14 DAY TRIAL // You might think that ice dispensers aren't such an essential part of life, until you realize that the supply of ice ultimately determines shelf life and, thus, how well food is preserved on the way to developing countries, and pretty much everyone else.
Until today, freezing food quickly was something that depended on possibly hazardous freezing chemicals.
Seattle-based nanoICE found a solution though, called simply the nanoICE system.
In seeking to redesign homemade ice machines and make them bigger and more efficient, as well as eco-friendly, they took a handmade prototype and modified it through Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate 3D CAD software.
The result was an ice machine that dispenses microscopic ice particles in liquid flow.
Then, they 3D printed the machine (component by component, from what we can gather) and tested it in Japan, Hawaii, Africa and the United States.
The nanoICA system uses 70% less energy than normal ice machines and up to 90% less Freon.
That's a huge leap, no matter how you look at it, especially when you factor into your thinking the fact that the nanoICE team intends to further optimize it.
The Sim 360 program will be used to carry out simulations of the complex phase changes that occur in the ice generator. Several simulations should even run at the same time. Eventually, they should produce even better machines.