I built an immersion chiller today

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homebrewkid

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Ive had a coil of 1/4" copper laying around for years and years, wondering what i should do with it, after a bit of googleing i discovered that some people have successfully made an immersion chiller from 1/4" copper, not ideal i know but it was free and thats important to me.

I have no idea how long the coil was, it originally started lofe as a 60metre roll, there was probably 20m or so left and i used it all.

I had to buy some 6mm pvc hose from bunnings and a couple of hose fittings, but only because I wanted it to be all new.

I wrapped the copper around a corny keg, pretty easy to do and i didn't bother making it tight, there was no need it fits in my keggle fine.

I gave it a soak in starsan to clean it up and it came out nice and shiny.

I used 5mm beer line clips to hold the hose on the copper and on the 6mm barb to male tap adapter, i had to make a short dual female ended hose to be able to plug it into the tap.

I managed to get a flow rate of about 1.5 litres in about 30 seconds, id say it will work well.

Cheers.

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I did the same years ago except mine wasn't free and I used about 14 meters from memory off a 20 m roll, was gonna use the rest for a pre chiller but still haven't got around to it as I live in Vic it was never really an issue but moving north soon so I'm guessing I'll be needing it there ! Good job[emoji106]
 
Well i must report that it worked really well, i was so excited about doing my very first all grain batch today that i forgot to time how long it took to cool down though, id estimate 20 minutes though.
 
Did you/can you whirlpool while chilling? will improve chilling time significantly....
 
Nice one. What Matplat said - keep that wort moving and it'll be better again.
 
Ducatiboy stu said:
Your first mistake was to form it into a coil
But only if the system doesn't incorporate some form of wort circulation during cooling such as:-
  • Whirlpool
  • Stirred
  • Pumped
  • etc
  • ie BM with pump running
Wobbly
 
I finished this today:


30483756881_406f0a5788_b.jpg


3 x 3m coils of 3/8" copper with 1/2" manifold and hose fittings.

The idea is that 3/8" copper has about three times the flow resistance of 1/2", same principle used in the "Hydra".

Won't be able to test it until next week at least.
 
After watching the picture for 30+ seconds I realised that this could have been inspired by M.C. Escher
 
Lyrebird_Cycles said:
I finished this today:


30483756881_406f0a5788_b.jpg


3 x 3m coils of 3/8" copper with 1/2" manifold and hose fittings.

The idea is that 3/8" copper has about three times the flow resistance of 1/2", same principle used in the "Hydra".

Won't be able to test it until next week at least.
The narrower pipe also gives a larger surface area between cooling water and wort, should be a 33% improvement right there.

Increased water turbulence inside the pipe would also help.

But we're talking about extracting a few percent out of an overall process that's efficient enough.
 
The smaller diameter tube will reduce turbulence or at least increase the flow stream velocity required to transition from laminar to turbulent flow: the effective hydraulic distance is smaller so there's an increased tendency for flow to stick to the surface.

The turnover velocity* for R = 2000 is 0.2 ms-1 for the larger tube and 0.27 ms-1 for the smaller. That corresponds to a flow rate of about 1 l min-1 for the single larger tube but slightly over 2 l min-1 for the three smaller tubes.



*Calculated using water at 20 oC and ignoring surface roughness.
 
This would be getting crazy but I wonder if you could put a tightly coiled bit of wire on the inside of the copper pipe to induce some turbulence, similar to what people do with a counter flow chiller. Only for the OCD mad scientists out there of course.

Since I've moved to my new system that includes pumps and whirlpooling, the need to get the chiller up to max efficiency is no longer there. I'm thinking of even hacking a bit off to create a pre chiller in an ice bucket for it.
 
pcqypcqy said:
This would be getting crazy but I wonder if you could put a tightly coiled bit of wire on the inside of the copper pipe to induce some turbulence, similar to what people do with a counter flow chiller. Only for the OCD mad scientists out there of course.
Many people do this with Liebig condensers, other option is to crimp the tube alternating at 90° angles every 5-10cm
 
There is a hole thread full of engunear speak dedicated to how a chiller works and how to make them efficient

Its a good one.

Caused tears for some in the end
 
Ducatiboy stu said:
There is a hole thread full of engunear speak dedicated to how a chiller works and how to make them efficient

Its a good one.

Caused tears for some in the end
Did it make it onto the Classic AHB thread thread?
 

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