Comment: Icebox Coolers & Eskys

Hi Coldee,

No myth...It's true !

Well partly true. I would have to check through my text books to see it salt makes ice last longer. But it certainly does make it colder !!

Manual ice cream making machines still use salt.

Using salt water to make ice I think would be a myth...But again, I have forgotten more about this sort of stuff than I care to remember...Saturated salt water does not freeze - the water freezes but the salt gets "pushed" out.

But, yes putting salt on your ice will make it colder.

I was going to run off to my text books...Silly me...I have got the intergoogleweb thingy :)

No, it will not make the ice last longer...Because it makes it colder !! What was that ??

Salt lowers the freezing point of water. Which means the water will remain a liquid at much lower temps. But it also means that the ice will get colder as the salt reduces the temp.

This means that although it gets colder the freezing point it lower and so the ice will actually melt even though it might be as low as minus 20c.

See ?? Easy :)

Throwing in the salt simply allows the existing water in the slurry to go below zero degrees and keep the whole mess colder for longer (brine).
The upshot of this is that any sealed receptacle containing fluid (AMBER FLUID) will freeze inside the water slurry and blow the caps off all your bloody stubbies, smash a few and create an even bigger mess.
But hey, if beer slushies are your go, its a brilliant idea.
Excellent for fish, not excellent for grog/veges and anything else you don't normally freeze.
It takes a few decent handfulls of pool salt in a 60 litre esky to create a decent beer smashing brine though.

Try making large ice blocks from a plastic rectangular container. Place it in the freezer and when its 75% frozen youll notice a portion in the middle of the block still fluid, poke a hole in the top of the block and pour it out and replace the water and refreeze. You can do this many times and what happens is the cloudy part of the ice block is reduced as its the clear ice that lasts longest and stays coolest.
i've done this for years and i can get 6 days on the beach without a problem. If you vacuum seal your meats they can stay in the water at the bottom of the eski without perishing.
Hope it helps