Ice Run of November 14, 2007

It was a whole new ballgame for the Ice run in November. The old Ice Company completely changed its personnel and has handed off our account to General Air. It has it's advantages and its disadvantages....

I had no assistant today, other than Gillian.

We loaded up 2000 pounds of Dry Ice into three huge coolers. Then loaded the coolers onto the truck. With ice, coolers, tools and passengers, we were carrying almost two tons of extra weight. I was a little concerned about driving up the canyon with such a load in a Quarter Ton Pick up....but Ford tough, I guess, since we made it with no problems.

 

We were able to pull into the Institute and back right up to the shed.

Our chamber was pretty devoid of any mass, but three weeks ago it was filled with pellets. The pellets don't seem to be able to persist...

When we looked inside the boxes, we found some pellets and some slabs left.

Some of the boxes had some pellets...some were empty.

The temperature was only at -50F, due to the lack of ice mass. It seems that pellets sublime too fast with the current increase in ambient temperatures. The loss is more like mid-summer than Late Fall. This is why we switched to all block this time, to see if we can slow down the rate of sublimation while maintaining the optimum temperature.

 

 

 

 

 

The boxes each contain two blocks and the rest of the 2000 pounds of block ice was placed on top.

 

 

 

 

Our blocks almost exactly fit. Some of the old slab pieces, we were able to fit along the side of the sarcophagus....

 

We were finally able to pack all the ice in and make things as snug and as compact as possible. Some of the ice was in paper, some was stripped and loaded in naked. Nothing like naked dry ice to get you going...

 

As we were preparing the chamber for more ice, we came across some pretty nice little Crystal Critters. Some were separated and some were in a glistening mass.....

We finally got everything unloaded from the truck and placed in the chamber. THere was approximately 175 pounds of pellets left and maybe 130 or so of slabs/block, with virtually no mass. Gives us a grand total of 305 pounds left, and when added to the 2000 pounds we brought today, gives us a total of 2305 pounds left in chamber for this period.

 

This ought to be good for 4-5 weeks, depending on the weather. It will be interesting to see if the all-block method can slow the sublimation while still maintaining the temperature.

Tune in next month!