ARTIFICIAL ICE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4794, 3 August 1876, Page 3

ARTIFICIAL ICE.

(From a Boston paper.) The manufacture of ice is rapidly becoming an important business in New Orleans, where there is more of the article used than in any other city in the world. The largest manufactory for making ice in existence is now nearly completed in that city. It required to build it over 1,400,000 bricks ; the walls are 115 by 150 feet, arid over 50 feet high, and three feet 5 inches thick. The walls are studded with exterior and interior buttresses at every fifteen feet, which project about one brick, both inside and out. The wall is in three parts, connected at regular intervals—the inner being the thickest, with a space of nine inches between that and the next. This space is filled with sawdust as fast as the wall goes up. Between the middle and the outer portion of the wall there is a space of five inches, with air-holes at the bottom and top for ventilation ; this is the air space. Pudlocks of scantling are set through the inner and middle walls, and project fifteen inches into the interior, and stud it thickly. To these are to be fastened a strong board lining, and the space between this and the interior brick wall is also to be filled with sawdust. The roof is closed in in the tightest manner, and then there will be a snug little ice-box 115 x 150 xSO, and one partition, with but one door and no window. The ice-room is 115 x 150, having space for the manufactory of 1200 tons and stowing at one time. The room contains over 5000 3-inch iron tubes, 36 feet high, placed upright in pairs 5 feet apart, and each pair connected at top and bottom, the connecting pipes ranging diagonally across the bight lines of the walls. The room is divided into two Bets of tubes. Only one set of 252 will be put in operation this season*; | these will make 80 tons a day. The ammonia which is so largely used in the manufacture i 3 brought from New York in vessels in the shape of liquid or aqua ammonia, containing over 20 per cent, of ammonia. The ammonia is vaporised by steam and forced into the tubes. At the top of the tubes all over the building are pipes finely perforated, into which water is forced by intermittent strokes of the pump, so as to throw out all over the top of the pipes, on their outside, a fine spray ; this spray .comes in contact with the tube 3 containing the flow of ammoniacal gas at a temperature below zero; the spray, which is the extreme of water agitated, is quickly congealed, and slowly climbs down the tubes in a coating of ico, which gradually thickens until columns of ice-like particles are formed, 36ft. long and 2Jft. thick. These are then sawed up and] down and rived off rapidly from the tubes. It is so arranged that one or more pairs of tubes may be workod at will. When it is desired to tako tho ice off the tubes the gaseous ammonia is drawn off, and either steam or liquid ammonia which vi made by condensation under great

pressure, thuFgerie'rating heat—consequently: thawing the ice around the tube.' Owing to; the nature of water to purify,, itself, while freezing, the ice thus made is perfectly chjar, though made of muddy water.' ;'.'"'.'