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Ice maker vs. refrigerator power use


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The ice maker only takes 60 watts and it freezes water into ice. The refrigerator just has to keep the food cool, which is a lot easier, but it takes 120 watts.  WTF Klei?  How about cutting the fridge down to 60 too eh?  120 watts that is constantly on is way too much power for a fridge, especially when you can just put the food crate in a CO2 pit for no power.  Hrm... then again, can you cycle the fridge with automation?  Once the food is cold, will it stay cold for a while if you cut the power to the fridge and only turn it back on every now and then?

 

58 minutes ago, Squeegee said:

The fridge can technically cool significantly more mass than the ice-maker. That's the only reason I can really think of.

Yea, but it isn't cooling it and spitting it out then cooling more.  It just has to *stay* cold inside.  Unless it stops drawing the power once it gets cold enough, but I don't think it does that.  I wonder though if you could use a timer to cycle the power on and off and the food would stay cold for a while while it is off?  But I think it isn't actually the cold temperature that prevents the food from going bad, but simply having the fridge powered on.

The fridge can technically cool significantly more mass than the ice-maker.

Is that really true? The ice maker pumps out ~3kDTUs worth of cooling, while the fridge only reaches 500DTUs. The ice maker can clearly deliver more cooling, assuming it goes in the right places.

1 hour ago, bobucles said:

 

Is that really true? The ice maker pumps out ~3kDTUs worth of cooling, while the fridge only reaches 500DTUs. The ice maker can clearly deliver more cooling, assuming it goes in the right places.

That's because the ice maker is actually pumping the heat from the water inside to the outside ( -20% ).  The fridge just has a fixed heat production no matter what is inside it.  The food inside does say it gets cold, but I'm pretty sure that's a totally unnecessary and useless side effect that is only there for immersion sake.

29 minutes ago, psusi said:

The food inside does say it gets cold, but I'm pretty sure that's a totally unnecessary and useless side effect that is only there for immersion sake.

Pretty sure huh?

From my observations  cooling power of refrigerator is ~6.5 kDTU/s.

Ice maker has 8.8 kDTU/s but it also generates a lot of heat in its vicinity, while refrigerator outputs constant 0.5 kDTU/s. You can put and remove things from refrigetator and use them on rails for a cooling effect.

Not the most efficient way but still I wouldn't call it useless.

5 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

Pretty sure huh?

From my observations  cooling power of refrigerator is ~6.5 kDTU/s.

Ice maker has 8.8 kDTU/s but it also generates a lot of heat in its vicinity, while refrigerator outputs constant 0.5 kDTU/s. You can put and remove things from refrigetator and use them on rails for a cooling effect.

Not the most efficient way but still I wouldn't call it useless.

You've actually tried adding a small amount of food and then a large amount of food and seeing how long it takes each to cool down?  I would bet it takes the same time either way.

Why do you say the ice maker can cool at 8.8 kDTU's?  AFAICS, it it pumps out 16 kDTU/s while removing 20% more than that from the water inside, giving you a net cooling of 3.2 kDTU/s.

Im basing my info about ice makers on this site: https://oni-db.com/details/icemachine

I checked the maximum of 100kg stored in refrigerator and I waited 60s and checked how much temperature dropped. it was around 1.15C

It doesn't take same time to cool down small and large amout.

Yeah. I looked up code, on the site, calculating ice maker Heat Removed/sec and seems like it doesn't include the value of Time to freeze variable.

Steam turbine calculator works there well so I trusted that this one is fine too.

But as you can see refrigerators can be an alternative to ice makers. But if there are aquatuners then who would want to use either of both...

45 minutes ago, Angpaur said:

But as you can see refrigerators can be an alternative to ice makers. But if there are aquatuners then who would want to use either of both...

Yea, especially since the refrigerators require tons and tons of food and sweepers and rails.

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