Study on ice slurry formation using ethanol solution with vacuum evaporation.

In this study, the authors propose an original method producing ice slurry from ethanol solution without using any refrigerator. In this method, ethanol solution, as thermal storage material, is evaporated under low-pressure condition, and the remaining solution is cooled and partially frozen as a consequence of the latent heat of evaporation. Since ethanol solution is used, this system has some advantages compared to the existent systems using other materials. Especially, COP of this system is expected to be high in low temperature region, because the saturated pressure of ethanol solution is relatively high. In the experiment, the relationship between concentration of the solution and of the vapour, which was evaporated from ice-solution mixture, was measured during the ice producing process. Using the result, the COP of this system was estimated and evaluated.