Export of Ice 4

[prc]

Sometime back I read a news item in local newspapers-about a strange export commodity ( not i-phones!) from US to India. Time-just after 1850's.USA was exporting ice to India. Ice blocks were cut from the frozen lakes near Chicago and packed with wooddust and shipped to India. Steam ships would have travelled through Suez or around South Africa to reach Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta(Kolkotta)By the time ice blocks reached Indian ports, half the quantity used to melt away.Still the customers,elite British, who were ruling the country relished the imported stuff with their drinks during the scorching Indian summer.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Well, in San Francisco during the Gold rush era, they used to send laundry first to Hawaii and later to China to be washed.

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[berkshire]

Back in the 1970s I had a chance to tour an Ice house in Pennsylvania. At that time it was one of the last few working. They had a dam across a stream that ran out of a nearby mountain, this skimmed the water and kept it clean, and also created a small lake. When the freeze came they would saw blocks out of the ice and pack them with sawdust and straw into a warehouse. they would continue this operation until the place was packed, then they would lock up and go away until the first week in June. They would then sell Ice until the stock was gone.
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[brandonbw]

My monitors were shipped 2 day air from South Korea to the Midwest to Alaska and finally to Los Angeles. It was the strangest tracking I have seen so far.

So how much ice would you need to overnight for only half to melt?

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[looslib]

Twice what you want to end up with.


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[CELinOttawa]

Lol... Funny looslib, but I don't believe the question is as trivial as you make it sound. Send one cube and you'd have none when the package arrived, barring nearly unbelievable level of insulation, send a massive block starting at near 0 kelvin (yes, I am being hyperbolic; Thank you for noticing), with typical ice box shipping insulation, and you'd likely retain most of the ice.

 

[KENAT]

The question as stated is incredibly trivial because it is incomplete, and so looselib's answer is correct.

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[cranky108]

My freezer makes ice, how much do you want?

If the cost of production is the same for the same quality, would it not make since to make things localy as needed?
So why is is it less expencive to make things in South Korea? Materials, people, energy, overhead costs? So the shipping cost must be less than the differential cost of making things where you live.

 

[1gibson]

Melting ice is not linear, so "twice what you want to end up with" is only correct for a very limited relationship of surface area to volume, and also depends on insulation, and time. Without stating that, I'd say it is not correct.

Just because the question is incomplete doesn't mean an incomplete answer is correct! Only that it could be correct for a limited set of circumstances, that must be defined as part of the answer. Of all places, we should know that here.

"What size pump do I need?" should not be answered with "500 gpm, 200ft head" even though I'm sure that is the right size pump for something.

 

[swall]

When I lived in NC, hurricane Fran hit and my area was without power. Got word of a local convenience store getting an ice shipment and rode my Honda 750 (to conserve gas, since the stations did not have power to the pumps)about 20 miles to the store. Bought a bag of ice and strapped it on to the seat. Got back home and there was only enough left to chill a couple of cans of beer. So, for this form of transport, I would have needed to procure about 8 times more than I needed.

 

[racookpe1978]

Boston sent more ice than anybody.
Very profitable for many years. Yes - 1/2 - to 2/3 was melted out.

But the customers overseas (and India was only one of many) paid enough to make it work. In sailing vessels and packed in sawdust, they made it pay off.