With the coming of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, China’s artificial ice rink construction will be in rapid development. A parametric evaluation of the cooling pipe in a direct evaporation rink was performed by numerical simulation. The results showed that the influence of the temperature of the antifreeze pipe on the ice surface temperature can be ignored. The evaporation temperature of the working medium in the cooling pipe is between −32 °C and −22.4 °C to ensure the ice surface temperature is between −5 °C and −3 °C. With the increase in the cooling pipe spacing, the required evaporation temperature of the working medium in the cooling pipe and the uniformity of the ice surface temperature decreased. The required evaporation temperature of the working medium in the cooling pipe decreases by 1.2–1.5 °C for every 10 mm increment of spacing. With the increase in the cooling pipe diameter, the required evaporation temperature of the working medium in the cooling pipe and the uniformity of the ice surface temperature increase. The required evaporation temperature of the working medium in the cooling pipe increases by 2.2–2.9 °C for every 5 mm increment of diameter. The maximum temperature difference of ice surface temperature ranged from 0.004 °C to 0.111 °C.
The ice-making process is an important factor that affects the ice quality and the energy consumption of ice rinks. An unsteady heat transfer model is established and validated for the ice-making process. The transient temperature variation and ice thickness growing characteristics during the ice-making process are analyzed. The freezing time of a water layer and the final temperature of the stabilized ice layer are quantified. The effects of ice rink structural parameters on the ice-making process are studied. The results show that the water temperature variations during the process go through three stages. The ice-growing process mainly occurs in the second stage. The ice-making process takes about 305 min–420 min for a water layer of 5 mm thickness. The reduction in the ice-making time and the decrease in the final temperature of the stabilized ice layer can be attained by reducing the water layer thickness, the surface heat flux, the cooling pipe spacing, the fluid temperature in the cooling pipe, or the top concrete thickness. Among them, the influences of the thickness of the water layer, the surface heat flux, and the fluid temperature in the cooling pipe are more significant. As the thickness of the water layer decreases from 7 mm to 3 mm, the total ice-making time decreases by about 37.6%. The ice-making time is reduced by 17.1% with the surface heat flux decreasing from 330 W/m2 to 250 W/m2. The ice-making time is reduced by 21.4% with the cooling pipe temperature decreasing from −15.5 °C to −19.5 °C.
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