experimental set-up a vertical storage tank is integrated with the evaporator of the vapour compression refrigeration system. Effect of the inlet temperature of heat transfer fluid (HTF) on the temperature variation of the PCM and the HTF in the storage tank and the performance parameters namely average rate of charging, energy stored, specific energy consumption (SEC) of the chiller with and without storage system are studied in detail. The effect of porosity variation in the storage tank is also studied. A VC decrease in evaporator temperature results in about 3-4% increase in SEC and VC decrease in condensing temperature leads to 2.25-3.25% decrease in SEC. The range of HTF inlet temperature and porosity values for optimum performance is reported. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.