Our insulated panels are designed to provide superior insulation and protection for your cold room, ensuring your products stay fresh and at the perfect temperature. With our cold storage insulated wall panels, you'll experience energy savings and maintain the ideal environment for your goods.
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Upgrade your cold storage facility with the best-in-class insulated wall panels for cold storage.
FALK Cold Storage Solutions: Revolutionizing the Global Supply Chain
In an era where the global supply chain increasingly relies on cold storage, FALK emerges as a leader in providing advanced solutions. Our state-of-the-art cold storage panels cater to a wide range of industries, especially those dealing with perishable goods requiring temperature-controlled storage.
Advanced Cold Storage Panels by FALK: A Game-Changer for Your Business
Our single-component metal panels are engineered for perfection, ensuring an air- and water-tight seal. This feature is vital for maintaining the integrity of temperature-sensitive items. Our focus isn’t limited to temperature maintenance; we prioritize energy efficiency and thermal control, leading to significant long-term savings and a smaller environmental footprint.
Why Choose FALK Insulated Metal Panels?
Unmatched Thermal Performance for Freshness and Efficiency
Our insulated wall panels are designed to prevent temperature fluctuations, keeping goods fresh and at optimal temperatures. We offer an extensive range of products, including wall coverings for cold walls, insulation panels, and roof solutions. Whether upgrading an existing facility or building a new one, our products offer unmatched flexibility to meet diverse needs.
Significant Energy Savings and Durable Construction
Investing in FALK's insulated panels leads to remarkable energy savings, thanks to their exceptional thermal efficiency. In a world where energy prices are soaring, our panels are a smart choice for reducing operational costs. Constructed with high-quality, durable materials, they withstand the challenges of cold storage environments, resisting moisture, corrosion, and other degrading factors. This durability means less frequent maintenance and replacements, ensuring long-lasting performance.
Hassle-Free Installation and Minimal Maintenance
Our cold room wall panels are designed for easy installation, with our expert team ready to assist, minimizing disruption to your operations. Their low maintenance requirement means you can focus on running your facility efficiently, without the worry of frequent upkeep.
In conclusion, FALK's innovative cold storage solutions are an optimal choice for businesses looking to enhance their supply chain efficiency. Our advanced panels offer superior insulation, energy savings, design versatility, and durability, all while ensuring the safety and integrity of your stored products. Choose FALK for a future-proofed cold storage solution that not only meets but exceeds industry standards.
Insulated panels for cold rooms? Fire resistance of cold rooms? These are some of the questions we are going to answer in the following article. We’ll review what a cold room is, what elements they are composed of, what we should know before building a cold room. We focus on the use of the refrigeration sandwich panels as the enclosure element of cold rooms, not without mentioning the other components that are part of them and that are relevant at the time of building.
Quality, certifications, and special attention among the different systems of insulated cold storage panels, are some of the factors to be considered from the very beginning if we want our cold room installations to be durable, useful, and insurable.
The truth is that we could find multiple definitions about what is a cold room or refrigerated chamber, so the first thing we will clarify is that we will talk about cold rooms in the industrial sector.
The cold room or refrigerated chamber is a space designed to maintain a specific controlled temperature through the use of refrigeration equipment. This temperature is usually below the temperature range on the outside.
Usually, this type of cold rooms or refrigerated chambers are used for processing or for the preservation of products during the manufacturing process. This can be in food handling, chemical processing, laboratory, or industrial manufacturing industries.
Therefore, it is important to note that when we think about the design and construction of cold rooms, we must take some aspects into account:
In this blog post we focus on the enclosure of the chamber, because the access doors and air conditioning equipment are enough topics for another whole article on each of them.
The most efficient way to build the envelope is to use sandwich insulation panels specially designed for this purpose. It is necessary to clarify that there are different types and qualities of insulated cold storage panels and not all of them will be useful if we want a cold room with quality and durability guarantees.
A insulated cold storage panel consists of two external metal sheets bonded to a core which serves as an insulating element. The metal sheets are usually made of steel with a finish on the outer faces.
We usually find different manufacturers in the market, and therefore different qualities and technologies of sandwich panel fabrication. Everything has a purpose and is focused on a specific target market.
Let’s understand each of the elements, so that we can comprehend and search for what is best suited to each project and, at the same time, allow us to compare “pears with pears”, i.e., similar product ranges.
Product quality is defined on the basis of the product’s resistance to fire. It may seem contradictory that we value insulated cold storage panels for its fire resistance, but this is due to the fact that insurance companies take this parameter into account because these are industrial facilities that are exposed to high-risk situations. In other words, a cold room installation that is not built with fireproof materials may not be subject to an insurance policy that covers damages in case of loss.
We have already stated that the insulated cold storage panels, like the insulated panel for roof and walls, consists of two steel sheets and an insulating core. The similarities end there. The cold storage panels have a number of characteristics that differentiate it from other insulation materials and make it an element specially designed to optimize the reduction of thermal transmission between the inside and the outside of the cold room.
Refrigerated panel core thicknesses are typically 3-1/8″, 4″ and 4-3/4″. However, it can be much thicker if the project requires it.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website pu sandwich panel.
The choice of panel thickness is an optimization between the cost of the panel investment (the thicker the panel, the higher the price) and the reduction of the power and consumption of the cooling equipment for the cold room. Let’s explain it very simply: the thicker the sandwich panel, the lower the power capacity and consumption of the cold room air conditioning equipment.
In case of using a panel of lesser thickness, it will be necessary a greater capacity in the power and consumption of the air conditioning equipment.
A good design for a cold room is where the ideal point is found between the selection of the panel thickness and the power-consumption of the cooling equipment.
If the cold room project is intended for use where a high level of sanitization is required, there are special paint coatings and finishes that are applied to the inside face of the panel to facilitate cleaning and prevent the accumulation or emergence of bacteria or contamination elements.
Among these coatings are PET and PVC 120 um. Both seek to prevent the generation of microorganisms in the case of storage and processing of food, as well as raw materials and products of the biological and chemical industries.
The core of the most economical insulating panel usually uses materials such as expanded polystyrene (EPS) and extruded polystyrene (XPS). This type of core has very good thermal transmission resistance performance but has a very important limitation: its chemical composition makes this type of core highly vulnerable when exposed to flames.
This is a type of core that is increasingly out of use, as many companies are turning away from this type of core due to its low resistance to accidents involving flames or fires.
If this type of insulated panel is used for your cold room, you should know that it will be practically impossible to obtain an accident insurance policy for the facilities or, in case of obtaining it, the cost will be significantly high.
In the medium range we find cores made of polyurethane foam, better known as PUR. It is necessary to clarify that within the PUR range we can find different categories, so it is necessary to request the product data sheet and manufacturer’s certifications in order to know in detail the quality of the foam core.
The difference between PUR cores is the performance it provides when exposed to a fire situation. The fact that it produces less smoke or that it keeps the product from degrading for a longer period of time are indicators of better quality.
How can I tell if one PUR is better performing than another? By comparing fire test performance values. Be wary of manufacturers who cannot provide a certification validated by an external approved body on the quality of the product.
Furthermore, there are polyisocyanurate (PIR) core foams, a compound with superior fire performance than PUR and which, depending on the manufacturer, can be certified with FM Approval, an internationally recognized certification that insurance companies rely on as an ideal construction system for the manufacture of cold rooms.
It is important to clarify that the FM Approval is not a certificate that is issued to the PIR insulating panel, but the installation process as a whole, which includes fastening elements, the panel itself, finishing elements, among other elements.
Therefore, if you use PIR insulated cold storage panels with FM Approval certificate to build a cold room, but you do not address the rest of the requirements during its assembly to be certified as a construction process under FM Approval standards, you will not obtain such certification.
In the highest range we find rock wool cores, which have the best performance in fire risk situations. Most developed countries have banned the use of EPS, XPS and even PUR panels for the construction of cold rooms, only allowing the construction with PIR cold room panels with FM Approval certification or rock wool core.
Among the rock wool cores we can find low density rock wool cores, up to high density rock wool cores. From lower to higher quality, it will provide us with better fire resistance performance, being able to obtain certifications that guarantee fire resistance of 60, 120 and 240 minutes, according to the type and thickness.
For a more detailed explanation of the fire resistance certification, please see our article Insulating Panels and Fire
Each refrigeration panels manufacturer has its own fastening system or joint between panels. It is necessary to corroborate the fastening system that best guarantees the watertightness and impermeability between panels. This will depend on the temperature conservation in the interior.
In most cases the tongue and groove shape between panels can indicate a good connection between them. But if an additional safety feature is required, there are refrigeration panels on the market with a mechanically tightened connection. These are known as “hook” connections.
The “hook” connection is a mechanical connecting mechanism between panels that guarantees maximum precision and tightness between the panels. It is a fixation that is achieved by the operation of a hook with manual adjustment during assembly.
In cold rooms with significant temperature differences inside and outside, it is advisable to use polyisocyanurate (PIR) foam boards inside the floor, in order to avoid the loss of low temperature conservation through it. These PIR foam boards are usually placed on the entire cold store floor in order to ensure thermal insulation. They are usually placed under a layer of reinforced concrete, which forms the cold room floor.
To build the roof of the cold rooms, the same cold wall panels are used, but they are fastened using cable anchoring systems, which allow them to be fastened to the main structure of the building inside which the cold room is located.
It is important to know what are the characteristics, use and certification that we require for our cold room in order to be able to choose the insulated panels with the type of core that best suits.
Cold rooms, depending on the working conditions inside, and the temperature difference with the outside, may require thermal insulation in walls, ceilings and in some cases in the floor. For all this, there are appropriate systems and products that guarantee their good performance.
A good design of cold rooms is the one in which we find the appropriate combination between the thickness of the insulated panels and the cooling equipment that optimizes power consumption. This work is usually performed by a specialized technician considering the conditions, location, and use of each installation.
If you need to pay for an insurance policy for the cold room, we should consider from the beginning to use FM Approval certified panels or panels with rock wool core. It is crucial to contact an insurance company or broker to determine the criteria they evaluate to grant the policy.
Please note that this article is intended to provide general guidelines on building cold rooms and is not intended as a tool or advisory to meet specific insurance policy requirements.