At the end of May this year, we received a patent for the “no-frost” heat exchanger, awarded for the Slovenian market and we also submitted the international application Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
Market trends in the field of refrigeration and freezing appliances have been shifting from classical passive appliances to so-called “no-frost” versions in the last two decades, where the very name suggests that their main advantage is in preventing the accumulation of ice on foods and internal walls of appliances. Since in the company Talum Izparilniki / Talum Evaporators evaporation panels are produced only for passive appliances, there was a need to develop a “no-frost” evaporator for “no-frost” refrigeration and freezing devices with intense circulation of cold air, the so-called dynamic cooling.
In 2015, the management of Talum Izparilniki / Talum Evaporators gave an incentive to re-develop the evaporator for dynamic cooling based on the roll-bond technology.
In the development of the concept, we had to pursue several goals: high thermal efficiency, low pressure drop, effective defrosting, certain dimensions and competitive price in comparison with fin-and-tube evaporators. The latter are designed in such a way that they have a large area of heat transfer to the air that leaks around outer surfaces, and the manufacture is simple enough to achieve a low own price. Therefore, in the field of refrigeration and freezing appliances with dynamic cooling, this is still the only technology that the manufacturers of appliances are installing in the “no-frost” version.
In cooperation with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana and our partners, we performed comparative measurements and found that the technical characteristics of the prototypes were already very close to the desired characteristics, although this was only the pre-development stage of the project. Since our solutions on the market are a novelty, we have applied for a patent, which was awarded to us.
In line with the new energy classification, which will come into force in 2019, it is expected that manufacturers of refrigeration and freezers will once again strive to increase efficiency, which is a new market opportunity for us.
Prototype of the “no-frost” evaporator for dynamic cooling based on the roll-bond technology