How can i accelerate water into ice?

How can i accelerate water into ice using conventional chest freezer?

Are there additves or non-toxic chemicals i can use?

Somewhat facetious, but… if you accelerate water, it will never become ice. To get ice, you need to decelerate water.

Accelerating the freezing process is a different thing.

Fill chest freezer with water

Throw out window of 2nd story or higher

Watch it hit the frozen snowdrift below the window.
I’m not sure what you’re asking.

Not sure I agree. To freeze, one must lower the temperature. That removes energy from the individual water molecules, and they do slow down, but there is really no overall relative motion change. So to get ice, one must reduce the temperature. And acceleration is no absolute bar to temperature reduction.

Wow, I’m pedantic tonight!

Anybody got a real answer to what the question posed by the OP might be?

I think he’s asking how to freeze water faster in a regular old freezer. If that’s the case, the only real solution is to increase the surface-to-volume ratio of the water to be frozen. And the easiest way to do that is to pour it into a very shallow pan, like a cookie tray. The greater surface area will allow the water to give up its heat faster.

And try and place the cookie sheet in contact with the surface of the freezer instead of suspended in air. In practise, this means putting it on the very bottom rather than on a rack.

Oh, and if you want the absolute fastest freezing:

completely clean out your freezer
place a layer of plastic wrap on the bottom
pour the water directly onto the plastic wrap until it’s about 1/4 inch deep
wait for it to freeze (maybe 20 minutes max)
peel off the plastic wrap with the ice on it and repeat with the rest of your water.

If I remember my highschool chemistry class, the lower the pressure, the higher the freezing point temperature is. So you could put your water in vacumn pump and have it freeze at a higher temperature, thus certainly freezing quicker. Problem is, when you drop your 35 degree F ice cube in a cup of ice tea, it’ll melt quicker.

There’s a few other things you can do too.
•Make sure your container has good contact with the wall or floor containing the freezer coils.
•Stir the water so it cools uniformly. Ice is a pretty good insulator, so you don’t want it to build up between the coils and the bulk of your container.
•Clean the heat exchanger coils of your freezer, so the refrigerant is as cool as possible going into the compressor. Heck, use a fan to blow cool air over the coils, or add some aluminum foil fins to increase their effective surface area.

There aren’t any chemicals you can add to water that’ll significantly increase it’s freezing rate. Dry ice or liquid nitrogen can freeze water fast, but you don’t want to use those in a freezer.

P.S. The website below backs me up :slight_smile:
http://tinyurl.com/c2jxk

Also, by Newton’s Law of Cooling (scroll down about halfway), the colder you set your freezer, the faster the ice will get down to the freezing point. This might not be so good for the other foods in your freezer, however.

It is believed that hot water cools faster than cold water, because some of it evaporates before it has a chance to freeze. This has been discussed at length here on the Dope and I don’t remember whether we decided it was true or not. Of course, if it does work, you could accomplish more or less the same effect by simply using less water.

If your freezer has an vent where the freshly cold air comes in, put the ice cube tray right there. If this is not possible, make sure there is at least a half inch of space around each tray; you need air circulation around the water for faster heat transfer.

The Master speaks: Which freezes faster, hot water or cold water?

Yup.
Guaranteed to freeze…up the vacuum pump! :rolleyes:
Couldn’t resist, too good to pass up.
Jest in fun tho.No offence intended.
Hope you see fit to become a regular.

Anything as listed in the various posts to improve the heat transfer from the cold surfaces of the freezer compartment to the water to be frozen will help.

How about Metal ice trays?

Only up to the triple point (0.006 atm). After that, the freezing point rapidly drops as water sublimates into gas rather than freezes.

PS: I had to look that up to confirm it as water is one of the very few substances that do this. Normal substances will have a increase in freezing point as the pressure goes up not down.

What you are trying to do is increase the heat transfer rate from the water to the freezer. There have been some very good suggestions here, especially the ones about increasing the surface area of the water and ensuring good air circulation. Another way to speed the process is to use radiator fins similar to the heat sinks used in electronics. A copper or aluminum rod stuck in the water with a large surface area projecting into the air will speed up the freezing process. Of course, you then have the problem of removing the rod after the water freezes, but you didn’t say the idea had to be practical.

To improve upon the shallow pan idea, stick your pan in the freezer until it’s nice and cold, then put your water in a spray bottle and spray it onto the pan. It’ll freeze instantly. It may take a while to build up as much as you need, but that wasn’t part of the question.

If I remember my chemistry class correctly, while the ice cube will melt quicker it probably won’t be that noticable. The heat of fusion for ice is 334 J/g and the specific heat is 4.186 J/g-C. If you have a gram of ice your extra degree or so Celcius is approximately 4 joules. Thats a pretty small fraction of the 334 joules necessary to melt the ice.