DOST develops 'saltwater-powered freezer' for farm products

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has developed an immersion freezer in which the contents are submerged in cold liquid to freeze and preserve them.

 

Specifically designed for small and medium enterprises, the immersion freezer looks like a bigger-than-normal grocery chest freezer. It has a maximum volume capacity of 1,000 liters and a freezing capacity of 60 kilograms per hour for ice-making.

 

It is more efficient than the common home freezer, a regular chest freezer or an air-blast freezer. It uses brine (water saturated with salt) as a coolant pumped into the cold storage to flow through the cooling coils and then to the freezer contents. The food freezes faster, as the heat transfer between liquid and solid is greater than air to solid. The food must be properly sealed so that the brine will not seep into it. 

 

The freezer is also equipped with adjustable coolant temperature settings to meet the specific requirements of different foods, and dividers to cool smaller amounts of product, with separate controls for each division. This makes the freezer more efficient both in cooling and power consumption.

 

The DOST immersion freezer is a competitively priced, cost-effective and efficient collaborative project of the Industrial Technology Development Institute, the Metals Industry Research and Development Center, and the Project Management Engineering and Design Service Office. — TJD, GMA News