Theoretical and experimental analysis of sea ice centrifugal desalination and supercooled water production for slurry ice

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive investigation of centrifugal desalination of sea ice and the production of slurry ice from supercooled water. A mathematical model for centrifugal desalination was established and validated through experiments. The results displayed a high level of accuracy in both the theoretical and experimental analyses, with an average goodness of fit of approximately 0.94. An experimental platform is established to produce supercooled water, using different types of water as ice-making solutions. The slurry ice is more suitable for centrifugal desalination than solid ice, and it can be obtained by disrupting the supercooled state of supercooled water, with finer ice crystals produced through ultrasonic supercooling release compared to natural methods. Decreasing the refrigerant temperature benefits enhancing the supercooling degree while compromising the stability of supercooled water generation. The stability is investigated with variations in refrigerant temperature to generate a solution temperature 2.0 °C higher than the refrigerant. When the supercooling degree is 1.0 °C, all of these solutions have a high stability of 80 %, however, it becomes worse as the supercooling degree increases. At the supercooling degree of 2.0 °C, saltwater has the highest stability of only 35 %, and seawater has the lowest stability of 15% due to its complicated composition. This phenomenon also reveals that conducting experiments using saline solution instead of seawater can lead to significant misleading effects. Additionally, the impact of flow rate on the supercooling degree is investigated, showing a minor influence.