Ko. 4(l92l) BRINE-FREEZING 53 



building, unprovided with any special insulation. The freezing 

 work is done on the ground floor, usually with the street door wide 

 open. This room also contains the ice and salt stores, the salt, 

 however, being simply piled in heaps on the floor. An ice-crusher 

 breaks the blocks of natural ice employed in this factory into small 

 pieces, and these by means of an electric hoist are carried to the roof 

 and there shot down a shoot into two large square openings that 

 lead directly into the two main compartments of the brine reservoirs 

 in the basement beneath. Stretching right and left from the brine 

 tank openings on the floor level is a long narrow platform with low 

 sides, a few inches high. Along one side of the platform at a height 

 of between 3 and 4 feet is the brine supply main, a 2,^'2 or 3 in. 

 galvanized iron pipe fitted with short branches at intervals of about 

 3 feet. Each branch is fitted with a cock and a short length of 

 rubber hose. One end of the brine main connects with the bottom 

 of the brine reservoir in the basement; the other end is blind. A 

 centrifugal pump is fixed at the beginning of the main. 



The ice and brine reservoirs consist of two main compartments 

 into which ice is fed, and an end compartment in which the cold 

 brine accumulates and from which it passes to the brine main and 

 centrifugal pump. An ingenious system of incomplete vertical 

 partitions that act as baffle plates, causes the brine to pass through 

 two masses of crushed ice before reaching the end reservoir. An 

 essential feature of the system is the packing of the fish to be 

 frozen, into trade boxes prior to be the freezing operation. These 

 boxes, of a capacity of 50 kilos of fish (say I cwt.), are of special 

 construction, the bottom being made of rather narrow boards 

 spaced a short distance apart, so that the bottom permits of free 

 drainage for any liquid that may find its way into the box. The 

 boxes before being packed already have part of the cover nailed 

 on, a strip along each side. As packed with fish the open boxes 

 (the central board of the cover being still unplaced) are stacked in 

 piles of three on the narrow brining platform, each pile directly 

 opposite one of the short side branches with which the brine main 

 is furnished. When sufficient boxes are ready for freezing the free 

 end of the short rubber hose attached to each branch of the main is 

 placed inside the open top of the uppermost fish box in each pile 

 and the cock opened. Everything being now ready to begin 

 operations, the centrifugal pump is started and this forces a steam 

 of cold brine into the main and thence through the side branches in 



