To provide a freezing and thawing chamber capable of enabling the thawing to be finished at a specified time at which the thawed food is required, and capable of minimizing the deterioration of the quality of the food by preserving the food by freezing as long as possible to the time just before the time calculated from the specified time.
The thawing is controlled by a cooling means 3 for cooling the food, a heating means 4 for heating the food, goods-temperature sensors 13a and 13b for detecting surrounding temperatures of the food, a means 14 for calculating the temperature of the goods capable of calculating the inner temperature of the food from the surrounding temperatures of the food and the heat transfer characteristics memorized by a memory 14, a means 18 for calculating the time required for the thawing, capable of calculating the time required for thawing the food when thawing the food under freezing preservation by changing surrounding temperature for the thawing stepwise, from the heat transfer characteristics of the food, and a surrounding temperature controller 19 capable of automatically changing the surrounding temperature from the freezing temperature to the surrounding temperature for the thawing so that the thawing may be finished at the time calculated by decreasing the time required for the thawing from the specified time for finishing the thawing.
MARUMOTO KAZUHIKO
KURAMOTO TETSUEI
