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How Icemakers Work

A standard home icemaker that you install in your freezer

Only a century ago, ice was hard to come by in most parts of the world. In
hotter climates, you had to buy your ice from a delivery service, which imported hefty
blocks from a colder climate or from an industrial refrigeration plant. The price of ice
was relatively steep, but if you wanted to keep your food cold, you didn't have much
choice. In the hottest parts of the world, ice was a rare luxury. In an equatorial country,
you might live your whole life and never even see a piece of ice.
This all changed in the early 20th century. Compact, affordable refrigerators brought the
means of food preservation and ice production into the home and corner store. In the
1960s, new automatic icemaker machines made life even easier. These days, most
Americans take ice completely for granted, even during the hottest days of summer.
In this article, we'll find out what's inside a typical home icemaker, as well as the larger
commercial icemakers you might find at a hotel or grocery store. As we'll see, the basic
process of making ice is very simple -- you just freeze water -- but spitting out perfectly
shaped ice cubes is a fairly elaborate process.
The home icemaker's predecessor was the plastic ice tray. It's fairly obvious how this
device works: You pour water into a mold, leave it in the freezer until it turns to a solid
and then extract the ice cubes. An icemaker does exactly the same thing, but the
process of pouring water and extracting cubes is fully automated. A home icemaker is
an ice-cube assembly line.

The home icemaker is a miniature ice-cube assembly line.

Most icemakers use an electric motor, an electrically operated water valve and an
electrical heating unit. To provide power to all these elements, you have to hook the
icemaker up to the electrical circuit powering your refrigerator. You also have to hook
the icemaker up to the plumbing line in your house, to provide fresh water for the ice
cubes. The power line and the water-intake tube both run through a hole in the back of
the freezer.
Making Ice
When everything is hooked up, the icemaker begins its cycle. The cycle is usually
controlled by a simple electrical circuit and a series of switches. In the diagram below,
you can see how the icemaker moves through its cycle.

At the beginning of the cycle, a timed switch in the circuit briefly sends current to
a solenoid water valve. In most designs, the water valve is actually positioned
behind the refrigerator, but it is connected to the central circuit via electrical
wires. When the circuit sends current down these wires, the charge moves a
solenoid (a type of electromagnet), which opens the valve.

The valve is only open for about seven seconds; it lets in just enough water to fill
the ice mold. The ice mold is a plastic well, with several connected cavities.
Typically, these cavities have a curved, half-circle shape. Each of the cavity walls
has a small notch in it so each ice cube will be attached to the cube next to it.

Once the mold is filled, the machine waits for the water in the mold to freeze.
The cooling unit in the refrigerator does the actual work of freezing the water,
not the icemaker itself. The icemaker has a built-in thermostat, which monitors

the temperature level of the water in the molds. When the temperature dips to a
particular level -- say, 9 degrees Fahrenheit (-13 degrees Celsius) -- the
thermostat closes a switch in the electrical circuit Closing this switch lets
electrical current flow through a heating coil underneath the icemaker. As the
coil heats up, it warms the bottom of the ice mold, loosening the ice cubes from
the mold surface.

The electrical circuit then activates the icemaker's motor. The motor spins a gear,
which rotates another gear attached to a long plastic shaft. The shaft has a
series of ejector blades extending out from it. As the blades revolve, they scoop
the ice cubes up and out of the mold, pushing them to the front of the icemaker.
Since the cubes are connected to one another, they move as a single unit.

At the front of the icemaker, there are plastic notches in the housing that match
up with the ejector blades. The blades pass through these notches, and the
cubes are pushed out to a collection bin underneath the icemaker.

The revolving shaft has a notched plastic cam at its base. Just before the cubes
are pushed out of the icemaker, the cam catches hold of the shut-off arm, lifting it
up. After the cubes are ejected, the arm falls down again. When the arm reaches
its lowest resting position, it throws a switch in the circuit, which activates the
water valve to begin another cycle. If the arm can't reach its lowest position,
because there are stacked-up ice cubes in the way, the cycle is interrupted. This
keeps the icemaker from filling your entire freezer with ice; it will only make more
cubes when there is room in the collection bin.

This system is effective for making ice at home, but it doesn't produce enough ice for
commercial purposes, such as restaurants and self-service hotel ice machines. In the
next section, we'll look at a larger, more powerful icemaker design.
Commercial Icemakers
There are any numbers of ways to configure a large, free-standing icemaker -- all you
need is a refrigeration system, a water supply and some way of collecting the ice that
forms.
One of the simplest professional systems uses a large metal ice-cube tray, positioned
vertically. You can see how this system works in the diagram below.
In this system, the metal ice tray is connected to a set of coiled heat-exchanging
pipes like the ones on the back of your refrigerator. If you've read How Refrigerators
Work, then you know how these pipes work. A compressor drives a stream of
refrigerant fluid in a continuous cycle of condensation and expansion. Basically, the

compressor forces refrigerant through a narrow tube (called the condenser) to

condense it, and then releases it into a wider tube (called the evaporator), where it can
expand.
Compressing the refrigerant raises its pressure, which increases its temperature. As the
refrigerant passes through the narrow condenser coils, it loses heat to the cooler air
outside, and it condenses into a liquid. When the compressed fluid passes through
the expansion valve, it evaporates -- it expands to become a gas. This evaporation
process draws in heat energy from the metal pipes and the air around the refrigerant.
This cools the pipes and the attached metal ice tray.
The icemaker has a water pump, which draws water from a collection sump and pours
it over the chilled ice tray. As the water flows over the tray, it gradually freezes, building
up ice cubes in the well of the tray. When you freeze water layer by layer this way, it
forms clear ice. When you freeze it all at once, as in the home icemaker, you get cloudy
ice.
After a set amount of time, the icemaker triggers a solenoid valve connected to the
heat-exchanging coils. Switching this valve changes the path of the refrigerant. The
compressor stops forcing the heated gas from the compressor into the narrow
condenser; instead, it forces the gas into a wide bypass tube. The hot gas is cycled
back to the evaporator without condensing. When you force this hot gas through the
evaporator pipes, the pipes and the ice tray heat up rapidly, which loosens the ice
cubes.
Typically, the individual cube cavities are slanted so the loosened ice will slide out on
their own, into a collection bin below. Some systems have a cylinder piston that gives
the tray a little shove, knocking the cubes loose.
This sort of system is popular in restaurants and hotels because it makes ice cubes with
a standard shape and size. Other businesses, such as grocery stores and scientific
research firms, need smaller ice flakes for packing perishable items. We'll look at flake
icemakers next.
Flake Icemakers
In the last section, we looked at a standard cube icemaker design. Flake icemakers
work on the same basic principle as cube icemakers, but they have an additional
component: the ice crusher. You can see how a typical flake system works in the
diagram below.
Like the cube icemaker design we examined in the last section, this machine uses a set
of heat-exchanging coils and a stream of water to build up a layer of ice. But in this

system, the coils are positioned inside a large metal cylinder. Water passes through
the cylinder, as well as around its outer edges. The passing water gradually builds up a
large column of ice surrounding the cylinder from the inside and outside.
As with a cube icemaker, a solenoid valve releases hot gas into the cooling pipes after a
set length of time. This loosens the ice column so it falls into the ice crusher below. The
ice crusher breaks the ice cylinder into small pieces, which pass on to a collection bin.
The size of the ice bits depends on the crusher mechanism. Some crushers grind the
ice into fine flakes, while other crushers produce larger, irregularly shaped ice chunks.
There are many variations on these designs, but the basic idea in all of them is the
same. A refrigeration system builds up a layer of ice, and a harvesting system ejects
the ice into a collection bin. At the most basic level, this is all there is to any icemaker