The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-02
1cE-MAK1NG BY ELECTRICITY.

It Requires Eight Days for a Cake of Ice to Develop, but it May Soon Take Less Time.
 What is believed to be the only elec- trically operated ice-making plant in the United States has been installed by the Cataract Ice company, of Niagara Falls, in a new brick building, one hum dred and twenty-five feet long, forty four feet wide and which has a height of twenty-eight feet, says Orrin E.. Dunlap in the Scientific American. The greater part of the artificial or manu- [ factured ice of to-day is made by one of two systems. These systems are known as the can" system and the ''plate" system. The Cataract Ice com pany formerly used the "can" system, but desiring to increase its output, as well as the quality of it's product, it adopted the plate" system, and the pant 1t has installed is one of the most interesting in the world.
 In Niagara Falls the popular power for the operation of factories of all kinds is electrical power, and the Cat aract Ice company has installed a one
 
 dred volt Westinghouse induction mo- tor to operate an ammonia compressor; a flye-horse- power motor of the same type, two hundred and twenty volts, 2, that operates an air compressor; a three-horse-power motor of the same type and voltage that operates the brine pump, and five-horse-rower mo- tor to operate an electric crane. The electric current is received from the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing company at twenty-two hundred volts, and for the operation of the small motors this voltage is stepped down to two hundred and twenty volts.
 In this Niagara Falls plant the tank occupies a space of nlnety-eight feet long, fifteen and one-half feet wide and is nine feet nine inches high. This tank is divided into eight compart- ments, each compartment containing four plates. One of these eight com- partments is emptied daily, taking out eight cakes of ice. the approximate weight of each cake being about four tons; so that the plant has a daily capacity of about tnity-two tons. The weight of the daily output varies, of course, according to the thickness of the ice. Each cake of ice made is | about fifteen feet three inches by nine 'eet six inches, clear and transparent. | ito each cake of ice, about six feet : part, two iron rods five feet long and about one inch in diameter are frozen, and in drawing the ice these rods are | engaged by hooks at the ends of chains | on the electric crane. After being | raised from the compartment where it | was made, each cake of ice is conveyed by the crane to the rear of the building, | where 1t is placed on 0 tip table and l dropped to a horizontal position. At l the present time saws operated by i hand are used to cut the ice into small 1 cakes, but an electrically operated saw l Is to be installed. Out of each of the huge cakes thirty-twO small cakes are l made, and these are chuted to storage l room. where the ice is kept for delive- | " to the company's many wagons. The | plant has a storage capacity of three ! thousand tons.
 | It Is evident that in a plant of this | kind the dangers that arise from using | ice from streams that are polluted by sewage are avoided. It may be claimed | that natural ice is just as good as ice Eartificially made, if the water supply is \ pure in the stream or pond from which l the natural ice is taken. In the plant of the Cataract Ice company the water | is taken from the city mains. It passes ! through a condenser and is pumped to the top of the building, wheree it is discharged into a tank of large capac- ity equipped with live steam coils. Here the temperature of the water is raised to one hundred and sixty de- grees, and by gravitation the water passes down through a flat cooleer, which reduces it to a temperature of about ninety degrees before passing through the filters, which have capac- ity of about fifteen thousand gallons per day. From the filters it passes to the fore-cooer, or water storage tank.