Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1879 — Manufactured Ice In Augusta. [ARTICLE]

Manufactured Ice In Augusta.

The Arctic Ice Company arc now turning out between ten and twelve thousand pounds of ice per day, which they are under contract to deliver at half a cent a pound. The process employed by the company is said to be the cheapest known to science at the present day. The cost of manufacturing ice here is only eighty-live cents a ton, or about four cent's and a quarter a hundred pounds. As it is sold in bulk at ten dollars a ton the margin of profit is nine dollars and fifteen cents on each two thousand pounds. This is ahead of California gold mining. The ice comes out in huge oblong blocks, thirty-two inches in length and twelve inches square. There is space in the freezing chest (so to speak) for fohr hundred and eighty of these blocks, amounting in weight to thirty thousand pounds. As it requires sev-enty-two hours, however, from the time the water is poured into the cans until it is /turned out again in solid form, of the quantity is produced daily. It is the intention of the company to double the capacity of the works in a very short time. The blocks in the new chest will be only six inches thick, and as they will freeze much more rapidly than those of double the, thickness the daily production will be correspondingly great. The process by which the freezing is accomplished requires about fifty pounds of liquid ammopia to be stored in a very strong iron cylinder, and this is connected with a coil of pipes immersed in a tank of strong brine; into this brine galvanized iron cans holding pure water are placed, and these cans are of the size of the blocks of ice which are formed. The liquid ammonia is allowed to flow through these coils, and iV gradually becomes gaseous, and in becoming sd abstracts from the water so much heat that it speedily freezes. A powerful steam pump forces the gaseous ammonia back into the iron cylinder again, thus liberating great heat, which is disposed of by cold water dropping uptfn the 1 coils of pipes through which the on its way to the condenser. Tne process is a continuous "one, andif thopumps and-eoilsdo uot, leak there is no loss, and the operations may go on so long aS the machinery lasts. ((?«.)' Chronicle. x • ■■■ ♦-