Fully Automated Brewing System Design

[Doogiechap]

I can appreciate that Bandito, I had an Aussie supplier quote me $430 for a paddle wheel flow sensor. I found the exact same one in the UK for $140. We get sooooo ripped off over here sometimes, it really pays to shop around.

Shame that money is going overseas though...

I just purchased 8 John Guest in line Check Valves for $93 direct from the States. The supplier had them for $7 US but no international Shipping so opted to use http://www.priceusa.com.au/ who purchase on your behalf in the States and then ship OS. You can see they obviously have a margin but the cost was still less than half of the typical retail price here.......

 

[Phoney]

Im on the lookout for a small motorized tank agitator / vertical mixer along the lines of one of these, for a consistant stir of the mash. Ive gotten about half a dozen quotes from Australian engineering firms who specialize in these sorts of things, im looking at $600 - $1000.

Ive also looked at buying the die cast SS mixing shaft, gear motor, housing etc seperately and building it myself and that works out at around $300 minimum..

Im now looking for overseas suppliers who im certain could do one for a fraction of the price, before I go down the uncertain the DIY road..

Any ideas?

 

[Bandito]

I only looked quite briefely a few weeks ago, the lowest price I have seen on the net was about US$600. I still have a lot of searching to do. I was considering finding a highly geared drill, and mounting it with a drill press fitting. Then using the 'painted red' paint stirrer from bunnings (doesnt look too bad - some holes in the welds though).

Just had a thought though. Perhaps a valve actuator could be used to drive the stirrer. As in - one that can continuously turn. In another thread, Brewing Bob suggested a belimo actuator for automating a valve - if these can turn continuously, it may be the go - at least for my purposes. I was just looking at the results of a search for butterfly valves. I got this, which I thought would be good for a false bottom of my MLT and Kettle, but then realised that it is made with 3 layers, so would trap bugs. These also use belimo actuators/(http://www.nuaire.com/download/brochure/airevalv_butterfly_valves.pdf)

Ebay search for Balimo actuators: http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=belimo+ac...t=0&bkBtn=1
Another search would be valve actuators or perhaps continuous valve actuators.

 

[BjornJ]

Bandito,
have read with interest your quest for coming up with the project of a life time.
Keep the posts coming, I hope you don't stop posting because some people are saying it will not work.
Will be interesting to see the end result, either way!



phoneyhuh,
see this link that may give you ideas for making something out of an old washing machine motor?

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum//ind...1265&st=300

They are using a washing machine motor to run a grain mill as it has high power and low turning speed,



(Graham Sanders is another very interesting poster, seems to be making all kind of stuff )

thanks
Bjorn

 

[Bandito]

Thanks BjornJ, if the suppliers would stop taking half a lifetime to get me prices it might actually get done on time

Looking at these very sexy peristaltic pumps too. Waiting for a quote. http://www.welco.net/wp10a_e.html They look like they would be quite cheap. Very simple design.

Finally got a price for these, they now have a harder base which makes them usable for more types of tubing US$100- plus postage. Oh yea! I'll get 3.

 

[Bandito]

Finally got a price for these, they now have a harder base which makes them usable for more types of tubing US$100- plus postage. Oh yea! I'll get 3.

Getting 2.

I am actually quite freaked out atm. I had a debt from my credit card last week for AU$230, but cant remember making a purchase :blink: I think I might have bought a automatic pet food dispenser or two? Damn you alcomehol! Whatever I bought, I hope it was automated brewing related!

 

[Frank]

Im on the lookout for a small motorized tank agitator / vertical mixer along the lines of one of these, for a consistant stir of the mash. Ive gotten about half a dozen quotes from Australian engineering firms who specialize in these sorts of things, im looking at $600 - $1000.

Ive also looked at buying the die cast SS mixing shaft, gear motor, housing etc seperately and building it myself and that works out at around $300 minimum..

Im now looking for overseas suppliers who im certain could do one for a fraction of the price, before I go down the uncertain the DIY road..

Any ideas?

Try googling 'Planetary Mixer' or good old trusty 'Kenwood Chef'. You will be able to control the speed as well.

 

[Bandito]

Well, its the weekend again, and so time for an update/

Two peristaltic pumps are currently on a plane from japan to australia. I expect to recieve them by tuesday. They are a non-commercial release "for evaluation only", so in that spirit, I will post a review of them. The main things I will cover are head height,flow rate and over volting capabilities (to get faster flow rates). I would like to test some silicon tube in them, but dont have any as yet. I plan to run one to anhilation. At US$100 these are the cheapest sanitary pumps around. Will post in the gear and equipment thread.

My eleven pinch valves are due to be shipped from the US next week, so hopefully a week later I will have them! ooooo I cant wait! My desktop background is an old image of their previous products - I consider it sanitary valve porn - :blink: Pic attached.

As has been the case for a long time, the issue of getting the grist out of the MLT and the hops out of the kettle is still a major issue. Based on my volume calculations of diameter versus height, I require 12 inch diameter and at least 30cm height for both the MLT and kettle - the issue is that butterfly valves of this size are very expensive! The best I have found are here: http://cgi.ebay.com/12-Bray-PTFE-150-HSI-A...=item1c0c0e62c6 Pic attached - aparentley teflon seat and wafer. Cant afford four of those at the moment, so will send an expression of interest. The idea is that both the MLT and kettle will have two of them above one another, the top one will be drilled with small holes to make a false bottom, or have large chuncks cut out and an actual false bottom screwed in. The bottom one will be the actual seal. I plan to connect the top one to the bottom internally, thus reducing the need for more than one actuator per vessel.

The actuator is still up in the air - I guess a balimo wont be strong enough, and the proper ones are hugely expensive (~1k+)

Thats the state of the brewery design at the moment.

 

[Bandito]

Just got off the phone to the supplier of the teflon coated butterfly valves pictured above. He can do 4 of them for US$350 each. He will get back to me with shipping cost and specs so I can also look for cheap shipping too. I was considering trying to have a dual MLT and Kettle, but doubt it would work with an element in the MLT.

I recieved the two perstaltic pumps yesterday - got to find a variable 24 volt dc supply and get the connection to the pinch valve tubing sorted. Speaking of which, the pinch valves should be shipped any minute.

 

[Bandito]

Well, if I can get the delivery of these 4 butterfly valves down to about $300 I might be able to order them next week. https://www.ipsparcel.com/ gave a rough price for 2 x 50 Lbs of US$355. ups.com gave US$600 for the same weight. They are likely to weigh about 25 Lbs each, and the delivery time is a week - waiting on the specs of the valves. Anyone know of a cheap international courier?

I am recalculating the volume of the vessels on a daily basis - I think the mash efficiency will be a major factor. If I can get good efficiency, the grain bill will go down, but the required volume of the MLT will as well. An option to increase vessel volume might be to make the kettle slightly conical to increase the boil volume without increasing the height. I have read that smaller mash volumes usually result in higher efficiency. Now that I have decided on 12" valves for the bottom of the MLT and Kettle, the height of them is the variable. Mabee a similar concept is possible for the MLT, but with a much higher angle on the conical walls. I have worked with engineers that used a structural analysis program called strand to design conical vessels - I will have to send my designs to them to assess in return for some beer. I'll give beerbelly a call soon to get a quote for the MLT, Kettle and fermenter.

I also need to look at the specs of the valves construction to find out if the wafer (i think it is called that) is made of solid steel or sheets of steel. I need to cut out large portions of the moving wafer of the top butterfly valve to install false bottoms, and this will require the exposed cut edges to be sealed. This would be difficult as vertually nothing will stick to teflon, and if it is constructed with multiple layers of steel sheet, there is a possibility of wort festering in the spaces if unsealed.

A 12" (305mm) diameter vessel 550mm high has a volume of 40L

It seems I am now into the procurement (buying) phase, and will be for the next couple of months. I have been saving since I started this project 2.5 months ago, and now every cent I can scrape together will be spent on it. (I had to think hard today about wether to buy a regulator and get a CO2 bottle tomorrow to carb my first keg, but I figure I have to. Will even be converting my fermentation fridge to a keggerator) on the weekend.

 

[rwmingis]

I just can't believe you are getting teflon coated DN300 valves at 350 bucks each, that sounds like a steal.

If you can get around it, you are WAY better off not trimming the butterfly valve.

As for your kettle size vs mash efficiency, I reckon you are getting a bit over technical here. You should be generous with the freeboard incase you get a number wrong or want to increase capacity in the future. I am an industrial engineer, and 9 times out of 10 I've saved myself by oversizing a system or component.

"When in doubt, build it stout"

 

[Bandito]

Yea, aye! I told my boss today, and he jumped back a couple of feet before saying What the hell? They're going to be hugely expensive!
They will turn out to be about $450 with postage and exchange rate, but that is still about 1/4 of what I would have expected. I cant figure out any other way to get a false bottom in the top valve disk, so I think a chop and try to seal will have to do. It might be possible to attach a round false bottom to the two outer edges of the main valve, and install an axel for it, but I dont think it would be guaranteed - I might try it though, wouldnt be a bad thing to have 2 spare 12" valves handy!

I will make it as big as I can. I just realised today that I can use stainless pipe for the MLT and Kettle bodys, and just have ANSI flanges welded on (I think thats what they are called - gota get up to scratch on this valve lingo). Here are the specs for these valves I got this morning:

FIG: ANSI 150
CWP: 150 PSI
BODY: 396
STEM: 17-4
DISC: PTFE

Center to center (bolt to bolt): 17"
3 1/16" (body thickness?)

My account was debited today for the pinch valves, that means they are about to be shipped - theres a good chance I will have them by next friday or early the next week! So exciting! They debited over $200 less than I expected - I guess I got the discount I asked for! Ask for a discount and you shall recieve. << thats going in this weeks sig.

 

[Bandito]

Damn Bob! you got me really thinking about whether I could make do with just one valve per vessel. I think it could work, but have been changing my mind every 12 hours for days. So I did what I always do when I cant make up my mind - I tossed a 20c coin - tails was 2 valves total, heads was 4 valves total (2 valves in each vessel (one as a main wort tight valve, the other modified to be a false bottom)).

It came up tails - so I will order just 2 valves total, and replace the upper valve with a fabricated false bottom - joined at two points to the main valve with loose bolts, and pivoted in the centre by an axel.

I used the same coin deciding process to decide on the pinch valve size and the peristaltic valve size - 20c coins seem to produce correct results .

Thanks for helping me save a shitload Bob! Infact, that means I can order two of these in the morning! Yeeha!

 

[Bandito]

Im not sure what I have got myself into with these butterfly valves - I found the specs of them, they are series 23 and a whopping 53Kg each!, and thats not including the gear actuator on top. Looks like it could be actuated with an electric balimo type actuator instead of the wheel.

The issue now, is that the shipping weight is being quoted as 350LB = 159Kg, and is US$600 to sydney airport only (have to get a quote for it to get to me). :blink: Not a bad price to fly 159Kg from the US to Aus! with 6-8 day delivery time.

I guess the brew stand will need a crane monorail on it too!

series 23 butterfly valve: http://www.bray.com/docs/Brochures/22.pdf
series 4 gear actuator : http://www.bray.com/docs/Brochures/manualop.pdf
similar series 20/21 PTFE coated disk http://www.bray.com/docs/brochures/B-1007_...TFE_2007-08.pdf

 

[Bandito]

The pinch valves arrived, but minus the 15m of silicon select tubing :angry: . I guess thats why it was cheaper than expected, will be asking for free shipping on the tube.

The pic contains everything I have got so far, the 6 nornally open ones on the left, and the 5 normally closed ones on the right. To the far left are the two peristaltic pumps that I havent tried yet. 20 clips for the pinch valves are at the back. It seems that just by chance, the peristaltic tube is the same outside diameter as the tubing for the pinch valves. If luck is on my side they will have the same wall thickness, and I can use silicon in the pump too. Since these pumps have a harder base and are still in testing, the harder wall of silicon may work. The tubing I will be using though, is silicon select, not sure if it is different, but if it is soft enough for the valves, it should be soft enough for the pumps.

On the butterfly valve side, I called tycoflowcontrol.com.au today for a rough quote, and got $600 each for 300mm diameter, stainless steel disk and stem, and an EPDM (rubber) seat. Double that for teflon coated. Since I dont really want any rubber in contact with the mash or boiling wort, I'll go with the teflon coated ones from the US for half the cost.

 

[stew.w]

how much are you thinking this project is going to cost?

 

[Bandito]

at the moment, it looks like 6K - only twice the original estimate :blink:

Just having a closer look at the area of open tube in the normally open type, and er the tube is only opening like 1mm! Dont know what's with that! I expected them to be half bore - like half the internal diameter. The normally closed have only a tiny bit more. Will be finding out that the F is up with that!

Quite freaked out - wrong sized tube? wouldnt be the first time!. Incorrect fabrication? Should have an answer by morning.

 

[Bandito]

Found a refference on the biochem site mentioning "FULL BORE" So I have a leg to stand on, and if it comes down to it, I'll just have to make my own.

 

[praxis178]

Found a refference on the biochem site mentioning "FULL BORE" So I have a leg to stand on, and if it comes down to it, I'll just have to make my own.

Those solenoids may require energizing to be in the normally open state, so while sitting there in your hand un-powered the bias magnet/spring will pull/push* the plunger to a neutral position, hence the 1mm gap etc. *push if the bias is spring powered.

 

[Bandito]

Those solenoids may require energizing to be in the normally open state, so while sitting there in your hand un-powered the bias magnet/spring will pull/push* the plunger to a neutral position, hence the 1mm gap etc. *push if the bias is spring powered.

Thats the response I hope to get. I have tried a 9V battery on the normally open one in reverse polarity, but not 12V. The normally closed one needed 12V to actuate open, but got a sililar bore. I have pushed it as far as she'll go sir, I can not push it anymore.