No Frost system — what is it and why is it needed in the refrigerator?

For sev­er­al mil­len­nia, the method of cool­ing prod­ucts with the help of cold stor­age devices remained prac­ti­cal­ly unchanged. It was only at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry that the first house­hold com­pres­sor refrig­er­a­tor was intro­duced, pro­duc­ing cold on its own. And already in 1957, the first mod­els with “dry freez­ing” went on sale. This arti­cle will be about what No Frost is, what are the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences between refrig­er­a­tors with dry and con­ven­tion­al freez­ing.

The principle of operation of the technology, design features

The No Frost sys­tem is a way of cool­ing prod­ucts, dur­ing which ice or frost does not form on the walls inside the refrig­er­a­tor. It is because of this fea­ture that the tech­nol­o­gy got its name “No Frost”, which means “no frost”.

The source of cold in “dry freez­ing” is the evap­o­ra­tor. It is tak­en out of the freez­er and refrig­er­at­ing cham­ber, does not come into con­tact with its sur­face. At the same time, the evap­o­ra­tor is blown by fans. Fur­ther, the cooled air enters the inte­ri­or of the refrig­er­a­tor with the help of branched mul­ti-lev­el ven­ti­la­tion, where forced inten­sive cir­cu­la­tion of the air flow is cre­at­ed.

Depend­ing on which sec­tion of the refrig­er­a­tor uses the No Frost cool­ing sys­tem, Frost Free and Full No Frost are dis­tin­guished. The Frost Free defrost sys­tem works only inside the freez­er, while Full No Frost works in both cham­bers. In the medi­um tem­per­a­ture com­part­ments of Frost Free refrig­er­a­tors, a drip defrost­ing sys­tem is used, which avoids some of the dis­ad­van­tages (noise lev­el, shrink­age of prod­ucts, reduc­tion in usable vol­ume, increase in pow­er con­sump­tion), which will be described in more detail below. Full No Frost is some­times also called Total No Frost, but this is not entire­ly cor­rect. In fact, this is the name of an improved freez­ing tech­nol­o­gy from some man­u­fac­tur­ers (LG, Whirlpool), which has replaced the usu­al “dry freez­ing”.

Some­times, when choos­ing a tech­nique, the buy­er is com­plete­ly con­fused and does not see the dif­fer­ence between Low Frost or No Frost tech­nolo­gies. What is the LF sys­tem real­ly? This is an advanced freez­ing tech­nol­o­gy for the freez­er. The spe­cial design of the evap­o­ra­tor, which is locat­ed on the entire sur­face of the freez­er com­part­ment from the out­side, reduces the for­ma­tion of an ice crust, but this process is still inevitable, so sev­er­al times a year it will be nec­es­sary to clean such a unit from ice. If you are in doubt whether to choose a Low Frost or No Frost defrost sys­tem, which one is bet­ter, pay atten­tion to the pros and cons of “dry freez­ing” below.

No Frost cooling system — technology benefits

• uni­form tem­per­a­ture dis­tri­b­u­tion even in hard-to-reach places of the refrig­er­a­tor;
• easy clean­ing, com­fort­able, time-sav­ing main­te­nance of the refrig­er­a­tor;
• the fastest pos­si­ble cool­ing, achiev­ing opti­mal tem­per­a­tures.

The No Frost sys­tem means the pres­ence of forced cir­cu­la­tion and a con­stant blow­ing of the inte­ri­or space with cooled air. This is achieved through one or more cool­ers built into the body of the device. Mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ers offer a wide vari­ety of air sup­ply schemes: Super-X-Flow, Air Show­er, Mul­ti-Flow from Sam­sung, DAC (Dynam­ic Air Cool­ing) from Zanus­si, AIR (Aris­ton Inte­grat­ed Refrig­er­a­tion) from Aris­ton, Mul­ti-Air Flow from LG.

Mod­els of some man­u­fac­tur­ers are equipped with fans even on the doors

The main task of all the above schemes is to cre­ate opti­mal inten­sive cir­cu­la­tion, to pro­vide air flow access to all, even the most inac­ces­si­ble places. As a result, a uni­form tem­per­a­ture is estab­lished inside the refrig­er­a­tor, which is quick­ly restored even if the door is opened fre­quent­ly.

One of the main advan­tages of the No Frost cool­ing sys­tem in the refrig­er­a­tor is its unpre­ten­tious­ness in oper­a­tion. No reg­u­lar incon­ve­nience with defrost­ing a thick lay­er of ice. All that is required of you is to prompt­ly elim­i­nate the pol­lu­tion that occurs dur­ing oper­a­tion. To do this, sim­ply unplug the device from the pow­er sup­ply, per­form a wet clean­ing, wait until the sur­face is dry, and you can con­nect it back to the net­work.

Due to the rapid achieve­ment of low tem­per­a­tures, the removal of excess mois­ture, which leads to the freez­ing of berries into a sol­id piece of ice, No Frost freez­ers are ide­al for har­vest­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles for the win­ter. Freez­er No Frost will freeze each berry sep­a­rate­ly, pre­serv­ing its taste and beau­ti­ful appear­ance.

“Dry freeze” is ide­al for fruits, berries and veg­eta­bles.

No frost — what’s wrong with “dry freezing”?

• low humid­i­ty, quick dry­ing of prod­ucts;
• increased elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion;
• increased noise lev­el;
• reduc­tion in usable vol­ume.

Since there is con­stant air cir­cu­la­tion inside the “dry freez­er”, the prod­ucts real­ly dry out faster. On the one hand, by pur­chas­ing equip­ment with the No Frost sys­tem, you will get rid of prob­lems with con­den­sate on the walls of the cham­bers, you will be able to avoid the appear­ance of fun­gus, mold, and rot on veg­eta­bles and fruits. On the oth­er hand, dried veg­eta­bles / fruits lose their nutri­tion­al and taste val­ue. Most man­u­fac­tur­ers solve this prob­lem by cre­at­ing dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed zones.

In refrig­er­a­tors with the No Frost sys­tem, you can often see many com­part­ments inside which a spe­cial micro­cli­mate is cre­at­ed for a cer­tain type of prod­uct. And the eas­i­est way to avoid exces­sive dry­ing is to care­ful­ly pack food with a spe­cial film, use poly­eth­yl­ene, stor­age con­tain­ers.

Due to the fact that the refrig­er­a­tor with “dry freeze” is equipped with addi­tion­al equip­ment (cool­ers that pro­vide forced cir­cu­la­tion of the air flow), ener­gy con­sump­tion and noise lev­els increase slight­ly. How­ev­er, mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ers are work­ing to min­i­mize these short­com­ings, and many suc­ceed.

Total No Frost is an inno­v­a­tive defrost­ing sys­tem in refrig­er­a­tors, first intro­duced by the Kore­an cor­po­ra­tion LG. With the help of tech­nol­o­gy that uses a spe­cial Mul­ti-Air Flow air flow dis­tri­b­u­tion scheme, the freez­ing time is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced (full cool­ing of the refrig­er­a­tor takes 30 min­utes instead of the usu­al 2 hours), which saves ener­gy resources, improves the taste of frozen fruits and veg­eta­bles. A spe­cial­ly designed cool­er lay­out will deliv­er cold air to the most remote areas, so the max­i­mum allow­able tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence between dif­fer­ent areas is less than 1ºC.

Reduc­ing the usable vol­ume of the inter­nal space of the refrig­er­a­tor is pos­si­ble due to design fea­tures (place­ment of cool­ers, place­ment of ven­ti­la­tion). How­ev­er, many appli­ance brands have already learned to avoid this. Today, lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers use one evap­o­ra­tor per refrig­er­a­tor and freez­er com­part­ment. This allows you to increase the usable space, reduce the cost of pro­duc­tion.

Brief pre­sen­ta­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy of “dry freez­ing” on the exam­ple of refrig­er­a­tors Sam­sung.