EFFECT OF ICE NUCLEATORS ON SNOW MAKING AND SPRAY FREEZING

The snow-making process is a spray-freezing operation involving heat and mass transfer and ice nucleation. This latter phenomenon is of particular interest recently since some bacterial cells such as Pseudomonas syringae have been used commercially as ice nucleators in the snow-making process. This study quantifies the effect of ice nucleators on the efficiency of snow making. The theory of nucleation spectrum is extended to account for the variation of nucleation temperature of water droplets and is applied to this dynamic system. The results are then integrated with the heat- and mass-transfer calculations, using two-dimensional spline interpolant. The effects of nucleator concentration, ambient conditions, and droplet size distribution are discussed. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.