Ice Cream Machine

[DrWP]

Hi, this is not my usual field of expertise so bear with me as I’m definitely not an expert on refrigeration.

I’m in a strange situation where we own a creamery, and we are big enough we out grew the two ice cream machines (Emory Thompson) we have. We all currently have a regular day job, but we’re having a hard time keeping up with production and are often making ice cream after work from 5:30pm until 2 or 3 in the morning. All 3 of us are exhausted… Long story short I want to make ann ice cream machine that will handle larger volumes of ice cream since there is not one on the market in this size range. I need help sizing the refrigeration side of the unit to make sure this is even feasible.
I’d like to use R404 (unless there’s something better for my application)
The mixing chamber of the machine which will be a metal cylinder that the walls cool on in order to cool the churning ice cream. The size is 18” diameter and 34” long cylinder. The ice cream needs to cool down to approximately 25 degrees F from approximately 37 degrees F in a 10-15 minute period.

Is R404 the best refrigerant to use here?

How many feet of tubing would I need to coil around this cylinder? What diameter tubing is best for this coil?

What type and size of expansion device is best?

How much refrigerant would I need in terms of weight?

What type and size compressor is best for this application?

My plan is to use a water cooled condenser and regulate a flow of cold water based on its temperature.

I’ve never designed a refrigeration system from the beginning, I’ve only ever repaired previously functional systems. Thank you in advance!

 

[HVAC-Novice]

I'm no ice cream expert. But I doubt there is no equipment available. There are the large commercial ice cream companies that you find in grocery stores and I'm sure they use much larger equipment than you need. Did you talk to all manufacturers of ice cream machines? Are they not able to make a machine to your needs or at least have a model that comes close?

If you don't know how to manufacture, you should hire a company that specializes on such machines. They also can assist in designing or can design. You don't want to solder your own machine and then throw away batch after batch of ice cream because your machine breaks or isn't sufficient. I also assume there are some food-processing standards in what material you can use and so on.

 

[Stick.]

How big of a batch are you currently making and what's your desired batch size for this new machine?

 

[LittleInch]

Ok, I appreciate this might be a bit much but you're going to need to describe your operation and also what you want the system to do.

So this cylinder - How thick is it? What's it made of? what surface temperature does it not need to be lower than?

how does the batch work?

I think you might be better off thinking about how much heat you need to remove from the liquid (so what heat capacity and weight is the mixture) over what period of time.

A water / glycol filled set of tubes with a chiller unit might be a lot better and easier to control, but I can see you're thinking that way. I can't believe you can't buy a packaged unit to give you chilled water, but you might struggle to get one which gives you temperatures below 35 F. Making a complete chiller unit from scratch is nuts. That's like building a car by trying to source engine components.

First thing so is to figure out your heat load / rejection from the ice cream mix.

Got a picture or sketch of this cylinder thing?
Are there critical temperatures to stop the mixture freezing and sticking to the sides?
I only ever made a small tub and we used to stick the unit in the freezer. Could you do something similar?