Preventing Ice in Cold Storage with a High-Performance Dehumidifier
February 24, 2025
When operating a cold storage facility, one of the most frustrating things to manage is the build-up of ice. To protect the safety of your employees and ensure your product is consistently of its utmost quality, ice prevention should be a top priority for your business.
With this blog we will not only inform you of the risks that ice can cause to your everyday operations but also show you how high-performance dehumidifiers can tackle ice formation in cold storage for once and for all.
What Causes Ice Formation in Cold Storage?
Ice formation occurs when the water vapour that is present in humid air condenses and then freezes to become ice. Humid air enters the facility whenever doors are opened, which of course is an unavoidable part of operations. As much as you try and limit how long your doors are open for, you will never be able to truly eliminate ice formation without implementing humidity control.
You may find that even if you’ve taken some steps towards humidity control, such as installing vinyl curtains, ice is still a significant problem that drastically slows down your productivity and limits output. Unfortunately event the best vinyl curtains only reduce air movement by 65% and do even less for moisture control. Anyone who has tried this already knows what you get is a frozen over wall of vinyl that now prevents visibility, making the area higher in risk. Only a desiccant dehumidifier offers moisture protection through an open visible area.
Ice prevention is key to ensuring your operation continues to run smoothly. Once humidity enters a facility, ice can build up rapidly and immediately begin wreaking havoc. If you spot ice beginning to build up in your cold storage facility, it is important to take immediate action, as it can quickly derail your operations.
Why is it Important to Prevent Ice in Cold Storage?
There are many reasons why ice prevention should be a priority in your cold storage facility.
The biggest issue ice can cause is a blockage of air over your refrigeration system where the ice forms over the evaporator coil and this acts like a layer of insulation to the air. Any blockage reduces the efficiency of the system, causing it to work overtime to keep the temperature within the acceptable window. And if the ice is left unchecked, it could block the system completely and shut it down, bringing everything inside your cold storage to room temperature, ruining large batches of products and materials. The capacity of you refrigeration system keeps reducing as the ice forms and to compensate, more and more energy is used.
Removing the ice by hand is a time-consuming job. Some business owners are forced to empty and shut down their cold storage so that the ice can thaw, which means you need to leave space in your other freezers on a regular basis.
Ice in cold storage can also become a danger to your workers. As the floor becomes slippery, it becomes dangerous to operate forklift trucks, which becomes a hazard and often completely halts production. Ice also often comes with mist, which creates further risks as it becomes harder for workers to see what’s in front of them. Ice can very quickly create a deadly working environment; it is not worth the risk of employee injury and subsequent lawsuit.
Poor humidity control can also make equipment more likely to malfunction. Moisture rusts iron and steel, which can lead to very costly replacements. Ice can also prevent doors from sealing properly, leading to more temperature fluctuations and energy consumption. This can massively increase your energy costs, as refrigeration units have to work harder to maintain your desired temperature.
Ice can also wreck packaging, obscuring labels and damaging cardboard. At best this makes your products look less professional, and at worse it renders the label completely illegible and requires complete repackaging and labelling, which is both costly and time consuming. Illegible packaging can also be a compliance issue, don’t let ice ruin your reputation.
To ensure that customers are getting the best impression of your business, packages should be stored in an environment with completely dry air.
If your business produces consumable items, their quality can be compromised by ice, leading to a less consistent product. Your competitors will be therefore creating a better product line, and you’ll soon lose customers.
Controlling humidity through a high-performance dehumidifier ensures your operation runs as smoothly as possible, so that your product is the best that it can be. It also saves a significant amount of time on de-icing and keeps your team safe. It doesn’t take long to see huge savings in electricity and an even bigger increase in productivity.
How do High-Performance Dehumidifiers help with Ice Prevention?
Industrial dehumidifiers are designed to decrease the relative humidity (RH) of large factories and cold storage facilities. To put it simply, they take the moisture out of the air, leaving you with air that is too dry to create ice. This means you no longer have to worry about de-icing your facility and ice-related issues will be a thing of the past.
Rather than running around in circles trying to fix a never-ending problem, invest in high-performance dehumidifiers that cut off ice formation right at its source and allow you to focus on what matters most: running your business.
Desiccant dehumidifiers are a type of dehumidifier that is highly effective at extracting moisture from air, and its efficiency lends incredibly well to cold storage facilities. DEHUM dehumidifiers contain high performance silica gel, which is hygroscopic, meaning when placed within a facility they will absorb all the moisture from the air. This leaves the air so dry that it is impossible for ice to form.
Our high-performance dehumidifiers can be easily adjusted to match your exact environmental needs, as well as being able to adapt automatically to changes in temperature. This means you shouldn’t have to worry about manually adjusting to achieve your desired RH, the dehumidifier does the thinking for you.
You will notice an immediate impact on energy spending, we’ve had clients who’ve found their DEHUM dehumidifiers have paid for themselves within mere weeks.
Why Choose DEHUM for Ice Prevention Solutions?
A DEHUM dehumidifier is the most reliable and cost-effective option for ice prevention in cold storage.
Our humidity control systems are engineered and installed to streamline your production process while also fixing any humidity-related problems you’ve been having. No two systems are the same, each has been specifically tailored to best serve your space and your industry. Our process is incredibly involved too, we work with you every step of the way to ensure that you see maximum benefits from your system.
At DEHUM, we have been maintaining dehumidification equipment since 1996. We offer bespoke service agreements so we can optimise our approach to your business’s needs. This means that we can ensure you are getting the best quality humidity control that is within your budget. We track overall system performance to guarantee that we can get ahead of any potential issues before they arise.
We know that ice prevention can feel like fighting a losing battle, but hopefully our blog has helped you realise that there is a simple solution that can completely revolutionise your cold storage facility.
Whatever the industry, our specialist engineers are keen to make sure that unwanted ice formation is a thing of the past.
