THE MATAURA’S REFRIGERATING APPARATUS.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2482, 21 March 1882, Page 3

THE MATAURA’S REFRIGERATING APPARATUS.

As stated in the shipping news to-day, the New Zealand Shipping Company’s barque Mataura arrived at Lyttelton yesterday from London, after having been fitted with a refrigerator to enable her to be placed in the fresh meat trade between this country and the United Kingdom. As will bo remembered, the Bell-Ooleman refrigerator was the first tried by ocean-going vessels in the meatcarrying trade, but it would seem that the patent to be seen on board the Mataura, and palled Haflnm’s Pry Air Befrigerator, is

superior in many respects to the Bsli-Oole-man freezing process. The Orient Steam Navigation Company, the Ounurd Shipping Company, the Brisbane'Meat Pieserving Company, tiio Dunedin Meat Company, and several other companies have adopted their patent in preference. The following comments are from Homo papers, and may at this tinm bo of interest in connection with the practical tests of the Haslam method of freezing. The London “Times," Oct. sth, of last year, says—- “ Three vessels of the Orient Line are fitted with refrigerators—the Cozoo with the BellOoleman machine, and the Garonne and the Orient with the Haslam machine. The difference in the machines is that in the former the process of freezing is by means of wet air, and in the latter by dry air only. Mr Alfred 8. Haslam, of the Haslam Foundry and Engineering Company, Derby, the patentee, placed the machine in the Orient previous to her outward passage. Mr Haslam came to Plymouth for the express purpose of ascertaining the result of the experiment. In company with Mr Scott, the chief engineer of the Orient, Mr Haslam inspected the refrigerating machinery and the chambers in which the meat was located. The machine, which had been kept going twenty out of the twenty-four hours during the whole passage, excepting in passing the Suez Canal, when it was continually run, adjoins the engines of the vessel. It takes up very little apace. The atmosphere with the engine at work was decidedly close. Into the machine and refrigerator water and air may eater at 90 degrees. Further, the air, being compressed to about 401 b per square inch and heated to about 280 degrees, is then passed through the refrigerator and expanded, leaving the machine at a temperature ranging from 40 to 60 degrees below zero. Regularly the machine discharges a volume of air at the rata of 40,000 cubic feet per hour at an average temperature of 40 degrees below zero. When refrigerating with water at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, pure dry air is delivered into the chambers 40 to 60 degrees below zero. A similar degree of cold is to be obtained with water at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It is a most important point to know that the extreme heat of the tropics does not interfere with the freezing process.” The “ Daily News," of the same date, says ; —“The principle on which the Haslam Refrigerators manufactures cold air will be understood by practical engineers when we say that it is that of surface cooling in lieu of the older system of jet cooling. Water and air haying entered the machine, the air is compressed at about 451 b to the square inch, heated to about 280 degrees, then passed through the refrigerator and expanded, upon which the volume of cold air, which may even be produced at eo low a range as from 40 degrees to 60 degrees below zero, discharges itself continuously into the closed chambers in which the meat or other perishable articles are stored. Its chief featnre is the production of a preservative dry air. Another point is that the same degree of cold, we are assured, can be obtained with water taken in at 90 degrees as with water taken in at 50 degrees, a matter of obvious importance in ships which have to pass through the tropics. . . . A very little examination of the practical working of the refrigerator, and of its results, soon convinces the visitor that the temperature of the external air is really a matter of complete indifference. The hottest sun that ever shone down from a tropical sky would still leave the meat rooms cold as the air of a bright, hard, frosty night in the coldest winter of these latitudes."

Speaking of the Garonne’s arrival, the London “ Standard,” October 25th, says:— “ The Garonne is fitted with the refrigerating machine patented by the Haslam Foundry and Engineering Company, of Derby, and the ohiaf engineer of the vessel reports that the apparatus has worked satisfactorily, and is capable of reducing the temperature to several degrees below the requisite cold, so that in the tropics not the slightest difficulty was experienced in keeping the temperature down to the point requisite for the preservation of the meat.”

The refrigerator on board the Matanra was worked a sufficient part (sometimes ene hour, at others two hours) of each day on the voyage, and the report of the chief engineer, Mr Scott, fully corroborates these eminently satisfactory reports.