If more evidence is needed to illustrate the energy costs around freezer room doors, a visit to EBS’s factory in Melbourne should be a requirement for all cold store managers.
Taking the moisture ingress problem for starters, did you know that a 10m2 freezer door, if protected by a normal PVC strip curtain, and given a humidity of 80% and an air temperature differential of only 20 Degrees Celsius could allow up to 100,000m3 of warm air to move into the store daily, containing over 1000kgs of water? With a differential of 40 Degrees, which is more normal in South African cold stores, the quantity of water entering the freezer door could double to over 2000 kgs per day. Since the cold air inside a freezer loses volume, the warm air is actually sucked into the freezer from outside. This water will head either directly or indirectly, via sublimation, to the coldest part of the freezer store which are the evaporators, covering them with an insulating layer of ice which must be removed in up to 3 defrosts per day.
In Australia, the energy required to remove the heat from the warm air coming through the same size of freezer door can cost up to $286 per day which approximates to 90,000 Rand per month.
On top of this is the damage that can be caused by ice inside freezer stores from machines slipping on icy floors to water from malfunctioning evaporator drip trays contaminating stored product.
The EBS THERMO speed door cuts down moisture ingress by up to 99% over PVC strip curtains, while reducing energy losses by the same margin. It can be installed either in or outside the freezer door entrance and is made of an insulated closed cell material that removes the need for the traditional sliding “night” door. The EBS door roll up quickly to allow forklifts to move through with minimum delays and ice cannot build up on the door material, a common problem with other roll up doors. The EBS doors seal well on either side and can be quickly re-inserted if knocked out of the tracks.
Just another innovative solution from the country that gave us the insulated panel.