The term «ice water» is meant a water cooled in heat exchanger or evaporator temperature to about 0°C. The use of such coolant is an integral part of any business relating to the segments of the food industry.
As you know, there are different classification of heat exchangers, including shell and tube isolated, plate, immersion, film types. And if the first of them can be damaged when working with ice water, the latter two types of successfully coping with the assigned functions of cooling the liquid to 0,5 ° C, thus preventing its complete freezing. The most widely used heat exchanger coil type, as a subspecies of immersion.
Equipment, accumulating ice water, has a fairly simple principle of work. In times of low heat load ice accumulates, when increasing – melts, providing a reduction in heat leakage, abnormal installed equipment. The ice accumulator easily compensates heavy loadings, allows to reduce capital expenses for service of refrigerating appliances and their installation. It is quite unprofitable to choose systems focused on peak heat loads, as their duration often does not exceed an hour period per day.
Ice used as a cold accumulator, is an ideal water refrigerant, which has a number of indisputable advantages:
- Refrigeration equipment can be used at 50% of maximum capacity, which increases its service life by preventing unnecessary loads;
- Water causes corrosion of metal, and, as a consequence, the heat exchanger tubes and other elements of the system is less prone to wear;
- This refrigerant biologically harmless, it is not dangerous leakage of toxic waste;
And most importantly: water – accessible and cheap way to cold accumulation.