Can A Nasa Boil 200l Of Wort?

[T.D.]

Hi people,

Just wondering, does anybody think a NASA burner will be able to boil 200 litres of wort? I know there are a few people around here with mathematical formulas to figure out this kind of thing but my brain was not made for physics...

I would guess that since it takes only ~15 mins to boil 30L (from memory that is what people say it can do), it should boil 200L eventually.

Anybody have any other suggestions for boiling this kind of volume?

Cheers :beer:

 

[Jye]

Hey TD, I cant answer your question but the Lama brewery uses 2 burners on a 55 gallon (200ish L) kettle.

 

[T.D.]

Thanks Jye, great link! :beerbang:

 

[BrissyBrew]

I hate to admit to this but the other day I was boiling 26 liters in a coverted keg, I have a 2400W heating element but I thought I would boost it with my camping stove. That's right a camping stove the butane $20.00 from Big W type camping stoves. I thought it would assist in getting a better boil. Plus as it was a ginger beer I was concerned about all that ginger clogging up my coil (I need not be though).

The short of it all, I pulled the electric element out and I could boil 25L with a camping stove on a converted keg. Great tip for those into brewing. But more to the point if I can get a rolling boil from that surely it is worth a try for you NASA burner with a larger pot hehe.

 

[Stuster]

TD

Are you planning to brew really big batches?? :lol:

Based on my calculations which are pretty rough and ready I suggest that getting 200 litres to the boil will take 110 minutes, nearly 2 hours.

Unless you have stacks of time on your hand and are already partly deaf (so the roar doesn't bother you), I'd be looking at a bigger burner.

I can PM you if you really want.

Cheers
Stuart

 

[DJR]

I hate to admit to this but the other day I was boiling 26 liters in a coverted keg, I have a 2400W heating element but I thought I would boost it with my camping stove. That's right a camping stove the butane $20.00 from Big W type camping stoves. I thought it would assist in getting a better boil. Plus as it was a ginger beer I was concerned about all that ginger clogging up my coil (I need not be though).

The short of it all, I pulled the electric element out and I could boil 25L with a camping stove on a converted keg. Great tip for those into brewing. But more to the point if I can get a rolling boil from that surely it is worth a try for you NASA burner with a larger pot hehe.

[post="115600"][/post]​

I wouldn't be surprised - my one of them is rated at about 8 MJ/hour - which is about a quarter of a three-ring 30MJ burner. But i wouldn't like to have to keep putting the silly expensive 150g cartridges into it all the time...

But back to the original question - one of the jobbies on http://www.auscrown.com/commjetbrn.php here - specifically the 131MJ one would do the trick - at 131 MJ/hr you'd raise 200L of wort from 25C to 100C in about half an hour!

 

[Stuster]

I think that is assuming 100% efficiency, DJR. As you boil, you will lose energy from the hot wort. Those BTU ratings are like the 1.5MB/sec internet connection, just the theoretical maximum. Based on TD's 30 litres to the boil in 15 minutes, the efficiency is far lower, I guestimate nearly 2 hours to the boil for 200 litres. But probably the only way to really know is to do it so you know what efficiency you are getting. Go for it TD.

 

[altstart]

:beer:
Hey guys
My Nasa boils 76 ltrs in appprox 14 min After 90 mins boil I am down to 55ltrs. I am very happy with my Nasa it rocks.
Cheers Altstart

 

[Joel]

Or what about this?

http://www.auscrown.com/commdbbrn.php

I've never heard of or sen a duckbill burner before. How would they go? Do you reckon you'd get the soot problem that the jet burners apparently get at low flame? Personally, I'm looking at getting the 10 jet mongolian for a standard single batch 50L keg kettle.

 

[altstart]

:beer:
Hey Joel do you want to buy my Mongolian wok burner with reg and solid metal pipe
for $50.00. It sits on the shelf unused since I got my Nasa. I speak from experience do not buy a wok burner you can not control the boil with out extreme soot problems. Do a search on this forum and look at the posts that talk about Wok burners and the soot problem at low temps. Believe me the soot problem is uncontrollable.
Cheers Altstart

 

[T.D.]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Since my last post I found the auscrown website too. The 186mj duckbill burner looks pretty mean!

Stuster, the "15mins to boil 30L" comment I made is not based on my own experience - its something I "think" was said in another thread. I may be wrong, that was kind of the point of this thread - to confirm with NASA owners whether this kind of thing is standard.

Basically I will need to heat my mash and sparge water to 75-ish, and get the wort from 60 degrees to boiling, so there probably won't be any need to go from room temp to boiling in one go.

And another slight change, I will be aiming to collect 150L of wort, so the boil size will be somewhere between 170L and 180L I assume - not the 200L I first thought. That's only slightly over double altstart's 76L boil which takes 14 mins to boil(presumably from 60-odd degrees). Can I assume that it would take me around 30-40mins to boil 170L then, or does this sort of thing not work in a linear fashion???

Thanks guys :beer:

 

[Justin]

Just another site for you to look at that you may find interesting: http://home.earthlink.net/~davidstar58/

Here's the photo showing the two NASA's under a 44 Gallon drum:http://home.earthlink.net/~davidstar58/pages/buners.htm

Good luck with your quest.

Cheers, Justin

 

[crozdog]

TD,

I recently had similar queries about boiling 90+ litres, but I didn't raise them here on AHB. Instead, I went out to Gameco & had chat to them. They're great guys who are really helpful. They are quite interested in helping us homebrewers.

I ended up getting an 89Mj 2 ring HP burner, it's like sosman's but a bit bigger (see his brewiki site). I asked about the mongolians, but they confirmed what has been said on AHB ie they don't like being turned down for a rolling boil & will soot up if you try. I took it to Agro's for it's first run but found that the big burner wasn't going & the pilot connection wasn't right. Rather than risk blowing ourselves up, we decided to not use it. I took it back & they fixed it while I waited, no complaints. if only there were more firms like that which supports what it sells without issue or complaint.

For my $0.02 I'd Gameco a call as they deal with this sort of thing all the time. They also give a good discount if you mention the AHB forum!! :super: If you do decide to get something from them, my advice would be to get then to run it up for you to check it is all working. No affiliation etc, just impressed by Gameco's knowledge, pricing & service.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I did some calcs, with some help and worked out that uou would need a 200MJ burner for 200ltrs to do it effectivly

Not sure what the MJ rating of a NASA/Mongolian is..

 

[T.D.]

Nasa burners are 130,000 BTUs which roughly translates to 130Mj.

Does it follow that the Mj output should be similar to the number of litres being boiled? In that case the Auscrown duckbill burner (186Mj) might be just the ticket.


Crozdog, thanks for the recommendation - I'll seek them out and have a look at what they have on offer.

 

[DJR]

Nasa burners are 130,000 BTUs which roughly translates to 130Mj.

Does it follow that the Mj output should be similar to the number of litres being boiled? In that case the Auscrown duckbill burner (186Mj) might be just the ticket.


Crozdog, thanks for the recommendation - I'll seek them out and have a look at what they have on offer.

[post="115736"][/post]​

MJ ratings are MJ/hour. This means that once you know how many joules you are trying to put into what you are heating you can work out the time taken for the rating.

E.g. 200L of water weighs about 200,000 grams. The specific heat capacity of water is about 4.1 Joules/degree/gram - ie you need 4.1 Joules to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius. So if you wanted to raise the heat of 200L from 25 degrees to 100 degrees, you'd need 200,000 x 75 x 4.1 Joules = 61.5 MJ. The specific heat capacity is pretty close to water for wort.

Obviously your wort comes from the mash tun higher than 25 deg, maybe more like 65C, so it only has to do 25 degrees, so a quarter of that figure, or 20 MJ is better. On that figure a NASA rated at about 130Mj should do 200L in about 15 minutes! I didn't realise a NASA makes so goddamn much heat at full steam... that's a 4kg LPG gas cylinder gone in an hour from one of those!

 

[T.D.]

DJR,

Thanks mate - that is exactly the formula that I have seen before but couldn't remember!

As Stuster said, that would assume no loss of heat in the process to other sources. So to be safe you could double the time that formula predicts and probably have time up your sleeve.

Geez, I don't fancy getting only two batches done for every 9kg gas bottle! Might have to lookn at something a bit more economical...

:beer:

 

[kirem]

I did up a quick spreadsheet and compared a nasa burner and a 3.6kW electric element with various volumes and temps....big difference.

So based on those figures; 50L moved 25 degrees C, a nasa burner will do it in 4 minutes! This doesn't seem right, anyone confirm?

This doesn't take in to account any losses.


Volume Temp diff J MJ kW time taken (hours)
50 25 5125000 5.125 1.42475 0.40 Electric 3.6kW
130 36.14 0.04 Nasa burner

So once the kettle is up to temp and using some automatic temp control to keep it at close to 100 degrees C the Nasa burner wouldn't have to be on very often.

So is leaving it on, even at a low temp is this wasting a lot of energy?

K

edit: figures are not formatting the way I want them to.

 

[Airgead]

For my $0.02 I'd Gameco a call as they deal with this sort of thing all the time. They also give a good discount if you mention the AHB forum!! :super: If you do decide to get something from them, my advice would be to get then to run it up for you to check it is all working. No affiliation etc, just impressed by Gameco's knowledge, pricing & service.

[post="115707"][/post]​

I delt with Gameco too and they were very helpful. Heat calculations are compliceted so I leave that sort of thing to the experts.

They also have this description in their online catalogue -

LIQUID VAPOURISING BURNER 1000 MJ/HR

Which sounds way cool but might vaporise your 200l batch instead (and melt the pot).

Cheers
Dave

 

[T.D.]

Haha, you've gotta love the "liquid vapourising burner"!!!!

I emailed Gameco and I got a very informative reply, amongst which a few more questions were asked of my requirements. These people really seem to be interested in getting you the most appropriate burner for your needs. I have replied and hopefully will get some definitive recommendations tomorrow. Apparently the 60Mj burner they have may not be enough (however, it seems to all depend on the *time* I am willing to wait for the temps to be met). They said the have a burner that goes up to 200Mj (much more than the Nasa burner) but that was before I heard about the liquid vapourising burner!!! :super: I can't get enough of that name!!!