re: To hold the water or to drain.

quote:

---

You are leaving out an important detail though, and that’s if everything is already cold inside the cooler and that you have 3rd party items keeping cold that your want to maintain the water.

---

Everything depends on the question asked and what OP specifically asked was how to preserve ice longer, but yes liquid water will “refrigerate” better than air by keeping the temp more consistent in the container, for the exact same reason that it causes the ice to melt. It’s transferring heat more quickly to the ice, by making the heat transfer more efficient. If a marble were sitting in those cups above, the ones sitting in water would probably be cool (but greater than 32F) longer than a marble sitting next to some ice but mostly in contact with warm air, no debate there. Of course at that point you could cover the marble with the remaining ice, like you could your groceries while camping, and they would then stay colder longer. All kinds of practical things you can do to make this argument not even worth having, because ultimately insulation of the cooler is the single biggest factor for heat getting in and melting anything, water just helps it flow once it’s through the wall.

I dunk fish/deer meat in an ice slurry to cool quickly. I then drain the water once everything is cold to preserve the ice around it as long as possible. That’s the entire thing in a nutshell.