Experimental study on temperature distribution in an ice-making machine multichannel evaporator

With great requirements of ice in handling, storage, and supply of food products, it is significant to investigate the operation performance of ice making machine and improve the efficiency of refrigeration system. This paper presents an experimental investigation on a vapor compression refrigeration cycle with a subcooler applied in an ice-making machine. A multichannel evaporator is selected to generate ice cubes. To investigate the basic operation performance of refrigeration system in an ice-making machine, the fluid temperature distribution in multichannel evaporating coils and the dynamic variation in each cooling loop are measured in detail with a multichannel data acquisition instrument. Moreover, the ice generating and thawing phases are investigated. Parts of main conclusions are arrived at based on the analysis of the collection data. Meanwhile, some potential operational issues are also detected. To improve the operation performance of the ice machine, some suggestions and improvements are proposed.