Counterflow Chiller

[Guest Lurker]

Nice to see the good old Aussie safety shoe in action.

 

[Murray]

Ibrew seem to stock it for those interested. No price listed though.

 

[GSRman]

i believe its $375 from ibrew delivered to your door..

 

[wessmith]

Believe me $375 is CHEAP. That large Alfa Laval heat exchanger in the Jamison photo would be $4500 or so depending on the number of plates. We do have another type of tube in tube or coaxial stainless steel CFC available but the starting price is around $2000 for the smallest. Certainly not for the HB budget!

Wes

 

[GSRman]

wes: i believe you as soon as i was reading the description that was something like "the plates are brazed together in an oxygen free furnace with pure copper" i figured it would be pricey..

 

[Murray]

That is the price I was expecting. Certainly out of my budget though (for the time being, anyway B) ).

 

[THE DRUNK ARAB]

Ibrew seem to stock it for those interested. No price listed though.

Welcome back Murray B)

 

[Murray]

Thanks TDA

 

[Doc]

Doc, the Therminator is a sexy piece of kit and will do a great job. BUT it suffers from the same problem as all these plate type heat exchangers ie the plate to plate clearances are so tight, small pieces of trub (and heaven help any hop flowers getting in!) will become lodged and there is no way to physically clean the unit out. You then have to rely on agressive chemical cleaning which is not something I would recommend for the home situation.

Wes

Thanks Wes.
I've been giving it a lot of thought and email MoreBeer to see why they don't stock it (seeing they stock everything else) and here is their reply

As for the Therminator, we are currently running some tests to address some concerns we have regarding the design. Pending those results we will either start selling it, or continue marketing our counter-flow.

So I think I'll take the safter route and go for a convoluted counterflow chiller and use my existing immersion chiller as a pre-chiller.

Thanks for the input guys.

Beers,
Doc

 

[GSRman]

doc: i'd use the counterflow to chill the most off it, then use the immersion chiller (or a section of) in a bucket of ice for a final chill..

 

[technocat]

This is an old thread but I have a new question. The CFC below is a hybrid from the John Palmer article on counterflow chillers. Has anyone used one of these and at which end from an efficiency point of view would the cold water entry point be.

View attachment 32391


<_<

 

[Sammus]

counterflow, so the cold water would come in wherever the wort is coming out.

 

[technocat]

counterflow, so the cold water would come in wherever the wort is coming out.

Yeah sammus good observation but this is a hybrid as the coil is in a chamber. Looks like I might have to build one to find out. This may not be a popular setup by HB's although it looks simple enough. I was looking for some feedback from someone familiar with it.

cheers

 

[nifty]

Yeah sammus good observation but this is a hybrid as the coil is in a chamber. Looks like I might have to build one to find out. This may not be a popular setup by HB's although it looks simple enough. I was looking for some feedback from someone familiar with it.

cheers

Hi Beernut

I remember dicko made 1 of these a few years ago, maybe give him a pm.

cheers

nifty

 

[Sammus]

Yeah sammus good observation but this is a hybrid as the coil is in a chamber. Looks like I might have to build one to find out. This may not be a popular setup by HB's although it looks simple enough. I was looking for some feedback from someone familiar with it.

cheers

hybrid or not, counterflow is still the most efficient way. I own one that beerbelly used to make and used it for years, that's the way to go

 

[Supra-Jim]

I think the efficiency of the chiller pictured will be much lower than a CFC, probably more inline with that of an immersion chiller (or less!). IN a typical CFC you get a maximum surface area to surface area contact for heat transfer between the two fluids, by pushing them between the thin plates. In this design, you have a large (relative) reservoir of liquid (cooling), but only a small % of it in contact with the coils.

To keep an immersion chiller working efficiently you need to keep agitating the wort.

Cheers SJ

 

[ausdb]

This is an old thread but I have a new question. The CFC below is a hybrid from the John Palmer article on counterflow chillers. Has anyone used one of these and at which end from an efficiency point of view would the cold water entry point be.

View attachment 32391


<_<

They are pretty inefficient as the water just goes straight down the middle and doesn't circulate around the coil very well, also the surface area of the inner tube is small in relation to the volume of the shell. On the other and if you had multiple tubes inside the shell and they took up a lot of volume like the one below then you could increase the efficiency significantly.

I think Domonsura (beerbelly) used to build these with a stainless outer and multiple copper tubes coiled inside, either way if you are going to subject it to mains pressure on the cooling water circuit it will be a pain in the backside to seal where your wort tubes go through unless you make it out of metal in his case stainless but a big piece of copper tubing would do the same job and you could braze it all up with an oxy torch.

All heat exchangers rely on "turbulent flow" between the two mediums to eliminate "boundary layers" for maximum heat transfer, which is why the brazed plate heat exchangers can be so small for the amount of heat transfer they can do. This is also why a whirlpool immersion chiller setup works so much better than just dunking an immersion chiller in your kettle and leaving it there. Google the terms in quotes for more information than you could read in a lifetime on this.

The reality of it is that you could buy a plate heat exchanger or make an immersion chiller and put some money toward a pump for what it would cost in materials to make something like this these days.

 

[crozdog]

They are pretty inefficient as the water just goes straight down the middle and doesn't circulate around the coil very well,

AusDB, you're right, that's why they are often made with a filler inside the coil so the cooling water is forced to flow over the coils. Palmer actually recommends this approach just before the diagram shown, but the diagram doesn't show it.

I just looked through my info & found this comment on performance:
"One of the more innovative and compact chiller designs, the B.I.T.O.A. wort-chiller (Brewers' Warehouse, Seattle, Washington), is an interesting counterflow chiller that, according to the manufacturer's specifications, can cool 5 gal of wort from 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) to 70 degrees F (21 degrees C) in 12-15 min, using 65 degrees F (18 degrees C) tap water. The wort siphons through a coiled copper tube housed inside a PVC canister mounted on a stand. The unit is 15 in. long and 4 in. wide. Space often being a dear commodity for brewers, this chiller offers an efficient, moderately priced alternative to immersion chillers." source http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backi...1.4/hayden.html

Another reference stated:
"The system utilizes a PVC counter-flow type wort chiller, with 20' of copper tubing coiled inside a 4" diameter X 25" capped PVC pipe. The wort chiller also has a digital thermometer to monitor the wort as it exits into the carboy. At full flow(ball valve all the way open) the chiller will reduce the boiling wort to a temperature of 90-95F. If I reduce the flow by closing the ball valve to 3/4 the way open the temperature will fall to about 80-85F. Even at the reduced flow I can fill a 5 gallon carboy in about 3 minutes with cooled wort ready for the yeast. " Unfortunately the source site isn't going any more.

IMHO, both these comments seem to indicate that the design is pretty efficient.

I have one half built. It is a coil of 3/8' annealed with a 4" PVC drain pipe inner. All this sits in a 6" outer PVC pipe. There is not a lot of vacant space in this setup so the coolant has a high contact area / time with the coil.

FYI, I never got around to finishing it due to the drought & lack of a pool or water tank to circulate to. It's still on the UFO list but I'm happy no chilling at present.

 

[Doogiechap]

I built one a few years ago and found it to be quite inefficent compared to my Chillout MkIII plate chiller. :super:
I had a parallel run of 10mm copper (2 x 18m) in a 100mm poly tube. I had a filler in the middle of mine and plumbed it so the cooling water entered and exited from the same end and ran counterflow to the Wort.Piccies tell a thousand words
Cheers
Doug

 

[BOG]

I found that for a length of 3/8inch copper pipe to do an imersion chiller it was 50% of the value of a plate chiller from BeerBelly.

After stuffing around with bending etc and all the work to encase the coil in a water jacket you may as well pay the extra for a Plate Chiller.

The difference will be one brews worth of grain and you have something that's going to work , really well. And if you change your mind you can flog it here for 50% of it's new price.
why stuff around?



BOG