Ice Water, Ice Banks & Refrigeration
Why dairies cool with ice water, how an ice bank turns refrigeration into storable cold, and the loads from reception to cold store.
10 min read · Jacob Willis, Net Zero Lead · Last reviewed July 2026
Dairies run on cold water the way breweries run on glycol, and for a reason the product dictates: milk must be chilled fast, in equipment cleaned daily, without any risk of freezing it onto a heat-exchange surface. The sector's answer is ice water, water held at 0.5 to 1 °C, and behind it one of industrial refrigeration's most elegant devices: the ice bank, which turns a refrigeration plant into a battery. This lesson covers the dairy cold chain from silo to despatch, the ice-water system at its centre, and why that system makes dairy refrigeration uniquely schedulable.
In this lesson
- 01The cold loads, silo to despatch
- 02Why ice water, and what an ice bank is
- 03Reading a dairy's electrical profile
- 04Sources and further reading