Refrigerators are electrical appliances capable of maintaining a storage chamber below the room temperature. Food can be stored in a refrigerator in a cold or frozen state. A refrigerator may include a refrigerating compartment maintained at a temperature above zero degrees celsius and a freezing compartment (or a freezer) maintained below zero degrees.
The space inside the refrigerator is maintained at a low temperature by cool air circulation. cool air is continuously generated through a refrigeration cycle including compression, condensation, expansion and evaporation. Cool air is distributed to the inner space of the refrigerator by convection.
Typically, the main body of a refrigerator has a rectangular parallel-piped shape, with a refrigerating chamber and a freezer. A plurality of storage drawers, shelves and boxes may be provided within a storage space in the refrigerator for containing food or other items.
Generally, a top-mount style refrigerator has a freezer located at the upper portion and a refrigerating chamber located at the lower portion; while a bottom-freezer style refrigerator has a freezer located at the lower portion.
Conventionally, a partition used to separate the refrigerating chamber and the freezer from each other is formed integrally with the main body of the refrigerator. Thus, the respective volumes of the refrigerating chamber and the freezer are fixed by manufacturing and thus not adjustable regardless of the amount of food stored therein.
Korean Patent Registration No. 10-0129496 discloses a refrigerator with a freezing chamber or a refrigerating chamber of a variable volume. A diaphragm is used to as a partition to separate the freezing chamber and a refrigerating chamber from each other. The partition is movable along a separation wall. The technical disadvantages of this approach are as follows.
First, the above technique is only applicable to refrigerator products that have a freezer located at the upper portion and a refrigerating chamber located at the lower portion of the refrigerator.
Second, this technique requires additional components, such as a diaphragm, a partition and the like, to be added to the freezer. It also requires fixing grooves, fixing protrusions and the like to be built in the refrigerator main body. This introduces complex modifications of a refrigerator from the conventional design. Also in this configuration, it is difficult to maintain airtight nature.
Third, a user may not easily change the inner volumes of the refrigerating chamber and the freezing chamber.