Tuesday, August 4, 2020

New commercial fridge is too loud for home commercial kitchen

So yes, it's expected that a commercial fridge is going to be noisier than a unit designed for domestic use... unfortunately this one comes in at 51dB. With two doors closed and it at the other end of the house, it's still loud enough to hear in the bedroom :(

So I'm looking for some options. Firstly, because I paid under $1k for this unit, it's not like modifying it is the costliest exercise, particularly when it comes to the very limited warranty manufacturers will offer on commercial units. It's an under-counter unit with a stone top, so from a value point of view it doubling as a stone workbench made it worthwhile.

From the investigation I've done I've been able to determine the following:

  • Internally it's actually quite simple. It uses a single Seada SA1238A2 230V fan to exhaust air out to the front of the unit. This is probably louder than the impellor motor.
  • It uses a second Seada SA1238A2 230V fan internally to take chilled air up the middle of the unit internally.
  • It uses an Ebmpapst M4Q-045-EA01-75 impeller motor blowing across the radiator, which Ebmpapst have suggest might be able to be replaced with an EA01-38 which they tell me is quieter and more efficient - however I would be surprised if the noise is from the motor and not airflow against the fan. The radiator then sits in its own chamber on the right side of the unit, with no powered exhaust.

Unfortunately I can't find any specifications on these Seada fans, but the first thing I'd like to look at doing is replacing them with some 12V units that run at between 20 and 30dB. I'm looking in to small AC->DC supplies that I could use for this. This might also then mean drawing air in through the front, and having two units take air out the back.
The second problem is that impeller, where I'm looking for suggestions as to how to quieten it. The simplest solution would be a quieter fan, but one though was to replace the single impeller with an array of quieter fans; another would be to rotate the radiator 90 degrees and run air across the face of both sides of it, then draw air in through the front, and out through the back. I'd be keen to know what (if anything) might be wrong with this option.

The inability to find airflow characteristic specifications of the Seada fan is probably the main thing limiting my ability to make an informed design choice here - but if anyone has alternative suggestions, I'd be keen to hear them.

I'd like to be able to put this unit to use, but for now it remains switched off because it's too loud.

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