An artificial iceberg manufactured in a company in the Navarrese town of Beriáin is now ready to undertake a long journey, of more than 15,000 kilometers, to Australia, where it will be the centerpiece of an exhibition that commemorates the sinking of the Titanic on the night of April 14 to 15, 1912.
In this traveling exhibition, from the San Sebastian company Musealia, visitors can learn about the brief but legendary life of this ocean liner, from its design or its unexpected sinking after colliding with an iceberg in Newfoundland to its discovery four kilometers deep.
To give more realism to this traveling exhibition, which after Australia will pass through the United States and Austria, Musealia made a peculiar proposal to the Navarrese company Galván Frío Industrial, dedicated to the design, planning and installation of refrigeration solutions: the creation of an iceberg artificial that will recreate the one that 112 years ago caused the sinking of the Titanic.
Musealia has explained that the CEO of the Navarrese company, Santiago Galván, did a ‘survey’ through social networks of refrigeration companies capable of undertaking this challenge and ended up opting for Galván Frío Industrial.
When the proposal came, Galván stated, the first thing he thought was: “Oh, I’ve never made an iceberg, but why not?” Although he has acknowledged that the assignment caught them “a little offside,” they got to work considering that it was “a super nice project” and that they could technically carry it out.
To develop the project, the company opted for a system similar to that of an ice rink. It is an iceberg made of plastic material four meters long, 60 centimeters wide and two meters high, with a steel ‘skeleton’ and an intricate network of pipes. Glycolized water (a mixture of water and glycol used as antifreeze in refrigeration circuits) circulates through them at ten degrees below zero.
In this way, the ambient humidity condenses and forms a layer of ice on the iceberg, which has a certain resemblance in shape to Perejil Island, since the islet was one of the sources of inspiration in the design phase, which was commissioned from an external company.
“We are refrigeration installation technicians and we don’t have much idea about art either,” declared Galván, who detailed that he contacted a company in Zaragoza (Architecnica), with experience in making ninots and large figures, for example for dinosaur parks.
“They are the ones who gave us a hand in the artistic way, the model of the iceberg; the technical issue was already our thing,” he noted.
Shipping the iceberg will not be an easy task either. The water chiller weighs about 1,200 kilos and the model of the iceberg, between 500 and 600. Both parts are already packed in large wooden boxes that have the appropriate measurements to fit inside a maritime container.
Galván has stressed that, above all, working on this assignment “was very fun, also when halfway through the project we saw that we didn’t like it and, after having invested a lot of hours, we started again and people got tired of it. the hairs”.
However, he emphasized, “seeing the final product, we are very happy and we can say that yes, it was fun.”
