To study the optimum operating condition of industrial ice making

an experimental system of the vacuum flash of ethanol solution under adsorption was designed based on the theory of flash evaporation. Under the same initial flash pressure (100 Pa)

the effects of concentration

environment temperature

and size of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) on the flash properties were studied. The results indicated that adding ethanol could not only avoid recrystallization but also decrease the supercooling degree of water. Higher concentrations were found to be adverse to the flash process. The flash property of 5% mass concentration of ethanol was stable

and the supercooling degree of water could be decreased by as much as 60.62%. With the rise in the environment temperature

the flash rate increased as the flash percent factor increased from 25.45% to 44.04% for an increase in the environment temperature from 10 °C to 20 °C. Thus

lower environment temperatures were shown to be beneficial to the flash process. With the decrease in the practical size of MWCNT

the supercooling of the MWCNT-ethanol solution decreased. The ice packing factor (IPF) of the solution to which 5–18 nm MWCNT was added was 51.45% higher than that of the 5% mass concentration ethanol and 38.22% higher than that of water. The supercooling degree of the solution was 24.36% smaller than that of ethanol and 70.21% smaller than that of water

which shows the MWCNT-ethanol solution has a significant effect on reducing the supercooling degree of water and improving the IPF.