Disturbing technology: the defrost-o-plate
A few years ago, my dad bought a mad thing from JML (they advertise on TV and their slogan should be “we sell weird shit for your house”). I dubbed it the defrost-o-plate: it claimed to defrost food in record time, without heat. Bollocks! I cried. My dad showed me it in action. I bought one for myself.
My defrost-o-plate (I’ve no idea what it’s officially called) is a rectangular metal tray, painted matt black, with a half-dozen grooves in it (although as the photo shows, there are other designs out there). You don’t need to heat it up, it has no power source, it doesn’t seem to be made of anything unusual, and it is clearly of human origin: the feet fell off within days. And I have absolutely no idea how it works.
I tried an experiment: I got two ice cubes and put one on the defrost-o-plate, with the second ice cube on a normal plate. After half a minute, the normal-plate ice cube was starting to look a bit shiny; the defrost-o-plate cube was a puddle of water. If I leave a couple of steaks out to defrost, they take a few hours; on the defrost-o-plate, half an hour.
Naturally, I think it’s a great thing - but my complete inability to work out how it does its magic is driving me daft. There are lots of sites offering defrost-o-plates on the net, such as this one, but nobody tells you how it actually works. So I’d like to turn this over to you, as you’re all much smarter than me. How can a bit of metal perform such magic? Is there a scientific explanation, or is it witchcraft?
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I would guess that it is because it has a defrosting mesh plate made from aluminum laminae processed into a plate with a plurality of polygonal meshes, appearing like a honeycomb. The meshes effectively enlarge the heat exchange surface and, working in cooperation with the aluminum laminae of good heat conductivity, speed up defrosting. The meshes also promote air circulation to allow hot air reach the food on the defrosting mesh plate from all directions to prevent dead spots. The water drops formed during defrosting may also flow through the meshes into the tray below.
Is it not essentially a heatsink? They are extremely good heat conductors. You put something cold on them in a warm environment and they’ll try and equalise the temperature by taking heat from the air and moving it to the cold bit.
Exactly the opposite of a processor heatsink, which moves the heat from the processor and disapates it into the cooler air. Both rely on very high conductivity and a large surface area.
I might have made all that up though.
> I would guess that
I was with you until “that”. I got a bit lost afterwards.
> Is it not essentially a heatsink?
I DON’T KNOW!!!!! ;-)
OK, so the first one was pasted from the US patents site. ;-)
>>I DON’T KNOW!!!!!
When I said “is it not…?” I should’ve just said “it is”. Cos it is.
I got mine in Makro, which makes me think that any place that sells mad stuff that you’ve seen on TV is a good place - cash and carries, woolworths, homebase, those kinds of places (if you’re in the UK. If you’re in the US, I’m not sure…)
It’s a physical heat sink. Aluminum is a great thermal conductor — particularly aluminum that is painted black. Those “grooves” increase the surface area of whatever is being de-frosted, accelerating the heat transfer.
Keep it in a warm place and will work even better…
I stumbled on you blog while I was searching for a cooling surface for my Mac Mini. This is exactly what I am looking for.
I am guessing that it had embedded heat pipe in the plate. The heat pipe can instantaneously transfer heat/cold from one point of contact through out the whole body of the heat pipe which spread to the whole plate much quicker than normal heat transfer through the metal. Many of the computer processor heat sinks use heat pipe. You can search on heat pipe to find out how it work. It’s a really old physical discovery but it’s almost like magic.
Pleeeeeease let me know where to buy one of these in the US, specifically Atlanta, Georgia. I have been trying to find this product for a long time. Thank you in advance, somebody.
I’m able to produce similar effects from an old CPU heatsink - stick a pack of bacon on top and it 1/2’s the defrost time. Doing a bit of experimenting it does what you’d expect, the heat rises into the product, the cold ‘drops’ out of the product. Seems like this gadget is an enhanced version of it. Might have to get one!
I use to have one of these. I gave it to my son who left it at one of his apts. I am trying to find out where to get another one. Do you have any ideas of where I can find one?
I FIND THAT GOOGLING “DEFROSTING PLATE” GIVES ME LINKS LIKE THIS http://bellacopper.stores.yahoo.net/deplti.html
In the UK, Kleeneze sells ‘em.
I was looking for this thing also and I googled “defrost plate” and bingo, plenty of sites to buy it from. Kind of expensive though. I found this site too.
I find this the single weirdest thing about blogging: never being able to tell which of your posts are going to get the biggest reaction.
I relies on people like you watching it in fascination. Your body heat thaws the food.