Freezing Capacity Match Worksheet

Work your own product through the same four steps an engineer uses, so you arrive at the enquiry with inputs instead of questions. Nothing here replaces a sizing calculation; it tells you whether your numbers are internally consistent before anyone quotes them.

Step 1 — Write down the four numbers that decide the machine

Input	Your figure	Note
Thickest piece dimension	mm	The thickest piece you will actually run, not the average
Entry temperature	°C	Measured at the freezer infeed, not at the chiller outlet
Required core at exit	°C	This becomes the acceptance criterion at handover
Sustained rate	kg per hour	The rate the line holds all shift, with the peak recorded separately

Step 2 — Sanity check your dwell time assumption

Freezing time is governed by heat travelling out of the piece, so it grows steeply with thickness rather than in step with it. Doubling the thickest dimension does not double the time needed; it costs considerably more than double.

The check. If your current freezer holds product for a known number of minutes and you are moving to a thicker piece, do not assume the same belt speed will work. If your intended dwell time sits at the short end of the adjustable range on day one, you have no room left for a wetter product, a colder ambient or a fouled coil.

Step 3 — Convert rate into belt area

Belt area is the quantity you are actually buying. It follows from how much product sits on a square metre of belt and how long each piece has to stay on it.

Quantity	How to get it	Your figure
Loading on the belt	Weigh a measured area of belt as it currently runs, or count pieces per square metre and multiply by piece weight	kg per m²
Product on the belt at any moment	Sustained rate multiplied by dwell time in hours	kg
Belt area required	Product on the belt divided by loading	m²

If the third figure looks large, that is the honest answer rather than an error. It is the reason a spiral exists: the belt has to be that long, and stacking it vertically is how the length fits inside a building.

Step 4 — Fit it into the day

Window	Your figure	What it constrains
Production hours per day	h	How long the coil has to run between defrosts
Sanitation hours per day	h	Cleaning and defrost compete for the same window
Remaining margin	h	Twenty-four hours minus the two figures above

The check. If the remaining margin is zero or negative, the freezer is not the variable to solve it with. Either the daily target has to move, the sanitation regime has to change, or the defrost route has to be designed for it from the start. Discovering this before the order is placed is worth more than any specification on the datasheet.

What to do with the sheet

Send it with your enquiry, including the rows you could not fill. The gaps tell an engineer where to focus, and they are far more useful than a complete sheet with estimated figures in it.

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