Ice-Making | Shape is essential in cooling
Nissin Refrigeration & Engineering Ltd. Product information
- Refrigeration
- Cascade refrigeration system
- Ammonia-alcohol refrigeration system
- Marine Refrigeration
- Marine Cold Storage
- Land-Based Refrigeration
- Land-Based Cold Storage
- Ice-Making
- Cooling slurry ice
- Freezing slurry ice
- Block-ice facilities
- Automatic plate-ice facilities
- Air-Conditioning
- Marine air-conditioner
- Land-Based air-conditioner
- Special Equipment
- Environmental testing constant temperature units
- Rocket air-conditioner
- Carbon dioxide fire extinguishing system
- LPG reliquefaction unit
- Vacuum drying system
- Heat exchanger/pressure system
- Cold trap
- Cargo heater
- LNG vaporizers
- Titanium heat exchanger for nuclear power plant
- Electronic NC system
- Contact
1. What is slurry ice?
It is a fluid type of ice that consists of fine ice like snow (sphere-shaped ice with a 0.1-mm diameter) and liquid.
2. What is slurry ice freezing?
- It is a method for rapidly freezing food in which the food is wrapped with liquid fine ice to avoid damaging it.
- Ice has 60 times or more cold energy of liquid.
Slurry ice is a mixture of liquid and ice that has this high cold energy; thus, it has a more significant cooling capacity than normal liquid.
Reasons for using alcohol
Manufacturing method of slurry ice
Slurry ice is manufactured with a device called ice generator.
The ice generator has a low-temperature refrigerant sent from the freezing equipment. By cooling the internally running alcohol solution from the surroundings, it generates fine ice.
3. Characteristics of alcohol slurry ice
Rapid freezing
[Comparison with the air-cooling method]
It takes away heat more efficiently than the air. Hence, even if it freezes at a higher temperature than the air-cooling type...
- The passing speed of the maximum ice crystallization range (temperature range where quality tends to deteriorate) becomes faster.
- The time until the center of a tuna to reach -25°C is nearly the same.
[Comparison with the brine immersion method]
Since the ice having approximately 66 times the cold energy of liquid is mixed, the rise of brine temperature that occurs in the initial phase of freezing can be prevented.
When freezing products, they sink.
Ice and liquid are hard to separate.
With salt brine and calcium chloride brine, ice separate to the top quickly, while alcohol slurry ice has a significantly slow separation rate.
4. Quality of products frozen with alcohol slurry ice (in the case of tuna)
Mitigation of the meat quality damage by freezing
Red color retention effect after defrosting
The condition of the color after 24-hour storage at 5°C in a cut condition was as shown in the following photos, confirming the red color retention effect.
Reduction in dripping amount
Alcohol infiltration volume
(1) Examination by sensory inspection
After defrosting, the tuna was cut and inspected by 25 inspectors (our employees: male 21 and female 4) without letting them know the processing method. As a result, there were zero persons who sensed alcohol odor.
(2) Confirmation by measurement of infiltration volume
Miso and Udon are added with approximately 10,000-ppm alcohol; however, it can rarely be sensed with taste. The infiltration volume in alcohol freezing was 2000 ppm or lower at every section; hence, there were no issues.
