No matter whether it’s crushed or cubed, ice eventually melts into a puddle — but an alternative called jelly ice doesn’t.
No matter whether it’s crushed or cubed, ice eventually melts into a puddle — but an alternative called jelly ice doesn’t. Researchers Jiahan Zou and Gang Sun developed a one-step process to create the reusable, compostable material from gelatin, the same ingredient in jiggly desserts. Because frozen jelly ice doesn’t leak as it thaws, it’s ideal for food supply chains and medication transport. The team is also exploring protein-based structures for food-safe coatings and lab-grown meat scaffolds.
Zou will present her results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fall 2025 is being held Aug. 17-21; it features about 9,000 presentations on a range of science topics.
The jelly ice project started with a question posed to Zou and Sun by Luxin Wang, a food scientist at the University of California, Davis. Wang saw ice melting in grocery store seafood display cases and worried about meltwater spreading pathogens and contaminating the entire case. She asked whether the researchers could create a reusable material that functions like regular ice but doesn’t produce a potentially contaminated puddle.
The inspiration for the new material came from freezing tofu. Sun, a materials scientist also at UC Davis who advised Zou’s graduate research, explains that “frozen tofu keeps its water inside, but when you thaw it, it releases the water. So, we tried to solve that issue with another material: gelatin.”
Read More: American Chemical Society
Image: Jelly ice is a reusable and compostable cooling material that doesn’t melt into a mess like regular ice.
(Credit: UC Davis)
