dry ice

[[3889]]

can you buy it anywhere and is it a viable refrigerant for cool boxes?

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[Merlin3435]

I don`t think it would be a good idea. Use it only in well ventilated spaces - totally defeating the in boat cold box idea. Fine on deck though. But do you really want the beer solid!

Dry ice is frozen CO2, and a boat full of CO2 gas would not be a nice place.

CO2 buildup trigers and controls breathing - so a small increase in ambient CO2 causes breathlessness - lots is totally unbearble. - Ask anyone who has sucked the gas out of a self inflaiting life jacket to flat-pack it again - the reflex to breath goes beserk. DON``T TRY THAT.



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[Trevor_swfyc]

It would be useless as a cool box cooler, on all counts 1. Not cost effective. 2. Would not last very long. 3. Would be far too cold locally. 4. Would possibly damage the cool box plastic. 5. Danger of cold burns to yourself.
Stick to the freezer blocks or you could make your own with antifreeze 30% and water 70% it can be re frozen again and again, but ensure the container is labelled and does not leak into her freezer.
Another trick I use is to freeze half the milk in a container then replace the other half, the frozen milk gradually melts but keeps the whole at zero until all the milk is liquid.

Stay cool /forums/images/icons/cool.gif
Trevor


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[jollyjacktar]

In the days before portable generators and readily available gas refrigerators I once met a party in a bush coastal wilderness area miles from anywhere. To my surprise they offered me an icy beer to drink. They had made their own cool box using plywood with at least treble thickness polystyrene insulation. With very careful planning of their menus they organized their food in daily layers and at the appointed time of heading into the wilderness bought a quantity of dry ice and packed their frozen chickens, meat, peas, and all other freezable items for about a two week expedition. [They had obviously experimented with the method previously and had perfected the technique and practice].

Once each day they would open the coolbox and extract the items they needed [with gloves and tongs] and thaw them out. At the time I met them they had just about emptied their cool box and were being wasteful, they would put into it their surplus fish catches and cool their beer by briefly placing the cans in the dry ice. Prior to that they removed their daily food requirement placed this in a commercial cool box along with their required beer intake that needed cooling for the day. A cunning concept which seemed to work well. The remoteness of their camp site and the cool beer convinced me that this was no hoax and indeed a practical system that worked well. I can only assume that they had set this up two weeks prior, but remotenes of location and other factors would support evidence that it was at least one week old.

I always intended to try this myself, but then I bought a folding caravan/trailer and a gas fridge and kept and kept out of the wilderness. Nowadays I could probably exist on dehydrated food if I was going to such a wilderness, although the food doesnt taste as good.

Suitability on a boat? Probably not so wise due to carbon dioxide and confined spaces.

Good luck if you try this. I would be interested in the findings of your experiments

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[uke73]

CO2 in the right concentrations is an anaesthetic and apparently leads to rather nice halucinations if you're lucky. Having said that it can lead to a ventilation perfusion inequality which will kill you too, so probably not a good idea in a sealed boat. Quite a few cases of people dropping dead while working in big tanks as the CO2 sits and the bottom!

Ice packs probably safer!

neil

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[Guest]

This was explored some weeks ago by myself and others - biggest problem is ventilation and also the extreme cold of the dry-ice making handling dangerous.

<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.qqbaltic.com/index.html>http://www.qqbaltic.com/index.html</A> For all those disbelievers ! /forums/images/icons/cool.gif