More Tips on a Mini Ice Plant Business

By Silvestre Martin Pascual

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When preparing a mini ice plant feasibility study, you should consider the following points:

1. If your water supply is not ideal (hardness, non-pathogen free), it is best to have an elevated water storage/supply system where you can manually or mechanically chlorinate the water on a daily basis. This is still the cheapest and most effective way not only to render the water safe for human consumption but also to flocculate some elements that make the water "hard", particularly calcium carbonates (which end up as gall stones) and iron oxides (which leave brown stains on your toilet bowls and lavatories). In this case you will also need an efficient and cheap filtration system, i.e., with backwash system and easy regeneration of the hardness-eliminating bio-chemical compounds.

2. The best physical layout is a "below ground" brine tank for larger volumes of daily capacity (above 5MT). For smaller volumes, "above ground" will do; it will also facilitate loading onto delivery vehicles and eliminate pumping out the brine tank for periodic maintenance.

3. Ice cans for large-scale operation are standard for about 130kg. But this is too heavy for manual loading/harvesting operations which is the mode in small-scale production systems. The large-scale system will require a crane system which is additional capital and operating expense. The smaller cans of about 15kg eliminates the need for the crane system and also facilitates ice-cube cutting through a simple electrical device similar to soap bar making.

4. The heart of ice-making (and refrigeration in general) is the compressor. In our home refrigerators and freezers the compressor is the close type and can work only with electricity. For your ice-making operation the ideal is the open-type because you do not actually need electricity to produce ice or to refrigerate. Any system that can provide the mechanical drive to run the compressor (diesel or gas engine, wind power, water power) will do. The diesel engine is the most practical because you are independent of the local power system which can suffer outages for one reason or another. For diesel engines you can also shift to crude coconut oil and this will generate new income opportunities to coconut farmers and those others dependent on coconut for their livelihood.