Defrosting

Defrosting (or thawing) is the melting of an object or bringing a device's temperature above the freezing point to remove ice.

For thawing frozen foods, see Frozen food ยง Defrosting.

A defrosting procedure is generally performed periodically on refrigerators and freezers to maintain their operating efficiency. Over time, as the door is opened and closed, letting in new air, water vapour from the air condenses on the cooling elements within the cabinet.

Refrigerators
Defrosting a freezer

The resulting ice inhibits heat transfer out of the cabinet increasing running costs. Furthermore, as the ice builds up it takes increasing space from within the cabinet - reducing the space available for food storage.

Many newer units employ automatic defrosting (often called "frost-free" or "no frost") and do not require manual defrosting in normal use. Although, in some cases, users of Frost Free fridge/freezers have noted ice blocking the vent that allows air into the refrigerator compartment.

gollark: Similar random stuff which I mostly forgot: a thing which read the temperature and spun a thing to point at points on a dial is the only one I remember.
gollark: For some reason our teacher hailed it as the best thing ever or something...
gollark: My pair decided to make a device which would:* display text sent over serial* make a nice beepy noise when a thing was sentand write a program on a Pi connected to it which would download an RSS feed and send the latest feed item constantly.
gollark: For some stupid reason we were meant to make some random useless project with a box of stuff (motor, LCD, LEDs, a few sensors).
gollark: Oh, those things, I used one one time.

See also
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