Information on Steam Engine Ice Machine

[Andrew Pullin]

Hi All,

I am looking for information about a Steam Engine Ice Machine. My research has pointed to one of the earliest of these types of machines
being designed and built in Tasmania, a state of Australia, around the late 1800s. I am very keen to model one of these machines or at
least draw a set of plans for one up. I found it VERY difficult to locate a single old photo as punching Steam Engine into any search engine
on the internet gives hundreds of links to steam engines, but NOT ice machines. Since I am also Australian this particular engine has
peaked my interest.

I believe the way the machine basically operated was the steam engine drove a piston on one side in the normal way, and another piston
on the other side connected to it created vacuum pressure on a gas on the other side. This chilled the gas that was then piped through
salt water, chilling the water a few degrees below zero. This sub-zero water was then piped into a jacket around a fresh water source that
froze the fresh water into blocks of ice. A fairly convoluted method but it worked. I want to learn exactly HOW it worked. The only photo
I have shows a flywheel and some kind of push rod connected to a wooden Pipe with a jacket. It does not show any detail. I believe that
some of the first refrigerated ships used a similar method connected to their steam engine plant but the engine I want was a stand alone
unit.

Happy to share anything anyone comes up with. Would also be interested in similar Ice Machines from other countries. They were around
but not common as many European and North American (yes that includes Canada) countries simply harvested huge amounts of ice from
lakes and rivers in the winter time and stored it. It was the Industrial Revolution that invented this type of system that really made the
meat trade from Australia and Argentina and other places explode as for the first time meat could be stored long enough to transport
it over such long distances.

TIA

Cheers

Andrew

 

[GreenTwin]

I have seen some material on this topic.
I have to recall the name of the brand, and where I stored it.
I am guessing it was Ingersoll Rand, which also made air compressors, or perhaps York.

.

 

[GreenTwin]

A few videos.
Not sure where these engines were/are located.

 

[GreenTwin]

I saw one of these at an old engine show up north many years ago.

.

 

[GreenTwin]

Another one.

 

[GreenTwin]

For a glue company.
Why does a glue company need refrigeration?
My guess is that the glue was heated during manufacturing, and it had to be cooled to ambient temperature in order to package and ship it.
A very large vat of boiling hot glue could take days/weeks to cool, I would guess, and so a faster cooling method was required.

http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2016/08/1920-vilter-250-hp-tandem-compound.html

 

[GreenTwin]

Hoist and air compressor.

.
https://www.historic-structures.com/la/avery_island/avery_island_salt_works6.php

.

 

[GreenTwin]

Steam powered refrigeration compressor.

https://hvac-talk.com/vbb/threads/2244216-Vintage-Refrigeration-Pictures/page2

Edit:
This site has some fantastic photos in it.
Takes a while to work through all the pages.

 

[GreenTwin]

Linde was a big ammonia compressor manufacturer (perhaps still in business).
Frick was another company.

.

 

[Jasonb]

The German model engineering magazine Mashinen im Modellbau recently had an article about a model of the one made by jacob Perkins in 1834 that stretched over 8 pages. You should be able to buy a digital back issue. I did not have plans but a lot of photos and some scematics

magazine https://shop.vth.de/maschinen_im_modellbau_01_2025-0802501/

Article only https://www.vth-digital.de/read/nac...7f-17fb-4882-8a6f-246298c595e2&category=dampf

 

[GreenTwin]

What do I need to eat for breakfast to have arms like that ?

.

 

[GreenTwin]

An article.

https://www.coolingpost.com/features/iconic-refrigeration-frozen-in-time/

.

 

[Richard Hed]

Where I lived at the time in the Soviet of Washington, the last ice was delivered in the mid 70's.

 

[GreenTwin]

I can remember my dad stopping at the ice plant in midtown, and purchasing block ice, I guess for a cooler or icebox that we had.
I am sure we had an electric refrigerator at the house.
They had these big tongs that they brought the block out with.
I am not sure exactly where we put the block of ice in the car, but that is where it went.
And everyone had ice picks, and if you needed ice for your drink, you just used the ice pick to chip some off the block (chip off the ol block).
For some odd reason, you only had to hold the ice tongs by one handle, or perhaps it was necessary to use one handle to lock on the grip on the block of ice.

Electric refrigerators from the 1960's were quite small, compared to today's refrigerators.
And the freezer had to be defrosted every so often, since ice would accumulate on the surfaces, and eventually get excessively thick.
Everything would have to come out of the freezer until the ice melted enough to get rid of it.

And we had a clothes washing machine, but no dryer.
We had a clothes line as a dryer.
The clothes would get stiff as a board.

I seem to recall a dish rack on a drain board next to the sink.
No dishwasher.

Our cars did not have AC, power steering, or power brakes.
The car we had from the 1950's did not have seatbelts; that was not a thing back in the day.
.

 

[ShopShoe]

And from my childhood in the 1950s:

A lot of people had electric refrigerators (acquired in the post-WWII boom), but kept their old iceboxes for times when they needed extra cold storage for parties and family gatherings.

Most small towns in the central USA still had "locker plants" which still made ice for people to buy and also rented out "lockers" where you stored your long-term frozen meat and etc. Those plants often also included another part of their building where cattle or hogs were butchered and meat was either provided back to the customer for the service or sold to the public. I remember going with my parents or grandparents to get frozen meat from the rented locker and getting a tour of the giant cold room where the carcasses were hanging.

There are still some small meat processors around that will do custom processing for customers and possibly sell to the public. During the COVID shutdown some of these small businesses were able to supply meat when the large packing plants were closed.

--ShopShoe