10-Ton Slurry Ice Machine Project for Seafood Processing in Vietnam

For our customer in Vietnam, the cooling challenge was not simply producing more ice. The seafood processing operation needed a cooling medium that could make close, consistent contact with the product during daily handling.

We supplied an SF100 slurry ice machine with a rated capacity of 10 tons per 24 hours. The system produces a mixture of fine ice crystals and chilled liquid rather than conventional solid pieces of ice, giving the customer a different way to cool seafood during processing, handling and short-distance transportation.

That difference—the ability of slurry ice to flow around the product—is the most important part of this project.

When the Ice Behaves More Like a Liquid

Traditional solid ice has to be moved and distributed physically around the product being cooled.

Slurry ice behaves differently.

The SF100 produces fine ice crystals suspended in liquid. The mixture remains fluid enough to flow and can be transported through pipes and pumps, allowing the cooling medium to reach areas that would be more difficult to cover evenly with larger pieces of ice.

For seafood processing, this creates close contact between the cold slurry and irregular product surfaces.

That was relevant to our Vietnam customer. The original project requirements included continuous slurry ice availability, more uniform cooling and stable daily operation.

Instead of placing larger pieces of ice around seafood and depending mainly on point-to-point contact, slurry ice can surround more of the product surface. Its fine, smooth crystals also make it suitable for delicate seafood where aggressive mechanical contact is undesirable.

For this project, the customer was therefore not simply changing the capacity of the cooling system.

The customer was changing the way cooling reached the product.

Inside the SF100 System

The SF100 supplied for this project is rated at 10 tons of slurry ice per 24 hours. Koller’s current technical specifications list the model with a 22 HP compressor configuration, with water- or air-cooling options depending on project conditions.

The machine creates slurry ice by cooling a saline solution until part of the water crystallizes into very fine particles. Components in direct contact with the brine inside the evaporator use SUS316 stainless steel for corrosion resistance and food-processing suitability.

One physical property is particularly useful for understanding why the system was selected.

The latent heat of ice is approximately 334 kJ/kg. Slurry ice combines this phase-change cooling capacity with the ability of the ice-water mixture to maintain close contact with the surface being cooled.

For the customer, however, the practical result matters more than the thermodynamics.

The slurry can be applied during seafood handling, processing and short-distance transportation, rather than being limited to one fixed cooling point.

Because it can flow, the system also creates opportunities for a more integrated cooling layout. In suitable projects, slurry ice can be pumped toward the point of use instead of requiring all ice to be manually carried from the ice machine to the seafood.

That is an important distinction from conventional solid-ice handling.

From Machine Installation to Daily Processing

Before shipment, we tested the SF100 to verify the refrigeration system and slurry ice production.

After installation in Vietnam, our technical support covered equipment connection, system inspection, trial production and operating guidance. The machine was then commissioned for the customer’s daily seafood cooling operation.

This commissioning stage matters with slurry ice because the ice machine is only one part of the cooling process.

The concentration and flow of the slurry, the route between production and point of use, the customer’s processing sequence and the way seafood is handled all affect how the cooling system performs in actual operation.

For similar projects, our engineering team therefore needs to understand more than daily tonnage. We also look at where the slurry ice will be used, how it will be transferred, how many cooling points are involved and how the customer wants the system to connect with the existing processing line.

The Vietnam installation provided a dedicated 10-ton/day source of slurry ice for this purpose.

A Different Approach to Seafood Cooling

This project is a useful addition to our seafood-processing references because slurry ice solves the cooling problem differently from flake ice.

Both can be used for seafood.

But they should not be treated as interchangeable simply because both contain ice.

Flake ice is dry, loose and easy to distribute over seafood. Slurry ice is a pumpable ice-liquid mixture capable of flowing around the product and providing very close surface contact.

For this Vietnam customer, those characteristics matched the requirement for continuous, uniform cooling during daily seafood processing.

The completed SF100 system now provides up to 10 tons of rated slurry ice production per day, supporting processing, handling and short-distance cooling operations.

The defining feature of the project is therefore not simply its 10-ton capacity.

It is the way the Koller SF100 turns ice into a flowable cooling medium that can become part of the seafood processing system itself.