Cornell professor of food science engineering Syed Rizvi and Michael E. Wagner, Ph.D. have received a patent on a process for producing Ice Cream instantly (within 3 seconds).
In the traditional method of making ice cream, the dairy-based mix flows through a heat-exchanging barrel, where ice crystals form and get scraped by blades.
With this new method, highly pressurized carbon dioxide passes over a nozzle that, in turn, creates a vacuum to draw in the liquid ice cream. When carbon dioxide goes from a high pressure to a lower pressure, it cools the mixture to about minus 70 degrees C – freezing the mixture into ice cream, which jets out of another nozzle into a bowl, ready to eat.
Instant ice cream can be served right on the spot, all without the challenges of commercial transportation “cold chains,” in which the product must be frozen and maintained at minus 20 degrees Celsius. To guard against failing spots in the cold-temperature transportation chain, commercial ice cream makers add stabilizers and emulsifiers.
The cold chain is energy intensive, making the new process desirable from an energy and cost perspective, as well as reducing undesirable additives.
Cornell is currently exploring licensing opportunities.
The patent "Process and apparatus for rapid freezing of consumable and non-consumable products using the expansion of dense gas " is available on-line.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:40PM (7 children)
No need to walk to the refrigerator, instant ice cream can be served right on the spot in your living room.
On the plus side, if you're African-American you're slightly less likely to be killed by police in your living room than you are on your way to the ice cream store.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:04PM (1 child)
One could convert an ink jet printer to spray fresh ice cream directly into your mouth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:35PM
Followed by whipped cream.
(Score: 5, Funny) by corey on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:19PM (3 children)
I was thinking that refrigerator manufacturers could integrate this into fridge designs, next to the ice maker and water tap on the front of the door.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by captain normal on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:06PM (2 children)
All you need is a fairly large pressurized vessel of carbon dioxide, containers for various ice cream mixes, a bunch of valves and sensors etc, etc...Somehow I don't think it's going to fit the average home kitchen. This looks like something that might work in a commercial setting, if you can figure out how to sell instant ice cream.
You can cool stuff with compressed CO2. I learned this on the east coast of Baja years ago. It was a very hot day, we had lots of cerveza on the boat but were out of ice were tired of drinking warm beer. One of the crew went below and came up with one of the fire extinguishers. He stacked some bottles of beer in a bucket and sprayed it with the extinguisher...instant cold beer.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @04:00PM (1 child)
That sounds really cool (haa... haa...), but it also seems really silly and reckless.
In the minimum, fire extinguishers are not cheap. A consumer one for home use is some $40, and I'm not sure if there is a special one needed for a boat. That seems like a lot to pay for some cold beer.
That's not even considering the danger of if there is a fire, suddenly reduced resources to fight it. Admittedly it is very rare to have a fire, but it is a risk.
How much did you pay for this trip? Was this one of those "charge tourists a lot, and cater to their every whim" type things?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday June 02 2020, @02:12AM
I pay about $20 to refill my 20 pound ( of liquid CO2 ) jug that runs my homemade beverage carbonator.
Although one jug lasts me about a year, I can go through that jug in minutes if I vent the CO2 as a refrigerant.
Remember those frosty mug coolers and how fast they used those expensive little seltzer water cartridges? Or those really lossy sodapop makers and how fast they used CO2. That was why I built my own carbonator. Those things advertised on TV have really expensive consumables.
Incidentally, I think "Mini Melts" and "Dipping Dots" are also cryogenic ice cream. Patented in 1992 or so?
Releasing large quantities of CO2 in confined areas is not a good idea. Air is already about 4/5 nitrogen already.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:56PM
Q: What did George Floyd say to the ice cream salesman? A: Can you break a twenty?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:54PM (2 children)
The expensive ice cream places often let you have free samples.
The cheap places don't but it doesn't matter as much.
I remember a liquid nitrogen ice cream place that eventually went bust. The staff said they needed about 1 month training before they could start work.
I guess this will require less training to operate safely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @01:22AM
> less training...
Micro controller will be in charge, any idiot can push the button.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Monday June 01 2020, @12:01PM
I've never seen this commercially, but I think pretty much every university physics or chemistry society ties this at least once a year. You need to be a bit careful that it doesn't get cold enough to give you frostbite, but it tastes quite interesting. Apparently you get much more irregular crystalline structures when you freeze it this quickly so the end result tastes lighter than conventional ice cream.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:08PM
This way, I bet you can inject the CO2 into the ice cream itself, carbonating it.
"Yes, I'd like two floats, root beer, and coke with cherry ice cream, please. I'll have the root beer the traditional way, my kid wants hers in a cone."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:18PM (2 children)
it requires the ice cream to be injected into the cooling chamber as 20-100 micron droplets....
NO CHUNKY MONKEY = NOT ACCEPTABLE
(Score: 2) by ze on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:59PM
Couldn't another nozzle blast the chunks into the emerging icecream stream? Or there's always doing mix-ins cold stone style.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:04PM
Could you add things like M&Ms, cookie dough, chocolate chips etc after the ice cream is sprayed out? Perhaps have these poured into the chamber in which the ice cream is being jetted out?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:21PM (4 children)
Gelatai will like this, unless it is much different from the "traditional" method (I know Italians do not reveal fully their recipes, so if you say traditional you say secret and you have more trouble comparing with that). Industrial ice cream is a sugary pale imitation of icecream, how it gets formed is quite less relevant.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:11PM (1 child)
"Ice cream?" I think you mean "guar gum foam". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guar_gum [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:32PM
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-deluxe-lowfat-watermelon-chocolate-chip-sherbert/0001111004914 [kroger.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @05:59AM (1 child)
Put it through spectral analysis. Done.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 01 2020, @08:25PM
Spectral analysis of a dish won't get you the recipe.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:29PM (2 children)
I remember Alton Brown doing something like this on a show by re-purposing a water cooler and fire extinguisher. Wonder if that was listed in the prior art for the patent.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:35PM
Yeah, and there's countless WW2 movies of the troops on the Pacific islands chilling their beers with the CO2 extinguisher too. I guess the patent is for the machine itself.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:54PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:16PM (2 children)
They've been making ice cream on-the-spot at local carnivals and art fairs using liquid nitrogen for at least a decade now... it might take 10 seconds instead of 3, but they do it without fancy (patentable) nozzles, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Monday June 01 2020, @09:42AM (1 child)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 01 2020, @12:27PM
Depends how long you want to keep it. I don't believe the dewars at the fair had any additional refrigeration beyond a very slow bleed off of the LN2. I also seem to remember getting a monthly delivery of LN2 at the University, again to an insulated tank about 5' tall maybe 18-24" in diameter, and it didn't have any additional refrigeration going on beyond a purge of the little amount of gas that vaporized as a result of the imperfect insulation.
I agree, CO2 is not as costly or complex to handle, also not as dangerous - evidenced by the relative lack of CO2 "accidents" at the tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of soda dispenser stations around the world. About the worst you can do with a CO2 tank is knock the valve off the top and launch it like a rocket. Also: people suffocating in CO2 feel it and react strongly to find good air, whereas LN2 is a painless suffocation. Good invention, should be patented. Flash freeze ice cream? Been there, done that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:47PM (2 children)
I could see specific parts being patentable if they're all shiny and new but the idea of making shit cold by exploiting phase change isn't by any stretch of the imagination novel or non-obvious. It's been done so many times and in so many ways (your body even does it with sweat) that no specific application of it should be patentable by now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @01:52AM
This technique is one of the ways they make fine metal powders. They heat a metal or metal combination and shoot it through a nozzle using high pressure (typically an inert gas) to make a very fine metal powder.
Using a method like this to make ice cream seems to be novel, so worth of a patent.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday June 01 2020, @04:22AM
I was wondering about that myself. Liquid nitrogen ice cream has been a popular demonstration in science classes for a very long time. It's sometimes used in culinary competitions as well since it;s a lot faster than an ice cream machine and the ice crystals formed are extremely small.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @12:56AM (1 child)
But How am I to eat the ice cream while wearing a face mask?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @01:23AM
You cut a convenient hole in the mask for inserting ice cream and meat popsicles.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday June 01 2020, @05:28AM
"No need for refrigeration of the supply chain."
Day One. New Store, big opening sale. Cheap instant icecream for everyone. Yay!!
Day Two. Sales down a bit. Instant icecream for some people.
Day Three. New sign out the front. "Instant Frozen Yogurt".
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @06:31AM (1 child)
AKA dry ice - i.e., evaporate the dry ice with quickness to freeze up the cream mixture.
Once refined, maybe suitable for novelty snack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @09:45AM
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday June 01 2020, @07:52AM
Even with new patents, there are some things that just will not change when it comes to ice cream.
This is still good even after aging nearly 30 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-csjbwo5s [youtube.com]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Monday June 01 2020, @03:51PM
I wouldn't describe something at -70°C as being "ready to eat".