Ice Packs vs Ice vs Techni Ice, what should be in your Esky or Cooler?

What's your best tip for keeping the drinks icey cold in the cooler?

This scientific and well conducted video earned you a sub!

Actually, ice blocks wins because if item was at bottom they would be in slurry as soon they formed so it would have the "dip" on chart much longer around middle part absolutely clapping techno ice bullshit and ice packs. Redo test with thermocouple at bottom prove me other wise.

-much smarter individual

Thank you sir

You know the guys trying to sell you the new-you-beaut steak knives and the latest. fastest, hi-tech, 18v potato peeler at the show in side show alley.....
Even though I like the TI product.....this test is a flawed because cold goes down and product being cooled will never reach lowest temperature trying to cool from the bottom up. Refrigerate source should always be above or atleast to the side of the product being cooled. ***Ever bought prawns displayed on top of ice like at Woolies, or something????.... Wifey was not happy.... 🤮🤥🙂😄

Do yourself a favour and get a Techni ice box, they are awesome!
Thanks for the in depth video 👍👍

That was a "cool" video

Fascinating, I enjoyed that vid. 👍👍

Epic effort well done may God reward your good efforts with rectifying your affairs.

Great comparison. Never heard of techni-ice.

mate why do you call the cubes "block ice" in this video but "party ice" in the other, where "block ice" is the large solid blocks? bloody confusing...

You’re the first person I’ve seen break it down to an objective scientific process, and compare them by equal volume in an equal environment. One thing to note, is you’re spot on about the latent heat energy. But it’s also interesting to see them all finish at the same point. That’s even more proof that you did the experiment correctly. It’s like the various slope experiment. You have 5 balls at the top of 5 differently arced slopes. They all start at the same elevation and end at the same elevation. There’s no wind or rolling resistance. They’ll all finish at the same time. But the steep slope will dump its potential earlier than the even slope. Phase change does require more energy than normal. And having a substance with a lower freezing point will absorb more energy early on. But ultimately, as long as they all have the same mass, they all have the same potential. So it is significantly better for items that need to stay frozen, because it wants to absorb the most heat below the freeze point of water. But when it comes to keeping drinks cool, they’re all basically the same. I would still recommend a thin layer of ice with any ice pack, simply to fill in the gaps with more thermal mass.

Great informative video. Nicely done 👍

Is this ice can use for cocktails

You should've used a weight measurement and that way you would discount the influence of the packaging of your volume measurement which would've been far more accurate. In other words, weigh the package before water was introduced and then weigh it after would give you the total volume of water.

Hardly a new idea or new kids. They've been around since the 80s! Superb product and their range of coolers is ace. Great video.

Thx i was looking for this

Great video, thank you!

Interesting test, useful to know the results. I think it's worth including the total consumed space in the data, the techni ice takes up a lot more, you could probably fit another ice pack in the same space.

My problem is the techni ice is not really reusable. Once they melt the polymer on the inside does leak out creating a slime on the outside of the bag and I don't want that all over my drinks and food. I wish there was a better way.

I'm only a minute in, and it seems this fellow is confused about the physics. Any object or product placed in your freezer is going to reach exactly the same temperature, regardless of what it's made of. The temperature is determined by your freezer. So no product is going to be 'colder' when it first comes out of the freezer. If you are reading a different temperature with a thermal imaging camera, immediately after removing it from the freezer. it's due to differences in the emissivity affecting the readings.

What IS different with some products, is the melting / freezing point. Some products have a lower freezing / melting point (i.e. cooler shock has a freezing point of 18°F), than water which is 32°F. This means that those products will remain colder until they melt, compared to water ice. This is key for two reasons: 1- the phase change from a solid to a liquid (melting) absorbs a ton of energy, so most of the cooling capacity of ice or any ice pack happens when it melts. Water ice may start out close to 0°F (depending on the freezer), but it will quickly reach 32°F, and stay there until completely melted;
2- the ambient temperature inside a cooler will always be higher than the temperature of the ice or ice packs, since heat is constantly entering through the sides of the cooler.
Therefore it's very useful to have a cold pack that will freeze lower than 32°F, because that is the only way to maintain an ambient temperature below or even close to 32°F. It is simply not possible with plain water ice. So if you want to keep things frozen or very cold, that is useful. If you only need to keep beverages cold, it's not helpful, and you're better off with plain water ice.

Note: Most 'ice packs' are just water and blue dye, and sometimes a gelling agent, they don't have a freezing point much lower than plain water. As far as I know, none of the products mentioned have a lower freezing / melting point than water

Hi, I own a business where I ship out frozen patties! Customers typically receive their package in 2 days, however I have some customers who say their package arrive fine and some that says the ice pack wasn't could and the product wasn't cold, any tips?

You cheated :) You should have put the cola cans under the cooler packs. You put techniice packs all around the cola. No wonder it was cooler. It was an unfair test. Also when packing a cooler you should not put the cooling packs to the bottom, so it was not even a realistic test. Also you should have measured both weight and volume of the solutions to make sure similar amounts were used.

You're like an Australian Adam Savage

Hi there, I know it's been about a few months since this video, but have you heard of Responsible Ice? 10 pound Ice packs that use plain water instead of chemicals? Great website too!

They continue to absorb any moisture and odors released inside an eski and eventually split, oozing slimy smelly gunk, which necessitates throwing them out. To solve this, I recommend putting them in disposable shopping bags and sealing the bag with a knot.

Great stuff... my question now is .... do we keep the Techni ice sheets permanently in the freezer or only put them in prior to needed use? My ice bricks live permanently in my freezer.

Hi Simon, loved the vid and agree that Techni-Ice is the way to go, but small point of contention which probs wouldn't have made much of a diff. You kept referring to the cubed ice as block ice - which it was not. To answer your question about keeping the 'cooler' cooler: I have an Evakool icebox which is supremely insulated, now this is also something that has caused discussion around the campfire 'should you drain the water from cubed ice?'
Now my answer is simple, as water of any temperature is warmer than ice, the answer is yes! as thermodynamics? causes the two differing temps to try to equalize and it always moves towards the warmer end of the scale.
What I have done is fill 3 x 3Litre milk containers with fresh water, then freeze them into blocks. I put one on all three layers in my Evakool with the food, and separated by a sheet of corrugated plastic. The bottom brick was still frozen in the middle on the 13th night and was chipped to add to the bourbon! Thanks mate, great video again, cheers.

I have about 20 sheets that came with the 2 eskies I bought. They do a good job but do get slimy once they unfreeze. Not a big deal just a mention.

Better get myself some Techni-Ice.

Here's an idea for an experiment -- open an ice brick and loose the gel, then replace it with the stuff from some techni ice sheets " a techni ice brick " and see how it performs

would you be able to do something similar to this but no tint vs tinted windows?

I transport animal vaccines for a living and we have a gel pack similar to techni ice, you freeze them and they stay at 5c for 48 hours in a foam esky.

“Looks like castor sugar”
Yeah nah, that’s totally what I was thinking too... 💳😅

I save goon bags and 3/4 fill them and freeze them for a week. Solid ice block lasts a week in my big red. Fill the rest of the space with bag ice, usually 2

Interesting experiment however temperatures are only a part of the whole experience
For years now I 3/4 fill plastic milk containers with fresh water and freeze them down to keep my ice boxes cool when fishing
They are cheap and readily available
They don’t leave a pool of water behind
Easy to swap out of the freezer
If you’re short of water you can drink the contents
Take up less volume than other options
The fish are always icy cold at the filleting table
You can discard them at the end of your trip to save packing space
Orange juice containers are better as the plastic is thicker and less prone to puncture

You could've been a great Greek scholar with your volume trick. :)
I'm not so sure about the cooling results however or using the measure of how cold the things got after 48 hours in the deep fridge. Firstly you can take any material down to an arbitrary cold temperature - all the way to 0oK given a sufficiently cold container and enough time to suck the heat out.
Next, the resulting temperature of the material after being in the deep freezer for 48 hours is a mix of two phenomenon - its thermal capacity and thermal resistance to removing heat (insulation). The ice was at the highest temperature after 48 hours in the fridge. This is to be expected as water has one of the highest thermal capacities compared to other liquids, and ice is quite a good insulator (why you need to defrost a fridge) so to be fair, the three materials should have stayed in the deep fridge until they reached the same temperature, then do the test.
I think under those circumstance, ice would have out performed either of the other two materials by a country mile.

A really great video thanks 👍

The issue I see with the techni ice is you can’t put much in the esky. It’s like you need a combination of ice cubes and the techni ice.