What is the difference between refrigerated semi-trailers and others?

Semi-trailer-refrigerator is one of the types of heavy-duty trailers, which are intended for the carriage of goods requiring a special temperature regime. Such cargo includes meat, seafood, alcoholic beverages (wine in particular), medicines, flowers and semi-finished products. Modern refrigerated semi-trailers are equipped with refrigeration units capable of cooling the cargo compartment to a temperature of minus 20-30 degrees. However, in general, for the carriage of the above loads, compliance with the regime from -18 to +12 degrees Celsius is required .

According to the principle of operation, semi-trailers-refrigerators are no different from their home installations. The only difference is the area of cooling. In order to ensure a cold on all 33 pallets of the cargo, a lot of power is required. That's why most of such plants have their own internal combustion engine, which, as a rule, operates on diesel fuel. Consumption of semi-trailers, refrigerators about 3-4 liters of diesel per hour. The fuel is poured into a separate tank located inside the refrigeration unit itself.

First, the "ref" captures air from the street, then it goes through several stages of cooling (refrigerated semi-trailers also have their own refrigerant) and come through the fan blades inwards. The principle of operation is similar to a car air-conditioner, only the scale of their work is different.

It is worth noting that the new semi-trailers-refrigerators are marked with a special sticker that shows that the installation corresponds to one or another standard. Typically, the inscription is painted green or blue and is placed at the top of the body wall on both sides. Now all the plants of European production, including the Krone refrigerator semi-trailer, comply with the FRC standard. This indicates that the system is able to transport cargo in the temperature regime from minus 20 to plus 12 degrees Celsius.

As for the design, today's semi-trailers-refrigerators have an isothermal body, made, as a rule, from fiberglass panels. Previously, many manufacturers used steel sandwich panels (a striking example - the Czech "ALKA" and 2-axis Soviet ODAZ).

The cargo compartment of many trailers is equipped with special hooks for transporting meat carcasses, as well as cross bars for placing goods in 2 tiers. Some models are equipped with special partitions, which allow the transport of two cargoes simultaneously in different temperature modes.

All European semi-trailers-refrigerators have a length of 13.6 meters, which allows them to transport cargo in volume of more than 86 cubic meters (as a rule, 33 to 36 europallets are placed in them).

At the moment, the cost of a new trailer with a refrigeration unit in Russia is about 3-3.5 million rubles. At the same time, the cost of tilted analogs is 2 times lower. Even German 86-cc "Schmitz" costs no more than one and a half to two million rubles.