Rhino designs, builds and commissions industrial cold storage on ammonia, from the load study to the day the room holds temperature with product inside it.
Four answers gives you an indicative plant size. It is a starting point for a conversation, not a design.
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Indicative only, ±20%. Assumes 150 mm PUF panel, standard warehouse height, no product freezing load beyond the turnover selected. Energy at Rs 9.00/kWh, 18 h/day, 330 days . A real number needs a site survey and your product data.
Six room types cover most of what walks in the door. Anything outside this list still starts the same way: a survey and a load study.
Fruit, vegetables, dairy and pharma holding. Humidity control matters more here than raw capacity. The wrong coil selection dries product out.
The workhorse. Meat, seafood, frozen ready-to-eat, ice cream holding. Two-stage ammonia, flooded coils, hot gas defrost on a schedule that suits your shift pattern.
Sized on tonnes per batch and core temperature, not on room volume. Tell us the product, the incoming temperature and the batch window, and the plant follows from that.
Banana, mango and avocado. Ethylene dosing, controlled ramp, tight air distribution so the top pallet ripens like the bottom one.
Long-hold agricultural storage where running cost decides whether the season was worth it. Designed around a low specific power and a simple plant your team can actually operate.
One building, several set points, one machine room. Common for QSR and 3PL: ambient dock, chilled pick face, frozen bulk, all on a single ammonia plant with shared standby.
Six stages, one contractor, one handover date. The durations below are typical for a 3,000-pallet frozen store and move with scope .
We measure the plot, the power, the water and the access before we quote anything.
1 – 2 weeksProduct, throughput, ambient and insulation become a heat load and a machine selection.
2 weeksP&ID, GA, panel schematics, civil interface drawings. Your consultant signs before steel is cut.
3 – 4 weeksVessels, skids and panels built and tested in the shop, not improvised on your site.
8 – 12 weeksPanels, piping, insulation, cabling, controls. Progress reported weekly against the same bar chart you signed.
6 – 10 weeksCharge, pull-down test, performance report, operator training, then handover and the AMC.
2 – 3 weeksA signed commissioning report with the measured pull-down curve, as-built drawings, the refrigerant charge log, IBR documentation where applicable, an operator manual in the language your team reads, and a spares list with lead times against each line.
An annual maintenance contract with a fixed visit schedule, oil and filter changes planned around your low season, and a named engineer who has been inside your plant room. Breakdown response committed in hours, not "at the earliest" .
Not ideology. For a cold store above roughly 50 TR, ammonia wins on running cost and on the refrigerant bill you will still be paying in 2040.
| Criteria | Ammonia · R717 | CO₂ · R744 | HFC · R404A / R507 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Efficiency at −25 °C evaporating | Best in class | Good, better in cold climates | Lower, worsens with ambient |
| Global warming potential | 0 | 1 | 3,900+ |
| Ozone depletion | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Refrigerant cost per kg | Lowest | Low | High and rising with phase-down |
| Phase-down risk | None | None | Kigali schedule applies |
| Leak detection | Detectable by smell well below harmful levels | Odourless, needs sensors | Odourless, needs sensors |
| Toxicity and handling | Toxic. Needs a designed machine room, detection, ventilation and trained operators | Asphyxiant at high concentration, high pressure | Low toxicity |
| Best fit | Cold stores above ~50 TR, ice plants, process cooling | Low-charge, cascade low stage, retail-adjacent | Small rooms where a machine room isn't viable |
Ammonia is toxic and it is regulated. It needs a properly built machine room, gas detection, emergency ventilation, a scrubber or water curtain where the charge warrants it, and operators who have been trained rather than told. If your site cannot support that, we will say so and design a CO₂ or low-charge system instead. We would rather lose the enquiry than hand over a plant your team cannot run safely.
Pressure vessels fabricated and certified under IBR where applicable. Machine room design, ammonia detection and ventilation to the relevant Indian standards. Statutory approvals coordinated as part of the scope, not left with you.
Over fifteen years a cold store spends far more on electricity than it ever spent on the equipment. So we quote specific power alongside capacity, and we hold ourselves to it at commissioning.
Typical specific power for a −22 °C store, 40 °C ambient. Lower is better.
Indicative ranges at design conditions . Real numbers depend on condensing temperature, part-load hours and how the plant is actually operated.
Not from one clever component. From four unglamorous decisions taken at design stage: a condenser sized for your worst week rather than an average day, floating head pressure control, VFDs where the load genuinely varies, and a defrost schedule matched to your loading pattern instead of a fixed timer.
On a 3,000-pallet frozen store, the gap between a carelessly specified plant and a carefully specified one runs to several lakh rupees a year . That gap does not appear in the quotation. It appears every month for fifteen years.
Project profiles showing capacity, plant configuration, operating temperatures and commissioning performance.
Coastal Gujarat · commissioned 2024
Maharashtra · commissioned 2023
NCR · commissioned 2025
Anyone who answers that without seeing your site is guessing. The refrigeration plant is one line in a project that also includes civil work, insulated panels, racking, dock equipment and power infrastructure, and the split moves enormously with temperature and turnover. What we can do quickly is give you an indicative plant size from the load sheet above, and a budget range within a week of a survey.
Yes, when the machine room is designed for it. That means a separate, ventilated room, gas detection wired to the plant trip, emergency ventilation, no ammonia lines routed through occupied space where it can be avoided, and secondary glycol or CO₂ loops where it cannot. Thousands of Indian food plants run on ammonia. The failures are almost always maintenance and training failures, not refrigerant failures, which is why the AMC is part of our scope rather than an afterthought.
For a 3,000-pallet frozen store, typically 20 to 28 weeks from a signed order, assuming civil work runs in parallel and is ready when we need it. Fabrication is the long pole. We publish a bar chart at design stage and report against that same chart every week .
Often, yes. We survey it first and tell you honestly what we found, including whether the right answer is a repair, a retrofit or a replacement. If the existing plant is sound we will say that too, even though it is the smaller job.
A well-built frozen room holds temperature for hours on thermal mass alone, and that buffer is part of the design rather than luck. Beyond it you need generator backup sized for the plant, and a sequencing scheme so compressors restart in a controlled order instead of all at once. We size and specify both as part of the scope.
We provide the technical documentation, drawings and cost break-up that cold chain subsidy and bank applications ask for. We are not a consultancy and we do not process applications on your behalf. Scheme eligibility and current terms should be confirmed with the relevant authority .
Fill what you know and leave the rest. An engineer reads every one of these. You will get a reply from a person, not an auto-responder.
Phone +91 00000 00000
Email projects@rhino.example
Works Mumbai, Maharashtra