About Air Doors
The Advantages of HCR Air Doors
Since 1974, the founders of HCR set out to find a better solution for moving traffic through cooler and freezer doors. The world leader in re-circulatory air door technology
Using a completely fresh engineering approach and the principles of psychrometrics, the refrigeration engineers at HCR developed new technologies that pioneered the re-circulatory air door industry. Today, with more than 40 years of field experience, HCR has gone from the drawing board to application, from a basic idea to reality and has proven itself with thousands of successful installations worldwide inside the facilities of the largest, most demanding and cost conscious grocery and food distribution centers, food processing plants, refrigerated warehouses, and retail grocery stores.
HCR technology makes the appeal of an unencumbered, wide open doorway for your workers to move about freely, safely, and efficiently a reality.
HCR technology reduces or eliminates the problems associated with traditional doors
The benefits of HCR in your facility are visibly dramatic through the elimination of frost and ice and additionally remarkable in safely increasing productivity. When applied to large freezers with high-traffic or problematic doors, fully operational HCR units are essentially the same as adding refrigeration capacity.
Merchandise movement is significantly increased allowing you to maximize facility output. Safety concerns are reduced due to the clear visibility of the open doorway, the removal of frost and ice on the floor, and the elimination of moving door parts. HCR makes the appeal of an unencumbered, wide-open doorway for your workers to move about freely and efficiently a reality.
Look Alike Doors Don’t Perform Alike
HCR simply outperforms competitors
HCR has proven itself in side by side engineered studies against competitors. In cooler applications, HCR’s superior technology typically achieves much greater efficiency in reducing 2 way air exchange. When freezer solutions are compared, HCR is typically found to use at least half the energy of their competitors as well as achieving much greater reduction in 2 way air exchange. HCR employs a unique combination of different engineering disciplines to achieve their results that competitors simply do not possess.
In 2010, HCR further proved out the efficiency of their recirculatory air door technology at Creative Thermal Solutions (CTS) test labs in Urbana Illinois. The results verified that the HCR Model AC (single Air Door) is 80% energy efficient when stopping air infiltration and energy transfer between rooms with different temperatures.
CTS Labs is an independent third-party laboratory that concentrates its performance testing in industries that require specialized heating and cooling needs. The lab focuses on products offering environmental sustainability, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing energy consumption. CTS Labs is one of the few test facilities in North America that can provide credible confirmation of advertised performance specifications.
The performance analysis completed on the HCR Air Door included:
- Quantify the performance of an HCR horizontal stream re-circulatory air door.
- Compare the performance of the air door to an opening with no air door.
- Document the door’s performance by independently measuring total energy input on the hot and cold sides of a calorimeteric environmental chamber when steady state conditions are reached.
No other recirculatory air door manufacturer has ever done anything similar. As a result, HCR then wrote and presented a white paper of its findings at the national conferences for both RETA and IIAR. By doing this, HCR became a main stream solution embraced by refrigeration engineers throughout North America.
Solutions for Walk-In Freezers to Conveyors to the largest ASRS Distribution Facilities
HCR technology is now everywhere within the temperature controlled world. Although HCR is most famous for maximizing energy efficiency and eliminating moisture related problems in the largest ASRS grocery distribution centers, they also are providing remarkable solutions for Grocery Retail/Food Service walk-in freezers. All types of conveyors have also benefitted by HCR technology. Anywhere the refrigeration system is being overwhelmed by moisture infiltration is a potential application for HCR technology.
HCR Quality Manufacturing & Engineering
Quality is guaranteed
From HCR’s metal cutting laser machine to their powder coating system, HCR ensures quality to all aspects of their manufacturing. HCR is also an approved UL control panel manufacturer. Customers count on HCR to do the correct application engineering then create the appropriate air door unit for their needs. HCR engineering uses CFD modeling to essentially crawl inside a unit they are designing to make sure it can accomplish the intended results. This combination of engineering, manufacturing, and in the field ‘school of hard knocks’ experience is what HCR customers have come to expect.
