Concrete cooling is a technique that reduces the temperature of poured concrete to a certain level, in order to guarantee the quality of the concrete. Concrete cooling is mainly used for projects in parts of the world with warm climates, where large amounts of concrete are used. When concrete cures, a minimum favorable temperature in the range of 10 – 21 ºC must be maintained in the concrete for the minimum required curing period. If it cures at temperatures above this level the concrete loses strength, more cracking occurs, it rapidly sets and there is an increased water demand. Therefore, the importance of concrete cooling is huge, especially considering the crucial role concrete plays in almost every building process.

A method commonly used for concrete cooling is to replace part of the water added to the mix with flake ice. The transition from flake ice to water absorbs a lot of energy and therefore lowers the temperature of the mix significantly.

Using flake ice has a much bigger impact on the temperature of the concrete mix, compared to using cold water, due to the large amount of heat that is needed to melt the ice. To cool down 1 m³ of concrete by 1°C, about 33kg of cold water is necessary, while only 7.5kg of flake ice has the same effect.

To use this method, an ice plant is built near the construction site. An ice factory consists at least of a containerized flake ice machine (i.e. Recom CF900-ET) and an ice storage. Often transport, weighing and dosing systems are also in place. The complete factory only takes limited space, because the production and storage units are placed on top of each other.

The concrete industry makes use of Recom Ice factories. The quality of concrete for mega structures benefits from the use flake ice. The flake ice will help prevent excess temperature rise after the mixing process which can result in premature hardening of the concrete.

Large amounts of sub cooled dry flake ice are added to the concrete mixture. The large amount of thermal energy storage in the sub cooled flake ice dampens the temperature rise as a result of which, the time between mixing and pouring may be increased, thus offering more flexibility to overcome situations of long distance or high ambient temperatures.

Recom Ice Systems will help you co-engineer the complete ice factory. We offer:

• One or more ice plants up to 100 tons per 24 hours each
• The ice storage up to a capacity of 150 tons
• Ice transport systems with capacities up to 30 tons per hour
• Ice weighing systems to accomodate the batching process
• Water chiller to pre-chill the filtered river water, also for direct mixer use
• Day tanks
• Supervision and commissioning
• Siemens PLC-controlled with real time monitoring
• PLC is connected with batching plant control room