Thirteen configurations across two thermal architectures. The model number is where most vendors start the conversation; here it is where the conversation ends — after your product, your moisture and your removal rate have decided it.
Heat has to reach the ice for sublimation to happen. How it gets there is the single biggest architectural decision in a freeze dryer, and it is decided by your product, not by a price tier.
Conductive — shelf contact. Heat moves from a temperature-controlled shelf into the product through physical contact. Efficient, precise, and the right answer whenever the product sits flat and touches the tray: sliced fruit, purees, most food and nutraceutical work. The workhorse architecture across pilot and production scale.
Radiant HVT — high volume throughput. When the product cannot present a flat face to the shelf — irregular pieces, deep loads, whole items, high-fat raw formats — contact heating serves only the bottom layer and the rest waits. Radiant energy reaches the whole load instead. It is not a premium tier; it is a different physics answer to a different product.
Choosing wrong is expensive in a way that does not show up until production: the machine holds the batch, and the cycle takes half again as long as the plan assumed.
The designations below are model names. They are not capacities, and we do not publish capacity, throughput or cycle-time figures anywhere on this site.
| Architecture | Heat transfer | Systems | Suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conductive | Shelf contact | SUBLON 30 · 50 · 100 · 200 · 300 · 350 · 500 · 1000 | Flat-loading product across pilot and production scale |
| Radiant HVT | Radiant, high volume throughput | SUBLON 200 HVT · 300 HVT · 500 HVT · 1000 HVT · 2000 HVT | Products the shelf cannot serve efficiently |
Per-model configuration detail — shelf area, condenser capacity, shelf spacing, utility requirements — is published per configuration as each is released. [SPEC — Nick to confirm]
Why no pounds-per-batch column: the same system running sliced strawberries and running a high-fat raw treat is two different throughputs. A number in that column would be true for one product and misleading for the rest, and you would only find out after the purchase order.
Shelf area is the number on every brochure in this industry, which is why it is the number buyers compare. It decides how much product fits. It does not decide how fast the water leaves.
Sublimated vapour has to be captured, or chamber pressure rises and drying stalls. That is the condenser’s job, and its ice capacity is the real ceiling on a cycle. Behind it, refrigeration has to hold the condenser cold enough to keep trapping under load — not at start-up, but in hour fourteen. Vacuum has to hold pressure in the window where sublimation actually happens, with the pump sized for the vapour load rather than for the empty chamber.
Size those three against your removal rate and shelf area falls out as a result. Start from shelf area and the other three are a guess wearing a spec sheet. This is the whole reason our sizing sequence runs product → machine and never the other way.
A freeze dryer that cannot tell you what it did is a freeze dryer you cannot improve, and cannot defend to a customer asking about a batch.
Every system runs on industry-leading Siemens control architecture, with Sublon technology tracking the freeze-drying process end to end. Every cycle is logged, every parameter is visible to your operators while it runs, and the record is there afterwards when a customer, an auditor or your own process engineer asks what a batch actually did.
Practically, that means shelf temperature staging, chamber pressure, condenser temperature and cycle timing are recorded rather than remembered — so cycle development is a data exercise instead of an argument about what happened overnight.
Run the water load first. Batch weight, starting moisture and target finished moisture give the pounds of water that must leave; dividing by your target cycle hours gives the removal rate the machine has to sustain. That rate selects the configuration. The sizing calculator does the arithmetic in about a minute.
Because a capacity figure is only true for the product it was measured on. Loading depth, piece size, fat content and starting moisture all move it. We publish model designations and the physics that decides them, then size your specific product in writing.
Conductive moves heat into the product through contact with a temperature-controlled shelf. Radiant reaches the load without needing that contact. Flat-loading products favour conductive; irregular, deep or high-fat loads that the shelf cannot serve favour radiant HVT.
Yes, and contract or multi-product operations should be. The specification starts from the widest water load and the shortest cycle window in the range you intend to run, so condenser, refrigeration and vacuum hold the whole range rather than one comfortable case.