Introduction
For a long time, people from emerging coastal areas have been deprived of a consumable ice commodity that could conveniently be used to cool drinks and protect edibles at safe temperatures. Ice is widely used in hospitals as a preservative for medicine and in other sectors such the fish industry and during disasters such as hurricane disasters. The market for the product varies. The market is almost continuous in the corporate world or in hospitals, as it is utilised on a regular basis. But sometimes the demand rises especially when the disaster such as hurricane strikes. In order to set up an ice business, the company should first understand if the catastrophe and the severity of the disaster often affects the region. If such locations are prone to disaster, the manufacturer can store the products in excess so that when the tragedy occurs, they will provide enough goods to meet the additional demand. Approximately 10 lb of ice is needed per person in a disaster. That indicates that 50,000 lb of ice is required if 5,000n citizens are hit by a hurricane. 30 lbs of ice per cubic metre is needed for the preservation of items such as pharmaceuticals or fish preservatives. Such constant demand will maintain production at a steady rate. The organisation should sell the commodity by promoting the product in the media, such as newspapers, advertisements, fliers in rural regions, and TV ads, in order to reach consumers. The organisation can also provide promotions on items offered and marketed at the promotional price at leisure centres.
Ice as a Preservative
Ice frozen drugs are prescription items that can be kept in locations between 20C and 80C, such as vaccinations and temperature responsive clinical research medicines, so that their safety is not affected. During preparation, products produced from plasma and red blood cell components separated from whole blood for transfusion also require extra attention to prevent spoiling them because of high temperatures. In order to ensure the consistency of medicinal goods, all drugs need to be processed and treated according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
In order to maintain adequate safety for refrigerated drugs, the World Health Organisation supports unique storage requirements, such as the requirement for ice retention. In their development, storage and transportation, factories must be driven by sound industrial standards and it is essential that medical facilities treat temperature-sensitive drugs in the developed world as required to provide a patient with a quality product. Unsuitable handling and storage practices of temperature-sensitive medicines may result in probable spoilage of the drugs and consequent financial impact for the medical facility. For example, insulin and products of biotechnology need to be stored in ice-facilitated low temperatures and are generally expensive commodities. Inadequate storage and consequent recycling of these items can have a detrimental effect on the economy and capability of medical facilities in the often economically struggling third world to opportunistically use semen in artificial insemination and vaccinate or treat patients. Ice can be used in storing these high cost medicines and maintaining their quality. This is commercially viable because when medicines are being carried in field, they are kept in ice so that they cannot get destroyed.
Historical data suggests that more than four thousand years ago, ancient Chinese stored fish using salt. Ancient Romans also used natural ice mixed with seaweed to ensure fish stayed fresh. However, with the advent of mechanical refrigeration, ice was made readily available for use in fish preservation. With temperatures of 00C and below, the growth of pathogenic and spoilage micro-organisms reduce, thus limiting the rate of spoilage and doing away with some safety risks. Reduction of fish temperature is the most vital consequence of ice use. Therefore, the faster the ice chills the better. While there have been several records of cold-shock reactions when iced in a variety of tropical animals, with the aid of rapid chilling, other factors are generally outweighed.
Fish is kept moist by melting ice. This mainly reduces weight loss and prevents surface dehydration. Heat transport between ice surfaces and fish is also increased by the melting water. If ice is not used right after the fish is captured for whatever purpose, it also tends to hold the fish moist. While evaporative cooling does not avoid spoiling, the surface temperature of fish below the optimum growth temperature of common pathogenic and spoilage bacteria is actually decreased.
People in developing coastal communities who depend much on fish for their livelihoods should utilize ice to keep their catch moist and safe for distant markets. It is obvious that leaching effect of water may remove color pigments from fish gills and skin. Alternative handling methods can be recommended, based on the severity of the leaching method, consumer conditions and fish species. However, as opposed to other means of fish protection, ice has benefits. Ice has a large cooling capacity which implies that cooling 1 kg of fish will require a comparatively small amount of ice. For instance, 0.25 kg of ice will be required to reduce the temperature of 1 kg of lean fish at 250C to 00C. More ice is required in practice because it’s used to compensate for thermal losses.
Another lucky property of ice is that it is an autonomous mechanism for temperature control. As ice melts around fish, this property is exhibited on all contact points. In the case of electronic or mechanical control systems, control temperature will always be an average temperature.
Depending on the design and volume of these refrigeration systems, varied temperature gradients in chill storage rooms, with very low temperatures in one spot and maybe above 50C in another spot. Compared with ice made of fresh water, seawater ice has a lower melting point. With about 3.5 % of salt content ice made of seawater will melt at about -2.10C. However, as seawater ice is usually physically unstable, the overall temperature will be lowered during storage due to leaching out of brine. In such circumstances, some salt may be absorbed by the fish muscle, making seawater ice an inappropriate self-contained temperature system.
People always argue that artificial ice is better than natural ice, that ice from one port is better than another, or that ice from seawater is better than ice from freshwater. There are minor variations between various ports of fresh water ice, and those that use ice for fish protection will easily overlook them. Ice made of distilled water has the same cooling magnitude as ice made of tap water, and ice four months old is as better as newly-made ice.
However, one important aspect to remember is that ice loses much of its value once it has turned to water and mixture of ice and water can’t have the same effect as ice alone. Remember weight should be the benchmark for comparing different types of ice as what may appear to be the same weight may only be equal volume. For example, 1m3 of crushed block ice has far much cooling capacity than flake ice of same volume.
Besides ice, there are also other ways of chilling fish. Seawater cooled by addition of ice or mechanical means is a suitable way of quickly chilling large quantities of small fish. Healthy examples include the usage of Cooled Sea Water (CSW) and Refrigerated Sea Water (RSW). Water is very essential for every living organism. However, almost 1 billion people, mainly those living in the third world countries lack access to clean portable water. These regions have been gripped with water crisis, threatening the lives of those who live there. According to Sim, many people lose their lives through water and sanitation crisis in Africa.
The challenges the company will face is that, getting the fishermen who can buy the ice is sometimes quite difficult because of problems such as poor infrastructure and fishermen not willing to buy the product. Some prefer other methods such as drying fish before being taken to the market. Another reason is that some fishermen are not aware of the importance of keeping the fish afresh. This will cost the company to educate the farmers of proper food handle which will incur an extra cost. Lastly, many people in third world countries live in poverty and they cannot to buy ice for preservation. This will lower the selling power of the company and will require the company top setup a small plant before, as the people welfare increases, the company can expand and increase the number of manufactured ice.
Ice is more portable than liquid water. The main problem concerning water today is not scarcity but rather portability. Over 70 % of earth’s surface is covered by water, yet only a small percentage of that amount can be used as safe drinking water. The supply of safe water in the United States and other developing countries is not an issue. Even though people from these countries do not consume a lot of water there is still significant amount of clean water available. The situation is different in developing economies.
In order to have water in third world countries, women have to go and acquire it as men work to provide money. Some women walk up to four hours a day trying to acquire clean water for their families back home. In developed nations, another tragedy threatening the water problem is that available water is polluted, rendering it non-portable. Piped water systems installed in these countries operates in limited time or is not properly filtered to produce safe water.
Up to date, no organization or person has offered or implemented a working solution to water crisis in developing countries. However, there are several practicable solutions that can assist in the reduction of water related problems. Until enabling people to get water from them, surface water bodies should be handled, good filters should be built in piping networks, and people should still boil water before drinking.
Conclusion
Ice is an important tool as far as medical preservation is concerned. Ice is used to preserve vaccines semen as well as transplant organs for a long time. As far as the fishing industry is concerned, ice protects the fish from pathogens that are pathogenic which spoiling, and therefore helps hold the fish moist. Therefore, even though there are now more sophisticated technologies of chilling fish people from developing world who cannot afford these technologies can utilize ice in preserving fish. Clean water is also another problem which can be solved by educating people on ways of purifying water before they take.
References
- Andrew Langley and, Grant Sandi: Proceedings of the National Vaccine Storage Workshop Brisbane June 2004.
- Arjen Y Hoekstra The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society Routledge – 2013 .
- Barnes, Brian: Freeze Avoidance in a Mammal: Body Temperatures Below 0°C in an Arctic Hibernator: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1999
- Clucas Justin: Design and trials of ice boxes for use on fishing boats in Kakinada, India. Bay of Bengal Programme BOBP/WP67. Madras, India 1991
- Kelman, John: Storage of fish in chilled sea water. Torry Advisory Note 73. Torry Research Station, Aberdeen, 1977
- Nair, Balakrishnan: Studies on the chilled storage of fresh water fish. 1. Changes occurring during iced storage. J. Food Sci. Technol. 11, 118-122, 1977
- Sebastian Galiani: Water for life: The impact of Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality: The Journal of Political Economy 2005
- Steven Jackson: Writing the global water crisis: Technology & Culture, 2008
