Ice slurry production using supercooling phenomenon

The studied ice slurry production consists in generating ice from a flow of supercooled water or aqueous solution. After leaving the evaporator of the refrigerating plant, the supercooled flow is physically disturbed in order to generate ice crystals. The influence of different parameters on the crystallization have been studied: the level of supercooling, the flow rate and the refrigerant temperature. The results have shown the difficulty to control a plant where the supercooling phenomenon is undergoing. The stochastic character of the crystallization interferes with the reproducibility of the results. However, the experiments showed that it is possible to find operating parameters with enough safety margin to avoid the crystallization inside the tube of the exchanger. A modelling of the evaporator was carried out in order to apprehend the physical phenomena and the risks of crystallization within the evaporator.