50 Ton tubular ice factory production optimization

Abstract

The consumable ice industry is one of the most important consumable industry in Thailand due to the hot climate. There are two types of consumable ice in Thailand which are the tubular ice and the block ice. As there are over 1,500 ice production facility in Thailand according to the Ministry of Energy, large amount of power consumption had been made towards producing the product. Most of the factories are still not considerate about optimizing the production scheme or the machines they used. This leads to the considerations about determining a method to optimize the production process in terms of energy conservation and production efficiency. This research would be a piloted experiment towards an actual 50 ton capacity factory optimization process which the results proved that the five methods used had proved to reduce production time as well as lowering power consumption. The methods included machine maintenance, installation of insulating materials in lower tank, installation of VSD pump, and roof shielding for storage tank. Economically, the process would reached the payback point within two years and this could become a guideline for other production facilities that are interested towards operation research and optimization.