Argon leak,condensation, energy saving in commercial coolers/freezers glass door: analysis and solution

The problems facing cooler/freezer insulated glass doors are: 

● condensation 

● argon leak 

● dew inside glass door cavity

● More energy saving demand

1. Condensation appears on insulated glass doors, because the outside glass pane/layer temperature is below the dew point temperature. Therefore the way to stop condensation is to increase the outside glass pane temperature.

From the test result from Aucma test lab, our 95% high argon glass door could improve 10℃ of heat insulation performance. 

Under the same test condition(cooler cabinet inside 3℃, ambient 29℃), the normal aluminum spacer glass door outside glass temperature is 15℃, while our 95% high argon glass door outside temperature is 25℃, therefore there’s no condensation on our glass door.

2. Argon leak and dew point inside glass cavity:

From the chart below, we can understand that high argon 95% filling in insulated glass cavity will generate 20% better insulation performance and 20% more energy saving. Argon will increase the insulation temperature, which will stop or avoid the condensation on outside glass pane.

The industry all claim that argon gas is filled inside their insulated glass doors. Yet the sad truth is that the argon will leak and come down to ineffective concentration percentage (lower than 80%) in 1-2 years because of the spacer used, whether it’s aluminium spacer, or so called warm edge spacer, all have corner joints and broken butyl sealing problem during high temperature and low temperature test cycle. 

After the argon leaks, the moisture will come inside glass accordingly, thus forming dew water inside the glass cavity  

To overcome this argon leak problem, we imported flexible spacer insulated glass machine from Europe, and design a new generation of insulation glass and doors for upright beverage display cooler/freezer. 

3. Our solution:

Our 95% high argon insulated glass for commercial display cooler/freezer consist of 3 elements:

1. Two or three layer of soft low E: 

to reduce heat radiation through glass door while maintaining high transmittance and clear view into cooler cabinet 

2. Flexible ESG spacer: 

to keep super low moisture and argon gas penetration rate, and 

to reduce the heat conduction at the spacer edge area, and avoid the condensation at the glass door bottom edge area 

3. 95%~99% high argon filling and keeping inside glass cavity: 

to reduce the heat convection inside the glass cavity

Our insulated glass door will have initial argon filling percentage test, with handheld Sparklike argon test device, testing result between 95%-99%. Our glass is the only kind of glass door that passes EN-1279-2 Long term Moisture penetration test and EN-1279-3 Argon Gas rate and argon leak test.