Jones wrote: > No, not a misspell of 'dessert ice' (not this time anyway)...
> Poser-of-the-Day: Can anyone imagine making real ice, as in > solid-water ice, but in the desert, using zero electricity and > only natural forces? I can absolutely imagine it. I used to do it when I was a kid. Not only that, you can do it anywhere, anytime. Don't have to wait for the night. It's really simple. You just take some ammonium nitrate, put a thin walled metal container of water in the middle of it. Add some more water to the ammonium nitrate to make a slurry, and the water inside the metal container will freeze solid as brick. Dissolving ammonium nitrate is highly endothermic. Furthermore, you can do what I did to recycle it. You just spread the wet slurry out over a black tray and let the sun dry it out again, then scrape it out. I did this in a rather dry climate, so I am not positive it would work in a humid climate as the ammonium nitrate is also hygroscopic. Anyway, what you have here is a solar powered manual freezer. I used to dream of building some sort of slow rotating black disk that would be partially immersed in the slurry and then rotate out to be dryed out by the sun then into a shaded area to cool and then back into the slurry. Or how about a belt doing the same? Never did actually build it though. M. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
