An apparatus for melting ice comprising an ice bin structure containing ice. The ice bin structure comprising a housing with four walls, a floor, and optionally four supporting legs, a nozzle assembly structure comprising a pipe as well as a head structure, wherein the head structure is oriented at a downward angle; a drainage means situated at the floor of the housing structure; and a removable cover oriented to comprehensively fit the open top of the housing.

A refrigerator and a control method, device and system thereof are provided. The method comprises detecting and confirming that the cumulative running time of a compressor is no less than a running time threshold, and an ice maker is currently in a working state, and controlling the ice maker to perform an defrosting operation after a current ice making period is ended, the running time threshold being a time difference between the defrosting period of the refrigerator and the ice making period of the ice maker. The method allows avoiding defrosting in the ice making period, and therefore, the influence of defrosting on ice making of the ice maker can be reduced, the ice making efficiency and the ice making capacity if the ice maker can be effectively promoted, the ice making period is shortened, energy consumption is reduced, and produce reliability is improved.

Disclosed are a refrigerator and a method and device for controlling refrigeration of the refrigerator. A refrigeration system of the refrigerator comprises: includes an evaporator configured to refrigerate a refrigerating compartment and make ice in an ice machine, an ice-making damper and a refrigerating damper. The method includes recognizing a current ice-making stage of the ice machine, acquiring a current temperature of an ice-making compartment in the refrigerator, and controlling opening and closing of the ice-making damper and the refrigerating damper according to the current ice-making stage and the current temperature. Through controlling the refrigeration period of the refrigerating compartment and delaying the refrigeration starting time of the refrigerating compartment, the refrigeration cycle of the refrigerating compartment matches the ice-making cycle of the ice-making compartment, thus improving the ice-making efficiency of the ice machine and the ice-making amount, shortening the ice-making cycle, and reducing the energy consumption of the refrigerator.

A method of controlling a refrigerator includes detecting opening/closing of an ice dispensing duct, through which ice is taken out, and storing an opening time of the ice dispensing duct per time interval. Each time interval is classified as a use time when the opening time of the ice dispensing duct is equal to or greater than a reference time and each time interval is classified as a non-use time when the opening time of the ice dispensing duct is less than the reference time.

A system and method for controlling ice-making and ice-separating of an ice maker is proposed. In the ice maker that is configured to change an ice-separating time so that ice is cleanly separated in accordance with a changed required icing when the required icing time is changed, the system and method count a consumed ice-making time when ice-making is performed, set a target ice-separating time longer than a predetermined reference ice-separating time when the consumed ice-making time is out of a reference time range, and control the ice maker to perform ice-separating for the set target ice-separating time by means of the controller.

Disclosed is a system and method for cleaning an ice machine, a cleaning apparatus comprising an ozone generator, at least one fluid line connecting an output from the ozone generator to at least one of a water inlet, a water recirculatory line, and a water reservoir, wherein the cleaning apparatus is configured for use with an ice machine. In some embodiments, one or more sensors are provided and may be configured to detect a call for new ice formation. The one or more sensors may comprise (i) a flow valve sensor, (ii) a sensor configured to detect if water is flowing through a water inlet, (iii) a sensor configured to detect a beginning of new ice formation, and/or (iv) a sensor configured to detect an end of new ice formation.

The present disclosure provides an ice making evaporator that combines the cubic shape of pan and partition evaporators with the central ice making of a pin evaporator to achieve an ice shape that is mostly cubic. Separation of the cooling ability of these two evaporator portions allows cube shaping during ice making cycle based on time, temperature, pressure, or other variables.

A refrigerator utilizes a dual direction ice maker capable of overlapping multiple ice production cycles in time to accelerate ice production and/or routing ice to multiple storage bins.

an ice making system includes a tank that stores a medium to be cooled, an ice making machine that cools the medium and makes ice, a pump that circulates the medium between the tank and the ice making machine, a de-icing mechanism that heats the medium and melts the ice in the ice making machine, and a control device that controls operations of the ice making machine, the pump, and the de-icing mechanism. The ice making machine includes a cooling chamber that cools the medium, an inflow port through which the medium flows into the cooling chamber, and a discharge port through which the medium is discharged from the cooling chamber. The control device activates the de-icing mechanism when a pressure difference between a pressure of the medium at the inflow port and a pressure of the medium at the discharge port exceeds a predetermined value.

A method and system for cleaning of an ice maker forcing the ice maker to proceed with a cleaning cycle when cleaning of the ice maker is necessary, the method and system including: a cleaning grace period determination step determining, by a controller, whether a cleaning grace period, which allows the cleaning of the ice maker to be deferred, has elapsed when a time for performing a cleaning cycle of the ice maker comes during operation of the ice maker; an ice-separating determination step determining, by the controller, whether ice-separating operation has completed for current ice-making operation when the cleaning grace period is determined to have elapsed; and an operation stop step controlling, by the controller, the cleaning to proceed by stopping actions related to the ice-making and ice-separating operations of the ice maker when the ice-separating operation is completed.