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For commercial and industrial refrigeration projects (cold rooms, cold stores, process cooling) — not household fridges, home freezers or appliance repair. Results are planning estimates, not engineering design or safety advice; a qualified refrigeration engineer must confirm sizing before purchase.
Full heat-load breakdown in kW — envelope, product pull-down, infiltration and miscellaneous gains for cold rooms and freezers.
Standard engineering assumptions
Refrigeration kW is heat removed from the room — not electrical kW. Electrical input ≈ refrigeration load ÷ system COP, plus auxiliary loads.
Planning estimate only. Final capacity, equipment selection, refrigerant, safety requirements, price and energy performance must be confirmed by the selected qualified refrigeration provider.
Free for buyers, no obligation. These figures are estimates, not quotes — our team reviews your request and contacts suitable suppliers on your behalf.
Estimates Only: This calculator is provided for general informational purposes only. Results are approximate and may contain errors, omissions, or outdated information. They do not constitute legal, financial, engineering, tax, technical, or professional advice. Users are solely responsible for independently verifying all calculations, specifications, prices, regulations, and requirements with qualified professionals before making any decisions. By using this calculator, you acknowledge that the website owners, operators, and affiliates accept no responsibility or liability for any loss, damage, or decisions resulting from its use.
Total refrigeration load is the sum of four components: transmission through the envelope, product pull-down, air infiltration through doors, and internal gains from fans, lights, forklifts and people. In a typical cold store, transmission is 25–40 %, product 20–45 %, infiltration 15–30 % and internal gains 10–20 % of the total.
Q total = Q transmission + Q product + Q infiltration + Q internal · Q transmission = U × A × ΔT
Reviewed by ColdMatch refrigeration engineers
A 1,000 m³ frozen store at −25 °C in a 35 °C ambient, receiving 15 t/day of product entering at −5 °C.
Design refrigeration duty ≈ 20 kW at −30 °C evaporating, sized over an 18-hour running day (≈ 27 kW plant if you run 16 h).
| Room type | Specific load | Typical evaporating temp |
|---|---|---|
| Chilled store 0–4 °C, low turnover | 10–18 W/m³ | −8 to −5 °C |
| Chilled store 0–4 °C, high turnover / dock | 20–35 W/m³ | −10 to −6 °C |
| Frozen store −18 to −25 °C | 15–25 W/m³ | −32 to −28 °C |
| Blast freezer / tunnel | 80–150 W/m³ | −40 to −35 °C |
| Ripening or processing hall | 40–70 W/m³ | −8 to 0 °C |
Hot, humid sites (Gulf, West Africa, South-East Asia) run at the top of each range; door-protection and floor heating add 5–10 %.
ft², ft, °F and lb/day inputs convert to m², m, °C and kg/day internally; kW and TR are equivalent outputs.
A 500 m² chilled room, 6 m high, receives 15,000 kg/day at 22 °C.
Design refrigeration duty: 48.91 kW (13.91 TR), with a planning uncertainty band of 36.35–61.47 kW.
Illustrative planning result only. Confirm the final design, duty, equipment selection and performance with a qualified refrigeration engineer and supplier quotation.
Refrigeration heat load
Limitations
This is a preliminary planning estimate based on the assumptions you entered, not a refrigeration-engineering design, a certified load calculation or a quotation. Before equipment is ordered, cooling load, refrigerant selection, safety and system design should be verified by a qualified refrigeration engineer.
Square metres are not a cooling load: a cold room is sized around the heat that must be removed, not floor area alone.
Maintaining frozen product and freezing warm product are different refrigeration duties, and they produce very different system sizes.
Two refrigeration quotations are not comparable until their design assumptions are comparable — and a low equipment price can hide a high lifetime energy cost.
Next procurement step
Use this result as the starting point for a ColdMatch project request. Every request is reviewed manually by our procurement desk before any manufacturer or contractor is approached — buyers are never connected automatically to listed suppliers.
Turn this calculation into an RFQBrowse the matching equipment categoryAI agents may use ColdMatch calculators to structure preliminary cold-storage requirements and RFQs. Cooling-load, refrigerant, safety and system-design assumptions should be exposed as assumptions and verified before final engineering.
Transmission, product pull-down, infiltration, lighting/motors and personnel.
Chilled 0.25–0.35, frozen 0.18–0.22, blast 0.15 W/m²K or better.
In busy DCs infiltration can reach 15–25% of total load.
It sums four components — envelope transmission (U-value × surface × temperature difference), product pull-down, warm-air infiltration at doors and internal gains from people, lighting and fans — then applies a design allowance. The result is a planning duty in kW, shown as a range rather than a single number.
Measured door openings, real product entry temperatures and daily intake, the actual panel U-value from the panel datasheet, your local design ambient, and evaporator fan power. Each input can shift the total by 5–15%, which is why the tool reports a band instead of false precision.
No. The planning load is the starting point: suppliers add their own margins for defrost, load diversity, part-load and standby capacity. Use the figure to brief every supplier on the same basis so proposals are comparable — not as the final equipment size.
In busy distribution centres infiltration alone can reach 15–25% of the total load. If your doors open frequently or lack strip curtains, run the door infiltration calculator first and feed that figure in — the difference between a sealed room and a busy one is often the largest single line in the load.
Unsure about a term? See the cold chain glossary (CAPEX, OPEX, blast freezing).
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Your size, cost and load inputs are copied into the quote form, so you don't type them twice. Nothing is sent until you review and submit.
Free for buyers, no obligation. These figures are estimates, not quotes — our team reviews your request and contacts suitable suppliers on your behalf.
Send your requirements. A ColdMatch specialist reviews every request, prepares a brief and introduces suitable suppliers — free for buyers.
This calculator builds a cold room's heat load from its four real components — transmission through the envelope, product pull-down (including latent heat when the product freezes), door infiltration and internal gains from lighting, people, forklifts, fans and defrost — then spreads that 24-hour load over the compressor's design running hours and adds a stated safety margin. It returns a design refrigeration duty in kW and TR with a planning uncertainty band, plus the share each component contributes, so the dominant driver is visible before you approach suppliers. Refrigeration kW is heat removed from the room, not electrical kW.
Calculation version 2.0.0 · reviewed 2026-08-21 by ColdMatch Group project engineering desk · full methodology
Limitations: This is a preliminary planning estimate, not a thermal-load calculation by a qualified refrigeration engineer. Simplified W/m³ screening figures are early-stage only and are labelled as such; they should never be used to select equipment. Blast freezing, IQF tunnels, ripening rooms and controlled-atmosphere storage have dynamic loads this steady-state model does not represent. Floor loads on ground slabs, under-floor heating, and hot-gas defrost interactions are approximated.
ColdMatch Group supports procurement and project preparation. It does not manufacture equipment, does not provide regulated engineering certification and is not a lender. Every result here is a preliminary planning estimate.
Carry these values into a structured RFQ so suppliers price the same scope. The RFQ builder shows every transferred value for review before anything is sent — nothing is submitted automatically.
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