It is fascinating when you consider the question of exactly how do ice makers work? Not too long ago ice was a luxury in some parts of the world. It the colder hemisphere, ice maker was not really necessary at certain times of the year, particularly in winter months. However, at other times of the year, the ice maker is absolutely necessary, for a thing like making cold drinks, preserving medicine and food.
Ice used to be made in big factories by industrial ice makers. Most people had to go to the store or to the factory to buy big blocks of ice, transport it home before chipping away at it to get it down to the right size for home use. The excess was wrapped in cloth and buried in sand to preserve the ice as much as possible.
It is good that we are now living in modern times. We have ice makers at home to make as much ice as we desire. The ice makers are simply automatic ice-making machines that make ice on demand. No longer do you have to worry about the amount of ice or ice styles. When it comes to the ice makers you can get ice in different styles from bullet ice to sonic ice, clear ice to cloudy ice.
How do ice makers work? The ice-making process
There are many different types of ice makers: in fridge ice makers, countertop ice makers, built-in ice makers, and even commercial ice makers for bars, clubs, and restaurants. Alternatively, you can make ice the manual way, fill an ice cube tray with water and put it in the freezer or deep freeze and in two to four hours you have ice ready for your drink or food storage. With the automatic ice makers, the process is quite similar but automated. Water is placed it an ice tray, heat is absorbed from the water, which causes it to freeze into the perfect ice cubes.
I wrote a couple of articles for you that detail the process of how portable ice makers and commercial ice makers work. As a matter of fact, there is another article that provides information on how to make ice in a freezer without an ice cube tray. You probably found it quite interesting.
How do Ice makers inside your refrigerator works?
You may sometimes wonder how the ice maker within your refrigerator works. If that is you, let us take a closer look at how the ice machine works to create the ice that you need to keep your summer drinks or winter cocktail cool. This process is normally automatic. Water enters the freezer through a water line connected to the back to the refrigeration unit. Water entering the fridge is normally filtered.
The water filtration process, the first part of the process, removes all of the impurities from the water (chlorine, rust, dust particles) from the water as it enters the ice cube tray. The tray in the automatic ice maker normally have a shape depressed in it, water normally takes the shape of the tray. Water enters this tray through a valve that controls the flow of water. The valve allows just enough water to fill the tray thus filling the ice molds.
Because the tray is inside the freezer it gets really cold. The temperature inside the freezer is normally enough to bring the water inside the tray to about minus 12-degree Celcius or ten-degree Fahrenheit. At this temperature, the water is rock solid and ready to be removed.
Ice that is really cold has a tendency to stick to different surfaces. It the freezer, the phenomenon cause the ice to stick tightly to the ice cube tray. In order to separate the ice from the ice tray the ice maker normally comes with a heating element that flash melts a layer of the ice to cause it to release from the ice tray. The ice is then pushed into the ice holding bucket using a motorized arm. The process continues until the ice bucket is full.
The ice bucket normally has a sensor that detects when the ice cubes reach a certain level in the ice holding bin. AT the level of the sensor the ice maker stop making ice. The ice maker will keep the ice frozen in the ice holding bin. Ice in the ice bucket will clump together if this other process is not done.
Most ice makers will have a stirrer to stir the ice occasionally ensuring that the ice in the bucket does not get a chance to clump together. If you hear a churning sound in your refrigerator, do not worry, it is the ice maker churning preventing the ice in the ice bucket from clumping together.
Conclusion
It is awesome when you think of how far we came from. We progress from buying big blocks of ice to being to make ice on-demand at our home. Simply, no more travel to the shops now to get ice but to get ice from our personal automated ice-making machine.