The AIS Pre-Cooler is designed to reclaim waste water and lost energy through a passive transfer of
heat from incoming ice making water to pre-chilled blow-down water. By adding our simple but efficient
pre-cooler, ice manufacturing plants using Vogt® P24s and P34s can reuse waste water and reclaim a
large portion of the BTUs normally lost through blow-down water.
AIS Pre-Cooler
These units redirect chilled blow-down waste water to a specially designed
holding tank. Make-up water, on its way to the ice machine, is circulated
through a copper coil where a large number of BTUs are extracted from
the make-up water by the surrounding cold water. After the BTUs have
been extracted, the blow-down water is then transferred out of the holding
tank by a submersible water pump to the evaporative condonsor. The
pre-cooler is then ready to receive the next blow-down cycle from the ice
machine. A significant increase in ice production can be achieved by
reclaiming these previously lost BTUs! For example, a single Vogt P34AL
using 80° make-up water will produce an additional 2 tons of ice per day.
More about ice maker blow-down
Although water supplied by local water suppliers is safe to consume, it
contains many contaminants that interfere with the production of quality
ice. Modern ice machines are designed to control the amount of
contaminants that remain in the ice by flushing the system at the end
of each ice-making cycle. The water that is used for this flushing is
referred to as blow-down water.
The blow-down water is very cold (34°F) and is normally discharged directly into the drain. By
allowing this cold water to go directly down the drain, ice manufacturers are, in a sense, throwing
down the drain the money it took to cool water.
Automatic Ice Systems has solved this wasteful
practice of throwing away energy (BTUs), by developing a pre-cooler that uses the cold blow-down
water to cool the ice maker's incoming water.