Having worked in the food industry, I had become accustomed to the chilly (but on hot days refreshing) experience of retrieving food from a walk-in cooler. Considering how often the doors of these types of coolers were and are opened and closed throughout the day, it is no wonder that the temperature is controlled by heat exchangers, which are incredibly hard working and efficient heating and cooling elements. In the case of walk-in coolers and freezers, plate heat exchangers within the cooling system would cycle air through the flat plate system and cool it down to the precise degree dictated by the thermostat on the cooler. A plate heat exchanger is a very popular heat exchanger model because of the simplicity of its design, which involves a series of plates arranged vertically with enough space for the liquid or air being processed through them to flow along each plate. The end result is that the warm air or water passing through a cooling plate heat exchanger will be cool by the time it comes out the other end, which is a process that takes moments rather than minutes. These plates are made from sturdy materials that are able to absorb temperatures quickly, making them excellent transference items. Such materials are also able to withstand extreme temperatures without their surface cracking or becoming brittle, which means they will last for a long time within a system like a heat exchanger. Stainless steel and aluminum are two examples of these conductive materials used to produce plate heat exchangers. Another benefit of employing these machines to produce the chilled air for walk-in coolers is the fact that they can be designed in small proportions while still being able to process massive amounts of air. Hence why so many restaurants and cafeterias utilize plate heat exchangers for their refrigerators and freezers.
Source:
http://www.heatexchangers.org/2012/04/02/plate-heat-exchanger-2/