Thread: dry ice

Thanks to all - great information...might give it a go.

thanks every one,some good advise

Many years ago went camping with a few mates,one said dry ice was the bees knees.We had a big fiberglass esky chucked the dry ice and quite a few cartons of stubbies in.When we got to the campsite we had a block of frozen beer and glass,not 1 stubbie survived.
Andrew

we use compressed block ice in one of those eva-kool style eskies and usually get around 5-6 days without the fun and games of dry ice

Just thought I'd mention the Danger factor too. Don't touch it with bare skin when getting stuff out of the esky as it will burn sensitive skin. Kids are a no no

Not realy woth the cost if ya have a good quality eskie that will hold block ice frozen in bottles for 5 days

I go to the ice place on Gosport St @ Hemmant.

Last November we went away with 6 adults. We had one esky with dry ice and in this we stacked the meat and vegies (frozen) with the meals stacked according to meals on what days. We also had room to put 4X2 litre milk bottles in overnight to freeze for use in the day eskys.

We were away 7 days and the dry ice had disappeared on day 5 but it was still a chore to thaw out the chickens for the roast on day 6.

I believe the secret is to not open the dry ice box more than twice a day, and have another esky (fridge) for day to day drinks and the like..

One word of advice, a 5 day block will not last 5 days... it lasts 4.. allowing the solid icy matter to keep things cold for the last day.

It is better to keep the ice box full even if it is frozen water bottles than let it empty and warm up.

Make sure that all of your food is well sealed and wrapped, as the dry ice can give a taste to food... Sort of like a soda water taste (after all it is CO2)

I have never had a burn, or any other sort of accident using dry ice for over 20 years now. (except for dropping a frozen chook on my foot)

I percieve the real risk as getting food poisoning if the food is not kept at a safe temp.

WE used to distribute a name brand Icecream now owned by the multinational conglomerate UniLever. Anyway part of the business meant that we would sell function boxes to charities etc which used dry ice and at one stage we had a small delivery truck that used dry ice blocks. Ceba-Geigy used to deliver pallets of the stuff which we could keep at best for 2 weeks. It lasts longest if in a sealed container but only a matter of hours to a day. When our need was less than Ceba would deliver, we started making our own.

We bought the gas in dispensing CO2 cylinders from BOC (these have a tube to the bottom of the cylinder to pick up the liquid CO2 instead of the gas) which was connected to a block making device. The CO2 is released through a nozzle into a confined space with a permeable membrane which allows out air but not ice crystals. (One of them was made of two layers of a synthetic canvas like material with end plates made of fibreglass about 1/2" thick, the nozzle in one end.) When the container was full you turned off the gas flow.

The blocks lasted less than the blocks from Ceba-Geigy and probably because of the different density but you gould rely on 5 to 7 days, with the big advantage that we weren't buying blocks that were never sold and just evaporated. The CO2 in the bottles will last as long as you want to pay the rental on the bottle or it's used up.

If you were a keen fisherman or did lots of short trips away, then making them yourself may be an option. We sold the equipment to the local council for their mosquito monitoring.

There are a number of patents on the devices see: Method and apparatus for making CO2 snow blocks - Patent 5548974