Chilling 200l

[mcdaino]

Guys,

Looking at running 2x 60 plate heat exchangers to cool my 200L of hot wort. Not sure if this will be fast enough? Thoughts?

Also looking at using a chest freezer as a CLT (cold liquor tank) and just wondering if you know what size in litres I'll need? Liquor temp will be about 2-3 degrees C.

Thanks in advance!

 

[komodo]

Why not food grade glycol below 0?
Are you planing on using the plate chillers in series of parallel?

 

[mcdaino]

Why not food grade glycol below 0?
Are you planing on using the plate chillers in series of parallel?

Was thinking one after the other, but whatever works best I guess.

Hadn't thought about glycol, not sure how it'd go through copper brazed chillers or how much it costs etc.

 

[komodo]

Have you spoken to the manufacturer of the plate chillers your planning on using?
Personally I would have thought using them in parrallel would be better. Plenty of people are getting down to pitching temps with a single plate chiller. Using two in parrallel would give you a faster flow rate.
Using two in series you might end up with an issue of your chilled wort being too cold for pitching

 

[Quintrex]

Have you spoken to the manufacturer of the plate chillers your planning on using?
Personally I would have thought using them in parrallel would be better. Plenty of people are getting down to pitching temps with a single plate chiller. Using two in parrallel would give you a faster flow rate.
Using two in series you might end up with an issue of your chilled wort being too cold for pitching

Scientifically, running them parallel gives you the advantage of the greater difference in temp between chilling liquid and wort this gives better heat transfer efficiency. This would presumably allow a higher flow rate too. However in practise I'm not sure how they are most commonly rigged up in an actual brewery setup...

 

[QldKev]

From memory it takes a normal brewer using a standard plate chiller about 15mins. So running 2 parallel would be about 1 hour to chill the last of the wort. Seems a bit slow? Could you suppliment it with a huge immersion chiller and that may allow you to run the wort through the chiller a bit quicker once the main wort is cooler.

QldKev

 

[Thirsty Boy]

series is probably better - that will give you a much higher average velocity of liquid through the individual units for a given flowrate - more velocity means greater turbulence and better exchange of heat. Higher turbulence will also reduce surface fouling and keep the unit operating at optimal efficiency for a longer time.

 

[komodo]

^Makes sence.
I was just thinking that if your using sub 0 cooling water the flow rate would still be up so you would chill faster with the two in parrallel. I guess the real way is trial and error to see what works the best/fastest.