Chilling Trailers - the State of the Art.

More than 20 years ago a client of mine needed a solution. They were transporting chilled / frozen product & needed to keep the containers cold. They had no electrical power and couldn't run the engines due to noise pollution. We came up with a system called a "cold rail" which cooled the container by the sublimation of liquid CO2. The photo above shows the "cold rail" inside the test container - the photo below shows it outside the container for demonstration prposes.

In truth, it worked very well, the temperature inside the container went from +18 deg C to - 20 deg C in a few minutes. Despite this success, we never actually sold any.

It's against this background that I read (with interest) that it's now possible to fit solar panels to truck bodies and that they can make a significant contribution to the energy used to cool the vehicle.

This is a photo of a Chereau trailer with VIPV (Vehicle integrated PV) from Sono Motors. The contrast between our effective but low-tech solution and the current sleek and efficient solution is striking.

Let's hope that progress is as fast over the next 20 years.