Ever used dry ice for your ice chest for camping, etc?
Advantages/disadvantages,
Thanks,
mangeorge
it will freeze the contents.
it is a frostbite hazard. the gas does not support life and so is a hazard in a small confined space of a car or tent.
The biggest advantage is no water in the bottom. But that’s also it’s biggest disadvantage … ice water (especially if you add a little salt) is a much better coolant than just plain ice or dry ice. It really depends on what you’re cooling and why. For a camping trip with various items that you don’t want to get wet, dry ice is fine. Blue ice is cheaper in the long run because it’s reusable.
To have ice for the longest time I can, I’ve used a good-sized chunk (~25 lbs.) of dry ice on one side of the cooler, then a block of water ice (~10 lbs.)right next to it, then food etc. next to the block. The dry ice will sublimate away in a day, at which point you have a really cold block of ice that can last a few days. I not sure if a beverage can in the cooler would freeze – maybe not if it’s on the end opposite the dry ice.
That’s interesting. I’ve always used blue ice blocks.
It would **look **bad ass when you open it up, though.
The dry ice gets much cooler than just ice; so you might freeze items, explode sodas, etc.
A pretty good guide is http://www.ehow.com/how_2038663_ice-chest-using-dry-ice.html
It suggests only using the dry ice to keep FROZEN items frozen, and offers information such as how many pounds of dry ice are needed for 24 hours. I believe you could extend the time the dry ice itself keeps by wrapping it really well in newspaper, so you could have a few layers of newspapered dry ice on top of each other so that some of the layers would last the longest for an extended trip.
It further suggests that after the dry ice is gone, the frozen foods themselves can then be placed on top of your refrigerated items you kept in a normally iced chest.
It also reminds you to leave the plug open so your dry ice solid expanding into gas doesn’t explode the lid off of your cooler 
Another link with some first-hand experience comments from people:
http://camping.about.com/b/2010/07/03/using-dry-ice-in-your-cooler.htm
One person says that the gas from the dry ice made fruits like apples and oranges taste bad.
One person says that dry ice coming into contact with the plastic of the cooler made it crack, so again my suggestion to wrap the dry ice in several layers of newspaper is probably a good idea.
I don’t think putting dry ice and regular ice together is going to work out because if the ice melts, the water will just sublimate the dry ice, “wasting” the dry ice in trying to re-freeze the water.
When I’ve used dry ice, I’ve wrapped it in newspaper, put it in the bottom of the cooler, and then layered water ice on top as insulation. Stuff stayed cold for days, and the main problem was that the water ice became much colder than usual, freezing much of the stuff in the cooler. Melting water ice didn’t sublimate the dry ice, because the water ice stayed far below melting temperatures.
I like this idea the best (from my previously mentioned link in post #7:
“Mike” in post (11) says:
We have successfully experimented with the two-cooler approach to using dry ice for camping and sailing excursions.
Here’s the formula. Start with eight 1-liter soft drink bottles filled with water and frozen at home. Put four of the bottles in your food-and-drink cooler. The other four go in a second cooler, with the rest of its volume entirely filled with dry ice. Then you simply switch the ice bottles, rotating the four thawed bottles to the dry ice cooler and the four frozen bottles to the food cooler.
In effect, you’re using the dry ice to “make ice” for your food cooler. We also keep an ice cube tray in the dry ice cooler for cocktails.
Combine this with another person’s suggestion to put a little salt in the frozen water so it can get even lower temperature, you could maintain a pretty good refrigerated cooler with 1-liter or 2-liter bottles in rotation, without wetting or carbonating anything in the refrigerated cooler.
Ice next to dry ice? It simply will not melt until some time after the dry ice is all gone.
Ice water might be a good coolant (and salted ice water a bit better), but not as good as ice for keeping stuff cool. H[sub]2[/sub]O ice sitting in water will melt much faster than ice in a dry cooler – it has to absorb heat to melt and liquid water (even at 0[sup]o[/sup]C) contains way more heat than does the air in the cooler, so ice in a dry cooler has to absorb heat from the stored food.
As the ice melts draining the cooler is important not because you don’t want your food to get waterlogged (though that’s good too), but because the ice in the cooler will last longer.
On a river trip a few years ago we prepped a cooler by freezing 4-5" of water in the bottom and loading frozen stuff on top (we did this inside a walk-in freezer). We had air temperatures over 100[sup]o[/sup]F most days but by draining the cooler morning and night, and by never opening it for more than the time it took to pull out what we needed (we taped a map of the contents to the lid), we made that ice last over 2 weeks – when we pulled out on day 17 we still had a chunk that was over an inch thick.
IME, it’s as if the dry ice carbonated the fruit - melon, in particular, picked up an odd tingly bite.
This does not sound right. Zero degree water may contain more heat than Zero degree air, but it still cannot impart that heat to melt the ice - that’s going against the laws of thermo-dynamics. In fact, the specific heat index of the water, the fact that it can absorb a lot of heat, more than air, seems to me that it will HELP keep stuff cool.
And ‘absorbing heat from the stored food’ is a non-issue once that’s been chilled - what you’re worried about is absorbing heat from the outside of the cooler.
this. It will evaporate and displace oxygen and it is heavier so it will flow down. I have no idea how much it would take to kill someone but you don’t want a lot of it in a tight room if you sleep on the floor. You may remember the Mr. Science type of experiment where you make carbon dioxide and then pour it on a lit candle in a jar to extinguish it.
I use it camping but it’s kept in the mosquito netted dinning area.
No it’s not, it’s the latent heat of fusion – ice melts by absorbing heat from its surroundings, and 0[sup]o[/sup]C water contains more heat (80 calories per gram) than 0[sup]o[/sup]C ice. That’s what makes the water in a glass of ice water cold…
Both water and air are fluids and can thus transmit energy toward the ice (or food) and away from the walls of the cooler by convection (and you are thus better off with less of either in your cooler). Since air is ~1000X less dense than water it is less effective in transmitting heat than is water, even though it has both a lower specific heat and viscosity.
I’m not saying that cold water won’t help keep things cool for a bit but it will cause your ice to melt faster, and once the ice is gone it will transmit heat from the container walls to your food faster.
This is why most cooking sites recommend thawing a frozen turkey or roast in the refrigerator, because a slower thaw is better – but if you’re in more of a hurry they recommend submerging the beast (in water-tight packaging) in cold water because it is faster.
I went camping a few weeks ago with a guy who used a block of dry ice in the ice chest. All the deli meat that was sitting on top of it froze into a solid block.
Most of my camping will be for only a few days, so I think I’ll stick mostly with the blue ice, which I already have. Great stuff.
If I understand this correctly, if my stay lasted longer than expected and my blue ice started thawing, I could get some dry ice locally and re-freeze it.
I suggest regular water ice (it produces usable water) and a better icechest. They have some which will keep things cold for 5 days. Keep the icechest out of direct sun, and covered whenever possible.
Here’s a previous thread with some advice. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6208301
I discovered a trick with dry ice, magicians do something similar with flies. If you are camping somewhere near a beach with small baby crabs (about 2 inches across), catch one and place it near the dry ice in the cooler. I fanned the crab with a piece of cardboard to keep fresh air going to it, I didn’t want to suffocate it. After a few minutes, hand someone the “dead” crab. The heat from their hand will revive the crab. Hilarity ensues.