Prototype for Solar Powered Chip-Ice Production Facility

Fishermen in highly isolated communities like Shallatin and Halayeb (Southern Egypt) suffer from the fouling of their catch before reaching the markets, due to the prevailing high ambient temperatures. Thus, they resort to block or crushed ice to cool their catch. Since fresh water is unavailable naturally, energy is needed to produce the fresh water from sea water, as well as to operate the chiller for ice production. Hence, employing solar energy as the sole source of energy for manufacturing ice, and producing the ice straight from saline water provides independence from both the electric grid and fresh water resources. A prototype solar powered facility for chip ice production from saline water has been designed, manufactured and erected in Shallatin for this purpose. The prototype, basically an ice production machine provides facilities for fish chilling and refrigeration compartments for vaccines, medicines and food products. The produced ice can be easily transported in to fishing boats in 10 kg plastic boxes that are easy to carry and handle. The prototype design employs many standard parts to cut costs and development time. Adequate ventilation with natural heat leakage to the cool surfaces of equipment (e.g. external surfaces of tanks and their piping) produces the desired room temperature without need for a fan coil unit, as discovered in actual implementation. The design should be applicable to all environments similar to Halayeb and Shellatin, which includes many places on the Red sea in the Gulf area and Africa. It is thus expected to be attractive for commercial exploitation in those places, and offers opportunities for local manufacturing and exportation of industrial products.