Porthole container

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Empty drying containers (foreground right) and empty 20-foot porthole containers from the Alianca shipping company (center)
Porthole container from Hapag-Lloyd in the port on a clip-on cooling tower
Porthole container from Hamburg-Süd with clip-on and cooling tower
Schematic representation of the refrigeration system, cooling rod and porthole container in the hold of a refrigerated container ship with a CON-Air system

Porthole containers were used on container ships with ship-mounted cooling rods , the so-called CON-AIR ships. Porthole containers have been connected to the cooling of the central refrigeration system of the ships, they had as opposed to integral containers not have its own refrigeration unit . The Conair system was developed by the Hamburg company Grünzweig + Hartmann .

principle

Porthole containers were cooled by on-board refrigeration systems. The cooling took place through two openings on the front side, hence the name port hole container. The cold air flows into the container through the lower opening , the heated air exits from the upper opening . The cooling air supply on board was mainly provided by vertical (Con-Air), initially by horizontal cooling rods (Hall). These cooling rods are insulated and divided into supply and exhaust air ducts. Each cooling rod has an air cooler and a circulating fan, which push the air through the cooling rods and cooling containers connected in parallel and then cool it down again in the air cooler. This means that one temperature can be run per cooling rod. Depending on the ship's height, five to nine containers could be connected to each cooling rod.

CON-AIR ships

In the 1980s and 1990s, around 100 container ships worldwide that were equipped with 100 or more spaces (max. 1273) for porthole containers below deck could be classified into the group of CON-AIR ships. At that time, that was around 5% of the global container ship fleet, mainly liner ships that were employed in north-south container services with a large amount of refrigerated cargo. The Mairangi Bay , a CON-AIR ship built in 1978 near Bremer Vulkan , was for a long time one of the container ships with the largest cooling capacity with 1273 R- TEU slots.

From the year 2000 the porthole containers were replaced by integral containers and the CON-AIR ships were replaced by container ships with sockets for integral containers.

See also

literature

  • H. Linde: Transport of refrigerated cargo in containers on board container ships. In: Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society . Vol. 65, 1971, pp. 197-223.
  • K.-H. Hochhaus, L. Idler, Y. Wild: Refrigerated containers and controlled atmosphere in ship transport. In: Handbook of the shipyards. Volume XXI, Hansa Verlag, Hamburg 1992.
  • K.-H. High-rise: technical developments for reefer container ships. In: Ship & Harbor . Issue 10, 1993.
  • Y. Wild: Comparison between Porthole and Integrated reefer containers. In: Hansa . No. 4, 1994.
  • K.-H. High-rise: Working group for refrigerated container shipping. In: Ship & Harbor. No. 2/1997.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Linde: Sea transport of refrigerated cargo in containers. In: Hansa. Vol. 109, No. 19, October 1974, pp. 1641-1647.