Got the icemaker (1400#)

Ok guys, I picked up the icemaker today. I rode to New Orleans and found this beauty. It's 220v water cooled and 1400# per day. I'm bringing it to the local ice machine place tomorrow for service and start welding the chute to the ice box, I am going to install a diverter so I can fill up a separate under counter ice bin in the galley. Next task is to run the thing and see how much water I will need to circulate to keep the heat down. I was thinking of using 55 gallon drums and keep adding them until the heat dissipation is met. When I install in the boat I will buy a poly tank or several.

Holy Sh#t! How big is that boat?

65', she will be used as a mother ship for fishing the barrier islands. I did some calculations and figured I would need about 400 gallons and the change in temp would be about 20 degrees for a run time of three hours. I need to incorporate a heat exchanger in the system. Does anyone know off hand how much heat a small heat exchanger would get rid of? The thing makes about 19000btu's per hour. I am installing a live well for shrimp and bait fish which will have a full time raw water pump. I could install the heat xchanger in that system.

So the condenser on the icemaker is water cooled? If so depending on design and materials it might do ok with seawater. If you must run freshwater, a water to water hx with two pumps would do it. Size of the HX depends on what kind of temperature approach and flow rates you need. Go big is best.

I think the only way I'll be able to get it figured out is experiment. Sure need a heatxchanger.

1400 pounds of ice a day!!!

Wow!!

And I was thinking my little under the counter ice maker was pretty cool.

I have icemaker envy

ksanders said:

1400 pounds of ice a day!!! Wow!! And I was thinking my little under the counter ice maker was pretty cool. I have icemaker envy

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144 BTU per pound of ice x 1400= 201600 BTUs . Divide by 24 hours = 8400 btu/hour That is close 2400 watts is about 4hp. Find a radiator from an old gold wing or an old v8 engine marine oil cooler heat exchanger. Not too big. Should be cheap. Yay Sent from my iPhone using Trawler

Got the machine back today, cost $900 for the parts and labor to fix it, $200 for the purchase. Guy that fixed it said he would buy it $1500.00. I even got a free ice bin for the galley. Tomorrow I am going to the boat show but I will hook it up and make ice. My neighbor gave me a heat xchanger from a 3 cylinder kabota genset that should do the trick on the cooling. I'll update when the sheetmetal man is done with the chute. It's coming together.

swampu said:

Got the machine back today, cost $900 for the parts and labor to fix it, $200 for the purchase. Guy that fixed it said he would buy it $1500.00. I even got a free ice bin for the galley. Tomorrow I am going to the boat show but I will hook it up and make ice. My neighbor gave me a heat xchanger from a 3 cylinder kabota genset that should do the trick on the cooling. I'll update when the sheetmetal man is done with the chute. It's coming together.

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Don't you love it when a plan comes together? Especially on a boat none the less.

Crazy Cajuns.

Swamp. You are looking for a way to get rid of the heat from a water-cooled ice-maker mounted on the coach roof of your boat. One option you might consider is to pump the cooling water through an automobile radiator fitted with electric fans. The whole assemble could be housed in a box with louvers front and back mounted next to the ice maker. I'm guessing this would work as smaller ice-makers use the same principle to get rid of their heat.

Mike, Thats a great idea. I was going to either try your way or try a heat exchanger my neighbor has for kabota genset that stopped. I ran the unit tonight with a 55 gallon drum and a 12v pump for circulation. I recorded the following:
Start time: 5:41 Water temp: 65
First cycle time: 6:02 Water temp: 87.4
Second cycle time: 6:35 Water temp: 104.2
System shut down at 6:53 Water temp: 112

I found out two things, the shurflow 3 gallon/minute pump worked great and I can heat a lot of 105 degree water for bathing.
I am going to put about 80 gallon tank with a thermostat at 105 that will heat up the tank and then use the heat exchanger for the rest. This will be a closed loop system so I am going to have to do some experimenting...

Ok. I've got the system running for 3 hours on two 55 gallon drums of fresh water with the heat exchanger. It's still running too hot but it did make 134.4# of ice in 3 hours. I am going to the junk yard tomorrow to pick up a radiator to try Mike's idea. I don't think a redundant cooling system would be a bad thing. The system when from 75 and shot up to 99 in one hour. It leveled off to about 108 for the rest of the two hours. Here is a picture.
Side Note: I went fishing on a charter boat this weekend. The captain said they have to install a heat exchanger in the coolant system because in the summer the air cooled units shut down because of the heat. So I think I am going the right direction with this water cooled unit.

Paul
134.4# of ice in 3 hours seems to certainly be moving in the right direction !


Lehman 135 Twins

PVC pipe, blue barrels, random pumps!!! Cajun engineering gets the job done!!

On a serious note, running a radiator will probably have your cooling water temp higher than if you do something water cooled, using sea water as the final stage. That would take a pretty big HX, but maybe that unit in the photo (looks like a Crusader gas engine HX) might be big enough. In steady state ops, you really don't need the volume in the blue barrels. But it might help if HX is undersized, gives you some thermal inertia.

Kudos to someone that will NOT run out of ice. Unlike my boat...

My goal is to keep the temp around 15 degrees above the ambient air temp. That would give me ice on a 90 degree day. I wish I kept all my thermo books from school it sure would make this a lot easier.

I've taken the heat exchanger and the barrels out of the equation. I am running the radiator set up with 12v fan and it is running great. The outside temp is about 58 degrees and the unit running at 88 degrees. I am going to add another fan tomorrow. Here are some pictures.