36 boils out of a bottle of LPG

[tavas]

That would be like a steam jacket or steam injection heating coil. Could be done but I think inefficiencies on a small scale would be poor, even with condensate recovery. Plus to be truly cost competitive you would need to factor in cost of equipment like the coil and bolier etc.

On a small scale electric would be more efficient. As mentioned and as you are already doing, have a look around the house. Downlights for instance are massive consumers.

Pity there isn't a gas immersion coil system with internal combustion. No doubt there is if you are a major factory or something.

 

[mwd]

Off Topic: :icon_offtopic: If you want to save electricity at home and you have electric water heater just turn off at the breaker ( they usually have their own dedicated circuit) The stored water stays hot for days and only needs a couple of hours to heat up a tankfull.
Up here in FNQ you can shower in cold water during summer it comes out of the tap at 28C.

 

[lukasfab]

what are the options for NG burners?

 

[adryargument]

Efficiency of a gas burner is around 14-19% depending on how fast you are running the gas.
Efficiency of a water element is 95+%.

116 * 0.16 = 18 / 3 = 6 boils?

I get ~3-4 on a 50L batch, so looks about right.

 

[woodwormm]

what are the options for NG burners?

you can get NG burner tips (jets) for Mongolian and Duckbill, not sure about Nasa or Ring burners....

completely :icon_offtopic: :icon_offtopic: :icon_offtopic:

apparently when Coopers moved to Regency Park (a massive upsizing) they said to the local power companies "we need 'x' much electricity" and they were just laughed at, so they went out and got themselves a gas turbine (basically a Mig Fighter Jet engine), they use the heat from the jet engine to generate steam and electricity for their own purposes and they make so much leccy they feed back into the grid. essentially Coopers are making electricity with beer as a by-product...

(oh and this is a story i heard at the pub so take it as complete, honest to god, gospel truth -_- )

 

[komodo]

A lot of paper mills and even some of the large saw mills generate electricity on site using saw dust and by product as fuel so not unheard of.

As for gas Vs electricity - electricity is hands down cheaper than LPG.
Where I used to live it was bottled gas and we had a 200kg bottle bulk filled by mini tanker. The only things that ran off gas was a wall furnace (which was only used on snap cold days or when the wood stove needed a helping hand on ice cold days) and the oven/stove. The oven/stove was a PITA as the LP would burn it out every 4-5 years. Something to do with the jets and LP burning hotter than natural gas which most stoves are initially designed to run off.
We even ran our hot water off electricity and towards the end there was 5 adults showering twice a day so that hot water copped a hiding.
We had an LP system in for about 2 years and it was replaced with the electric as it saved about $300 a quarter. This was storage tank not on demand which I assume would be far more efficient mind you.

In saying all this - electric stoves are slow so for me at this stage I don't see me changing from a gas stovetop to an electric (in my experience even induction is a fair way off gas) But electric oven kicks ass over gas - especially natural gas where there is moisture and **** in the line.

In my brewery I'm gas and electricity. HLT and RIMS is electric but kettle is LP gas.
Hind sight I would go all electric and possibly when I move I will still go that way. But for now the combination works well.
This said the price of natural gas does make plumbing it to the natural gas line a definite possibility (no natural gas where my brewery is currently setup)

 

[brentice]

I have very little energy at the moment. It's true

 

[bum]

Thus disproving Feldon's skirt idea.

 

[kezza]

I use a nasa burner and hp reg and i get 3 singles 1 double batch and a run on the purifier with a 4 ring burner out of a 8.5kg bottle

 

[Feldon]

Much heat energy is wasted with LPG gas heating because the burned hot gases just roll around the bottom edge of the pot and dissipate to atmosphere. It does too with an electric stove top element but there you have physical contact between heating element and the pot base so its not quite as wasteful of energy (sort of direct injection of heat into the pot contents). With gas heating you are relying on convected heat, and as said most of the energy is convected to atmosphere rather than the pot.

However there are solutions. If you put a cheap metal shroud around the walls of the pot to channel the hot gases up between the pot walls and the shroud you can make heaps more use of the otherwise wasted hot burned gas . What the shroud does is use the walls of the pot as a heating surface. And by thus increasing the heated surface area you not only heat the contents faster, but use much less gas for the boil.

There's a US thread here that explains an experiment in using a shroud for homebrew boil: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/kettle-shroud-heat-retention-343355/

It is the same principle that Rocket Stoves use (find on Google) in developing countries where fuel is expensive and hard to get. They boil up big pots of food using the energy from burning only a few sticks and twigs. Its about time the richer western homebrew community got on to this to catch up with the poor Ethiopians. So instead of having a small shroud around just around the burner to act as a wind-break, make it taller and run it up the sides of the pot a bit.

Been a development in the US with a company now offering a sheet metal "Heat Guide" (shroud, skirt) as a bend-it-yourself flat-pack.

Check out the web page at http://www.homebrewtools.com/heat-guide (includes two videos, and data specs).