Student help - creating frost?

[Matt_barnett]

HI there

I'm a final year Industrial Design student studying at Brunel University London. Part of my course involves carrying out a major design project, researching, designing and creating prototypes of a product of our choice.

I'm looking into creating large amounts of 'frost' to be used in conjunction with my project.

My initial plan, is to spray a fine mist of water onto a large plate attached to a cooling unit (at around -10³C), so that this mist is converted into ice, and can then be removed as a fine 'ice dust' or frost.

I want this to be quite a compact unit, with a plate (and therefore cooling unit) no larger than 0.4m³.

If this makes sense, I need to convert roughly 0.06kg's of water to ice per cycle, which should take around 18Kj of energy (and I want to do this quickly, at least once every 10seconds, hence I'm using a very fine mist of water).

Can you suggest any of your equipment I could use in order to do this (in an insulated chamber obviously), or what type of equipment I need to be looking at?

Thanks for any help you can impart.

Yours sincerely Matthew Barnett

[Dan]

I'm looking into creating large amounts of 'frost' to be used in conjunction with my project.


I have heard it said that Eskimos (whatever the fashionable term for natives in Northwest America is) have more than one hundred words for "snow." Or "ice." Or "frost." Or "sleet." Heck, I just used 4 possibilities by way of example.

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/varia/snow.html

What is the end product you are seeking? Frozen water changes its personality as soon as it meets new frozen water. Your idea seems ambitious, and I expect you to hold your cards close to your chest if this is something you hope to patent. But right now, I do not see anything you couldn't do with a a flaker style ice machine, adapted or tweaked.

But if you want frost, this has to be formed during the spray, not at the collection point. (I think you want "hiryla".) :)