Freezer rooms designed for high-value products, such as blood plasma, biologics, reagents, and more, must maintain exceptionally tight temperature uniformity, even with frequent door openings and high traffic. As temperature set points decrease and the value of stored assets increases, the complexity of designing stable, high-performance environments rises accordingly.
Video Credit: Environmental Specialties, LLC
At Environmental Specialties, its team of experienced engineers have designed and installed thousands of freezer systems—many of which are still in reliable operation today. Built to meet the most demanding specifications, these freezer rooms often last 25+ years.
These systems are well-suited for a wide range of storage applications across industries, including:
- Bulk raw materials and final products
- Vaccines and drug products
- Media, chemical, and reagent holding
- Chromatography and analytical separations
- Plasma and blood products
- Depressed temperature stability and shelf-life studies
- Hazardous material
Versatile freezer room design
The freezer rooms are customized to match the specific size, temperature, and control system requirements. They combine maximum flexibility with precision and durability. Environmental Specialties provides the most recent environmental control technology and redundancy features, as well as modern dehumidification equipment to reduce frost buildup.
Sizes and capabilities
Sizes
- The sizes range from modest step-in units to stability testing rooms to high-bay warehouse storage chambers.
Capabilities
- Temperature setpoints between -10 °C and -40 °C.
- Volumetric temperature uniformity (horizontal and vertical) of +/-3 °C.
- Single point or variable set-point temperature control accuracy down to +/-0.1 °C.
- Dehumidifiers are available to mitigate frost buildup.
- N + N (2N) 100-percent mechanical redundancy systems with automatic switchover.
- Manual, automatic, and low-rise defrost methodologies are available.
- Accessories include outlets, security features, shelving, pass-throughs, windows, and more.
- Rooms built with insulated metal structure.
- Personnel and vehicle door options are available.
- Compliance with the Food and Drug Administration Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, Section 11.
- Standard controls can be connected with building management and automation systems.
Construction and features
Architectural features
- Modular metal-skinned panels with urethane insulation feature a “cam-locking” tongue-and-groove design, along with interior and exterior vinyl-gasketed seams to ensure a moisture- and vapor-tight seal.
- Self-supporting or building-supported roof panel suspension.
- Several insulated panel finishes, such as embossed white galvanized steel and stainless steel.
- Standard panel thicknesses of four to six inches.
- Floor panel:
- Stainless steel, galvanized steel, or diamond plate finishes.
- The standard floor load rating is 600 pounds per square foot; if required, a higher value may be used.
- Slab on grade construction requires thermal break.
- Entrance types
- Personnel doors
- Slider, roll-up, powered, and manual vehicle doors.
- Factory Mutual (FM) 4880 fire rating available.
Electrical Features
- Lighting
- Vapor-proof LED fixtures.
- Standard, motion-detected, or zoned lighting controls.
- Controls
- Proportional–integral–derivative (PID) or programmable logic controller (PLC).
- Optional redundancy.
Standard offerings
Warranty
- Minimum one-year labor and materials with variable extended warranty available.
Site-specific safety plan
Start-up field performance testing
- Monitoring points ranging from 16 to 24 unloaded.
- Validation is available as an additional service, including installation qualification (IQ), operational qualification (OQ), and performance qualification (PQ).
- 24-hour duration.
Turnover documentation
- Master manual (engineering/design submittal)
- Recommended spare parts
- Major equipment datasheets
- As-built drawings and schematics
- Owner’s instructions
- Controls manual
- Equipment manual
- Warranty statements
- Field testing data
Special options
The freezers can be designed to satisfy a wide range of extremely specific needs, such as:
- Outdoor construction
- Conditioned anteroom
- Project-specific and customer-specific modifications
- Unconditioned vestibule