Rink Ice Water Composition

[Query]

I don't know about ice building additives. But many rinks use distilled water, to keep the ice clear, so you can see through to the hockey paint. I suspect that also reduces rust, since some ions are said to increase rust. (But it's obvious that creating distilled water increases energy costs.)

Last I checked, most Olympic level skaters use JW or MK blades. That's partly history and marketing - JW/MK sometimes gives away blades to high profile skaters and coaches, and they apparently pay for endorsements. But is it possible that the JW/MK steels have a property that gives high end skaters using them a competitive advantage over the steels that corrode less easily?

I assume the o.p. has already determined that his preferred skate tech can sharpen well the blades he bought. But it makes sense for skaters with techs who can't, to stay with parallel sided uniform thickness blades that fit in more blade holders, and whose shapes are less sensitive to minor rocker profile changes.

Perhaps it also makes sense to choose blades with a more curved (shorter) spin rocker radius, like most or all MK/JW blades, because it makes it less necessary to keep re-emphasizing the transition point between the two rockers, as I find necessary on my (Ultima) blades. But I assume the o.p. bought what he wanted.

[nicklaszlo]

But many rinks use distilled water, to keep the ice clear

To distill water, it has to be vaporized.  If the ice is 200 feet by 80 feet, each resurfacing needs 2 mm of water, and electricity is $0.2 per killowatt hour, that would be $0.38 extra cost to vaporize the water for each resurfacing.  This assumes the water was already heated to just below the boiling point for free.

That is cheaper than I expected.

However, I would be very surprised if any rinks routinely distill water.

[AlbaNY]

To distill water, it has to be vaporized.  If the ice is 200 feet by 80 feet, each resurfacing needs 2 mm of water, and electricity is $0.2 per killowatt hour, that would be $0.38 extra cost to vaporize the water for each resurfacing.  This assumes the water was already heated to just below the boiling point for free.

That is cheaper than I expected.

However, I would be very surprised if any rinks routinely distill water.

I don't know anything about rinks using distilled water (we don't, and I'm sure none I've been at do.)  However, there is some resurfacer technology that produces clearer ice.  It's an add on feature available from Zamboni and other brands that does something (I don't recall the details at all tonight) to greatly improve the ice clarity and quality compared to the traditional design.  The new Zamboni we ordered will have this. 
I don't even want to think about the water and electric costs, yikes.  We go through SOOOOOO much hot water!

There are no additives, but I bet some of the variations noticed are likely due to local water mineral contents?

[FigureSpins]

Other than a very-impressive science fair experiment, I've never heard of a rink that uses distilled water to make ice.  (Skating Magazine, May 2011)

Rinks use a water filtration system to adjust the water used for ice making, but to be honest, they also use tap water.  Maybe the tap is connected to a filtration system, but it's not distilled.

[FigureSpins]

at some of the week-long camps I have attended, I see skaters that I skate with all year suddenly have rust problems.

I don't think it's additives; it's probably just from having the blades on the ice for long periods of time or not being able to dry the blades off well between sessions.  Having organized/attended some camps and clinics, I've noticed kids taking a break with the guards on the blades rather than having to tie/untie. 

[tstop4me]

I don't know about ice building additives. But many rinks use distilled water, to keep the ice clear, so you can see through to the hockey paint. I suspect that also reduces rust, since some ions are said to increase rust. (But it's obvious that creating distilled water increases energy costs.)

You've posted on the use of distilled water for ice rinks several times, here and elsewhere.  I'd be interested in supporting references.  I've always been skeptical because purifying water through distillation is a very expensive process, when you take into account all the operating costs [well beyond the simplified assumptions of Reply #13]. It's typically done when you want to both purify and sterilize the water.  Rinks hardly present a sterile environment, especially with hockey jocks about.   

Just for kicks, I did a web search for use of distilled water at ice rinks.  I found the article cited by FigureSpins concerning an eighth-grade science project.  I also found an  MS thesis concerning ice quality at ice rinks.  It does mention distillation as one potential method of purifying water.  Neither discusses what is actually used at commercial rinks.

But here are two references that do:

(cont'd below due to word count limit)

[tstop4me]

1) https://www.athleticbusiness.com/facilities/stadium-arena/article/15141378/quality-ice-begins-with-pure-water-and-thrives-through-attention-to-detail  .  This reference discusses water treatment at NHL hockey rinks.  Preferred method:

"Deionization and filtration of the water used to build ice sheets is now widespread at all levels, allowing for the removal of impurities such as suspended solids and gases."

But note, NHL rinks found that you don't want the water to be too pure:

"But as one NHL franchise discovered five years ago, even starting with the purest water possible doesn't guarantee peak ice performance. The Vancouver Canucks found themselves near the bottom third of the 30-team league's ice rankings (which aren't made public), but couldn't pinpoint why. An engineer at General Motors Place asked operators of facilities ranked among the top five for water samples, and later determined that the purified water in Vancouver was, in fact, too pure.

Specifically, it lacked a certain concentration of salts found in the league's higher-quality ice. "There has never been a sheet of ice made for hockey that was absolutely pure," says Leclerc, who has worked on ice surfaces in some of Canada's coldest, driest regions. "By adding impurities, you're trying to find that magic balance between ice that's so hard that it becomes unusable and ice that you can exert a certain amount of control over.""

(cont'd below due to word count limit)

[tstop4me]

(2) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-championship-curling-ice-water-treatment-robert-huehmer .  This reference discusses water treatment at curling rinks.  It provides a detailed discussion of how impurities screw up ice quality.  Their preferred methods:

"Water for ice making is usually supplied from an onsite well, or from a municipal water source. Ice technicians typically use either ion exchange (IX), or reverse osmosis (RO), to treat the water. While some rinks use IX beds with onsite regeneration, most do not want the health and safety concerns of strong acid and base. As a result, most curling rinks use carbon filtration for dechlorination followed by 3.6 cu.ft. rental IX canisters or an RO system. Typically, two or more two-bed (cation/anion) systems are installed in parallel to provide the desired flow rate. A flow-rate of 10 to 12 gpm is typically used to install ice for a major competition."

There is a good discussion of the pros and cons of deionization vs reverse osmosis.

Note that neither of these references mentions distillation as an alternative. 

When I worked in a semiconductor process lab, a central reverse osmosis plant provided initially purified water piped to the labs.  The water was then further purified by a point-of-use multistage filtration unit (particulate filters, activated carbon filters, deionization filters); no distillation here either.

[Query]

I'm in a bit of a rush, but it looks like you are mostly right. In particular, distillation USED TO BE either the most common, or one of the most common ways to purify water. But there are cheaper methods now, such as reverse osmosis and filtering. Distillation may have fairly low up front costs, but as you say, the energy costs are very high, even if you try to recover some of the waste heat.

That change has become common in other areas too - e.g., commercial desalination of sea water to produce fresh water rarely now uses distillation - but often used to.

And there are now many commercially practical ways to recover waste heat from other things, like power generation, for other purposes.

E.g., https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/ice-rink2.htm mentions using deionized water. You can find lots of similar links.

However, https://nuaquasystems.com/blogs/news/what-is-a-deionized-water-system-and-how-does-it-work does mention distilled water is sometimes used in deionization systems, AFAICT, that isn't very common.

https://patents.justia.com/patent/5536411 mentions distillation as an alternate procedure to reverse osmosis for rinks.

I found a few specialized links:

https://icelegendsaustralia.com/legends-2/article_40.html (a very early rink)

https://tccurling.org/donate-copy (only applied to a curling rink)

https://worldwidescience.org/topicpages/t/tekiyosei+iwatsuki+shimosa.html (for research - to try to make a very high speed rink)

Of course distilled water is frequently added to maintain batteries (specifically, non-sealed lead-acid batteries), including in ice surfacing machines.

E.g., see

https://lebomag.com/ride-sally-ride-zamboni/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzv44yI4ajo

But I admit that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

(Oddly enough Engo says https://www.engo.it/en/ice-resurfacing-machines/frequently-asked-questions/ says not to use distilled water in their machines.)

Natural snow is of course (naturally) distilled water. But again, that has nothing to do with what I am talking about.

So, you are basically right. I can't find anything that says it is common now.

Someone once told me their ice rink had distillation hardware for this purpose. But it seems it's outdated.

[tstop4me]

However, https://nuaquasystems.com/blogs/news/what-is-a-deionized-water-system-and-how-does-it-work does mention distilled water is sometimes used in deionization systems, AFAICT, that isn't very common.

That reference is in desperate need of proofreading.

"A DI system is frequently used in conjunction with, or as a substitute of, a reverse osmosis system. When combined with a reverse osmosis system, distilled water may be used to generate reliable, high-quality deionized water with no effort.reliable

Almost all of the dissolved solids in the water will be removed by the RO system (90 percent to 99 percent) before it goes into the DI tank. This tank will remove any remaining ions in the water after the RO system.

Placing a RO before your DI tanks will help you to get a considerably longer run time out of your DI tanks while also lowering your costs significantly."

<<Emphasis added.>>  They obviously meant "DI system" not "distilled water", since that section discusses the combination of RO (reverse osmosis) and DI (deionization) systems; and note additional typos.  [But note:  RO water is used as feed water to produced distilled water when purified sterilized water is needed.]  Below, they do discuss differences between deionization and distillation, but note the heading (and additional typos):

"The Difference Between Deionized Water and Dilution  <<Emphasis added.>>

Distilled water is clean water that has been refined by boiling it until its constituents are reduced to vapor, which may then be cooled to become pure distilled water. "While"

Deionized water, on the other hand, is generated by putting the source water through a cation or anion exchange system, which eliminates all ions from the water once it has been deionized."

https://patents.justia.com/patent/5536411 mentions distillation as an alternate procedure to reverse osmosis for rinks.

This is a patent.  The broadest term for one key process step is "demineralization".  Their primary example for demineralization is reverse osmosis.  The patent also covers demineralization via deionization and distillation, in case someone tries to work around the patent claims by one of those means; but they don't address commercial viability.

[tstop4me]

Distillation may have fairly low up front costs, but as you say, the energy costs are very high, even if you try to recover some of the waste heat.

I wouldn't expect the initial cost of a commercial scale distillation plant to be cheap.

<<Mod Note:  Discussion of water treatment split off into a new thread.  The original thread concerned Apex Supreme blades.>>

[AlbaNY]

Query, I learnt something new yesterday.  Last week my boss was at a yearly convention, NEISMA I believe?  There are all kinds of classes and vendors showing off equipment and products, I guess. 

Anyway, he told me he plans to try a product recommended to him by a rink manager from Minnesota who he knows.  There is indeed an additive some rinks use in the Zamboni tank.  This stuff is some kind of powder we'd have to add that will make the ice more clear and also allow us to fill the tank with cold water rather than hot.  He said it will remove minerals from the ice we have now?  I cannot imagine how but will find out more if it arrives in time for me to see the packaging. 

Beware to skaters in the first week or two of its use.  He said it'll make the ice feel sticky and terrible with minerals or something during the adjustment period.  O.O 
This makes me hope I'm gone before it is trialed, because I don't want to skate my last practices on weird ice.   

[supersharp]

Please share what you can find out about this product, I have some friends that help with training at a small rink in Mexico and they have no hot water available.  The ice is reportedly terrible.

[AlbaNY]

Please share what you can find out about this product, I have some friends that help with training at a small rink in Mexico and they have no hot water available.  The ice is reportedly terrible.

I sure will let you know.   

[Query]

Let's see. Internet sources say the water tank on a Zamboni typically holds around 200 gallons.

I get why purifying the water might be a bit expensive.

But would heating the tank water would be roughly equivalent in energy expenditure to a few hot showers? And most rinks have shower facilities, and therefore hot water heaters, right? I've seen Internet estimates that place the cost of heating a gallon of water at $0.01 to $0.02. So 200 gallons should cost very roughly $2 - $4 to heat, though I'm not sure exactly what temperature Zamboni water is best heated to. Probably, far less than the cost of rink refrigeration, in most climates, at least for indoor rinks. Or the labor cost of re-painting the ice because it is less transparent. Or the more frequent ice surfacing you presumably need because it doesn't do as good a job.

So - can you help me figure out why using cold water might make economic sense to a rink facility?

The only thing I can think of is that the water freezes a little faster on the ice faster if it starts cold. So maybe it reduces a little the time the rink is out of service between sessions.

[AlbaNY]

Please share what you can find out about this product, I have some friends that help with training at a small rink in Mexico and they have no hot water available.  The ice is reportedly terrible.

Supersharp, here are the photos my boss sent me of the promotional brochure and an explanation of what the composition is.  The product is called Icemax, and apparently it's mostly a protein.  Interesting, but I leave in less than a week and will miss out on seeing it personally.  I can keep in touch about what his opinion is on it, and hopefully it could really help in Mexico especially since the ice can be kept a couple degrees warmer with it, they claim.

[AlbaNY]

Query, I have to check the hot water temperature tomorrow when I work, because offhand I do not recall.  There is a big hot water heater unit that is only for the Zamboni garage.  The showers have a separate and more normal looking hot water heater. 

I suppose by your estimates that the hot water isn't as expensive as I worried.  We use it to more quickly clean the augers, and cold water takes ages to do that if the switch needs to be reset, even in summer.  I can say that I accidentally left the hot water on all night once, and my boss has done it too.  He said every driver has done it, and it is pretty expected a few times a year.  Yikes.    (At least it was not me who switched off the compressor when closing up one night!   )

The ice here gets painted once a year, never more.  (In Bucharest they add giant decals as paid ads and switch them out more frequently, but they also do not paint the ice and have it all white otherwise.)  It doesn't cost all that much for the ice painting.  Several people at a bit over minimum wage for a day or two, and the clarity of the ice seems to have no bearing on it other than that I was more careful to stay in the lines perfectly than it seems I needed to be.   

I will ask my boss tomorrow what the savings are. 
I can say that if I go grocery shopping and get a lot of items under 5$ the bill is often worse than I would like, so I assume it's about the added up cost over the year which would be significant?  Each cut uses that much water and fuel besides blade sharpening and whatever other maintenance.  I'm not a numbers sort of person, but I think it could save over $1000 per regularly scheduled cut a year at $3 of hot water cost each?

At our rink the ice is not usually out of service at all.  We have to rush to remove the nets or whatever and complete the cut, all in ten minutes, for the next skaters to begin.  I wish we had 15!

[Query]

Don't waste any time doing anything for me - I don't need it. I was just curious.

Here is Icemax's link: https://www.icemax.info

It has a lot of info on how they claim it works.

I was only roughly estimating the cost of heating the water put in the Zamboni tank. Not of the other uses you mention, though I wonder if the additive would help there.

I also didn't count the cost of pumping the heat from the Zamboni water back out, using the rink refrigeration systems, or the extra dehumidification needed because of the evaporation of warm water.

Icemax claims the rink ice can be kept warmer and still deliver how quality skating ice - If true that could be a major cost savings, because many rinks use A LOT of electricity for the ice refrigeration systems.

The calculation gets even more complicated if they use heat pumps to transfer heat. E.g., if the ice refrigeration system and/or water heater pumps the heat back into the facility air to heat it. (Many ice rinks heat the air above the ice, I guess to make customers more comfortable, and to reduce relative humidity, so there is less fog - though they often also use dehumidifiers to reduce fog.) Because sometimes heat pumps use less energy than simple heaters.

So I greatly oversimplified things in my cost estimate. So just ignore my estimate.

BTW, Icemax's claims remind me of Kurt Vonnegat's SF novel "Cat's Cradle", though the results are of course less extreme.

P.S. Alba, I suspect people will have trouble reading the text in the images you provided, because of the limited resolution. Maybe you took a picture using a cell phone, which sometimes doesn't work well.

P.P.S. Icemax (and related product Snowmax) has also been claimed to have benefits for synthetic snow for ski resorts, and possible cloud seeding.

For additional info on Icemax and Snowmax, see

https://www.dover.nh.gov/Assets/government/city-operations/2document/planning/Energy/energy-improvements-old/I6DEA.pdf

https://www.killingtonzone.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41303 (claims that snow max could make you sick)

https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/8935791/Faking_It_The_Science_of_Artificial_Snow/ (discusses Snowmax, and speculates on environmental impact.)

https://www.snomax.com/product/effects.html

[Query]

Let's speculate: Do Icemax and Snowmax make sense?

Liquids can freeze into a solid, in different ways. They can form a "glass", with atoms and/or molecules positioned and oriented in chaotic fashion. Or a "crystal", where they fit against each other in an organized reptitive fashion, like most or all the ice in ice rinks and snow flakes.

After water is spread on the ice surface, it cools down to a "supercooled liquid" - like a glass, but the atoms or molecules are freer to move. I guess top ice sheet gradually grows upwards, but forming many small "crystal grains".

At crystal grain boundaries, a solid might have empty space, where there is no material. Which I guess, would soften the bulk material would not be as hard, because you could press it down hard to push atoms or molecules into those spaces. Or there could choatic material between the grains. Liquid water is packed more densely than ice near the freezing point. So that would make the bulk material harder, but melt easier?? But I don't know intergrain water ice is like, with or without Icemax.

Ice rink ice in ice rinks has grains with 2 different "isomorphs" - molecular stacking patterns. Is that important?

Ice can form much faster, if there are "nucleation sites" dispersed throughout the liquid (or air, for snow), which tend to bond to and organize the material into patterns near them similar to a normal ice crystal structure (called "seeding") In the case of water, seeds can be small pieces of dust, bacteria and bacterial proteins (like are present in Icemax and Snowmax). Otherwise, perhaps the ice more gradually grows upwards from the top ice surface.

Icemax's and Snowmax's websites claims that the bacteria and bacterial protean they contain seeds the crystals faster than dust. They say this creates a denser, harder surface, which lasts longer, and works well at higher temperatures than pure water. I can only guess why or if these might be true.

Rapid ice growth reduces the time spent between sessions that can't be sold. But how would affect the ice from a skater's perspective? Maybe figure, hockey, speed skaters, and curlers would disagree. Skating ice is a compromise between being able to push hard sideways, which requires a hard surface, and being able to glide a long time, which requires a warmer, softer surface.

[Query]

Figure skaters avoid sideslip, and try to only slide along the length of the blade, except during stops, and perhaps jumps, creating deep narrow grooves. Aggressive hockey players often slide sideways, sheering off a shallow layer of ice. (That's oversimplified and overgeneralized.) Curlers use grippy shoes that aren't supposed to slide, but push a large curling stone that should slide as far as possible. Figure skaters tend to prefer a little warmer and softer ice than hockey players and I think also speed skaters, but colder and harder than curlers.

Likewise, for Snowmax, there are many types of snow, and many styles of skiing, snowboarding, and sledding. Could there be disagreement there too?

Would water slush - ice cubes ground up into little ice seed crystals, like in a slushy, be as effective, or more so, as Icemax? An interesting experiment. But perhaps not patentable, so not advertised. And could it harm the Zamboni or create other problems?

What about the claim that the claim that you can fill the Zamboni with Icemax seeded cold water instead of hot water? Why wouldn't that be needed with Icemax? It would potentially be a significant savings in time and money, both by reducing the time to freeze, and reducing the need for refrigeration and dehumidification. I assume the hot water is to melt the top surface, to get rid of roughness.

And again, I don't know if hockey, speed, figure, and curling users would feel the same about that change.

Icemax's website claims the ice itself can be kept a little warmer, and still provide a good skating surface. Why and how? Once again, I don't know if hockey, speed, figure, and curling users would feel the same about that change.

Can someone with more knowledge correct and augment what I just said, or at least speculate more intelligently?

What about the unverified 3rd party claim that the bacteria and bacterial protean in Icemax and Snowmax might be a health hazard? The manufacturers says the bacteria are natural, and are already involved in natural snow formation. But perhaps the introduced concentration is higher? Without hard evidence, should we just ignore it? Some bacteria already grow in indoor ice rinks. A known health hazard that most of us ignore, unless the rink has no dehumidification.

[AlbaNY]

Query, I don't know, but all that is interesting to contemplate. 

[Query]

Perhaps so many things about the physics of water ice are guesswork, that it might be impossible to answer some of my questions.

But the Icemax and Snowmax provider is claiming that introducing their bacterial and bacterial protein seeds ("nucleation sites") improves the ice in so many ways - that it forms quicker, can be kept warmer, produces a superior ice surface, and that the water in the Zamboni doesn't need to be hot - as to seem improbable. I feel intuitively there just ought to be some tradeoffs, even if everything is done exactly right, at the "right" temperatures and concentrations.

For example, if introducing many dispersed seeds means more but smaller crystal grains form, wouldn't that lower rather than raise the effective melting point? (Because at the boundaries between crystal gains, the water molecules would be well bonded to fewer other water molecules.)

I suppose it is possible that ordinary rink ice, formed without dispersed seeds is actually extremely imperfect - that there are many, many regions where no crystal forms, or many, many crystal defects, and that problem is fixed by introducing dispersed seeds.

Or maybe Icemax preferentially creates one crystal isomorph, so there are fewer boundaries between different stacking regions.

I've been told by several rink managers that when ice is cut without hot water, which is sometimes done to save time, the surface is much rougher. It's hard to believe that problem is fixed so simply.

[Query]

Maybe we could ask rinks we skate at whether they use IceMax, and what they think of it?

My favorite ice rink in my area is the Bowie Ice Arena. Very smooth ice, lots of time between sessions to do a good ice cut, experienced Zamboni drivers, they try to adapt ice temperature to type of skating (figure and public generally are a little warmer than hockey sessions), and do wet cuts with hot water in the Zamboni tank. The air above the ice is warmer than in some rinks, and I never see fog inside the building.

I asked a manager there how they treat the water they use in the Zamboni.

According to the manager, they use tap water, the same as what local residents get in their homes. No additives, no conditioning, no purification. The manager was not familiar with IceMax.

Their water comes from WSSC, an ordinary public water utility, but perhaps they use more than one reservoir, so I don't know if WSSC delivers similar water to everyone. I don't know what the mineral content of the water delivered to the rink is.

The ice surface looks white. One can see the hockey paint through the ice reasonably well.

So much for my theory that rinks with nice ice must purify their water.

(However today their ice seemed rather cold and hard during the public session, which I don't like. Might have something to do with the very hot weather we've had the last few days.)

[AlbaNY]

Query, I'm going to add my two cents.  I will not likely talk to the rink managers in NY until at least September.  I'm not even sure if my former rink has tried the product yet.

"My" rink had some of the best ice around.  Just one other in that area, that I never skated at yet, had softer ice that figure skaters liked even more.  We did not use additives, and no other rinks did either.  My boss kept the temperature low with a focus on hockey, but we had a nice sheet.  No fog ever, no stalagmites...

One rink that people sometimes said had crappier ice used an Olympia rather than Zamboni, but some of their problem was bad edges and also more use overall.  Their ice was even less clear than ours, but I don't know the reason.  They painted their lines a couple months after us and both had equally blurred lines right away.  They also never had the fog I've read complaints about.  This is a thing the dehumidifying system takes care of (or doesn't.)  Fog is something that shouldn't happen with proper systems and care (and $ for it.)

Ice at a rink only looks white due to the paint under it, btw.  I'm going to do a Youtube video about that process eventually.   

[Query]

Ice at a rink only looks white due to the paint under it, btw.  I'm going to do a Youtube video about that process eventually. 

Oh! So that's why one can still see the colored hockey lines and circles - presumably the white paint goes under them.

beckerarena.com/what-kind-of-paint-to-use-on-ice says the white paint makes it easier to see hockey pucks. Based on the pictures there, it makes the ice look better too.

We did have one rink here that had a lot of problems with fog (and mold), until new management replaced the dehumidifiers.

The rink I worked at had fog at night - maybe they turned off the dehumidifiers at night. I think I remember that it made the ice a bit rough in the morning. (Of course they could have surfaced it in the morning rather then at night - but doing it their way let them not pay for Zamboni drivers until later in the day - they mostly reserved mornings for figure skaters and ice dancers, which probably didn't bring in as much money, so keeping them happy wasn't as high a priority.) Their outdoor mini-rink also sometimes had fog.

I guess dense fog would be very bad for hockey - you really couldn't see the puck.