Case Study: Sunwell Technologies achieves environmentally friendly transport refrigeration design with COMSOL Multiphysics on HPC clusters

Sunwell Technologies - Customer Case Study

Sunwell Technologies, a leader in variable-state slurry ice (Deepchill™) systems, faced the challenge of developing low-emission, efficient refrigerated units for transporting perishable goods—systems that must perform across wide operating ranges while meeting strict energy and emissions targets. To avoid costly, large-scale experiments and accelerate design, Sunwell worked with researchers at UMass Dartmouth using Comsol’s COMSOL Multiphysics to model heat transfer and fluid dynamics for their Deepchill™ thermo batteries and refrigerated units.

Using Comsol Multiphysics on UMass Dartmouth’s HPC cluster, the team ran 2D and full 3D fine‑mesh simulations (using distributed MUMPS solvers across nodes) to quantify thermal loads, temperature distributions, insulation performance and natural convection; the models even captured Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities in cooling transients. Comsol-enabled simulations completed in roughly half a day to a week depending on complexity, supported optimization of Sunwell’s Deepchill™ batteries (designed to maintain target temperatures for 48 hours), reduced reliance on expensive experiments, and improved design accuracy and development speed.

Sunwell Technologies

Jessica Currie

Sunwell Technologies