Proscription friendly refrigeration?

Morden wrote:They have ice houses where they ship in ice from mountains and such, it's discussed in Book 2 and a few times later on when Howsman is talking about how people will go nuts for that and air conditioning when he can wiggle it past the proscriptions. I don't believe they have much in the way of refrigeration or the Royal Palace wouldn't need to ship in large quantities of ice whilst losing a large portion of it due to it melting.

By the time of _Through Fiery Trials_ (in particular September YoG 914), Howsmyn has introduced refrigeration (the unit appears to be too big for ordinary households) and Nynian promptly "invented" ice cream.

I am a bit puzzled by this because all you really need to make ice cream was salted ice and somebody turning the crank to churn the cream and ingredients until it set.

In TFT we have textev about steam-powered refrigeration - freezing in fact. There's the snippet about Nynian using one of the first models to create ice cream for a birthday.

I would imagine it's a pretty conventional chilling cycle, with compression of a refrigerant, with a heat exchanger to blow off some of compression-generated heat, the then expansion to pull heat out of the target vessel.

The textev specifically mentions a new, smaller Praiger steam system (IMHO to drive the compressor and likely the heat exchanger cooling fan).

My only question is what refrigerant they're using. Ammonia (as discussed in the thread) would be one that's easily available and likely already in use for other reasons. Can't think of others that would be both A) readily available; and B) Proscription-compliant...

Loren Pechtel wrote:It's not energy efficient. It's just when your power source is heat the inefficiency of the ammonia cycle is less than the inefficiency of converting that heat to electricity.

I do agree it can be done within the proscriptions.

Ammonia is still the refrigerant of choice in massive industrial plants like food processing, chemical factories, etc. It's cheap, plentiful and is not a threat to the ozone and while it's a greenhouse gas, it has a very short half life in the atmosphere. Of course those places don't use the absorption cycle opting instead for massive screw and turbine compressors. I worked for 30 years around ammonia refrigeration plants. You haven't lived until a large liquid ammonia line bursts where you are working. Dodging a flood of liquid ammonia across the floor while trying to get the emergency oxygen mask rig on is a trip.[/quote]

We are talking about ammonia cycle refrigeration--no compressor, just heat. The first refrigerators were ammonia cycle, but now my understanding is that it's normally only used off grid.[/quote]

You need a compressor/pump of some sort to ensure that the refrigerant move towards the evaporator. I believe it was mentioned at one point that Delthak Works had a design for an Ice plant that they were working on that used either a steam engine or some form of kinetic generator (wind or water) to create ice for home ice boxes. Based on the level of technology that they were working with as of Through Fiery Trial and Nynian's mention of having invented ice cream it is likely that this technology is in use and that it is mostly used in large warehouses and industrial plants as it would be impractical to run refrigerators in individual homes. Remember because of the orbital platform Safehold is restricted to steam technology and electricity is what really made small scale home refrigeration viable.

I also get the feeling that it will not be the Empire of Charis that tries making electrical generators first... my bet is the Harchongese or Desnair looking to pull ahead of Charis try it and get a rod from god dropped on their heads for their troubles.

Warpy wrote:
I also get the feeling that it will not be the Empire of Charis that tries making electrical generators first... my bet is the Harchongese or Desnair looking to pull ahead of Charis try it and get a rod from god dropped on their heads for their troubles.

While I can see Desnair or the remnant of the Harchong Empire wanting to outdo Charis, I can't see them doing it by messing around with electricity. Both areas are theologically conservative, and the Writ is very strict on "hands off the Rakurai".