Marine Harvest Scotland has purchased a new eco-friendly slurry ice system for chilling salmon from ThorIce Ltd in Iceland, delivered by Slurry Ice Systems in Scotland.
Marine Harvest is well aware of the need for rapid chilling and needed a system that could consistently chill the fish to the correct temperature and guarantee the results every time.
The main objective of rapid and controlled chilling of fish and food products is to increase the shelf life by controlling the biological processes occurring in the flesh.
The process is something that can not be reversed if you get it wrong, quality can not be added later. That is why rapid chilling really matters from the start and that the chilling is controlled throughout whole process.
ThorIce and Marine Harvest carried out extensive trials in the spring of 2011. The main objective was to find how rapidly slurry ice would chill the salmon and how well controlled the process could be carried out.
The results from the trials were very promising and led to an order of the largest system ThorIce has produced to date. The system is a turnkey system, packed into a 40 foot container, delivering 7-10 tons an hour of slurry ice. It consists of two large slurry ice machines and precooler, all using eco-friendly refrigerants (NH3) and tuned to give the most effect for the least power consumption.
The whole system is a PED certified refrigeration system. It can be adjusted as a high performance system, producing large quantities of ice, but can also be run at more moderate levels, using less electricity per ton of ice.
Knowing the temperature and the quantity of the fish to be chilled, the machines can be adjusted to a predefined temperature.
