Immersion Elements For 300l Kettle? Help Please!

[brendon_mackenzie]

Hi all,
I am trying to price a pilot setup. Before I get the ss kettle fabricated I am wanting to sort out the costs for elements. Not being of the electrical persuasion I thought I would ask.
The idea is to brew in 200L fermenters and have a kettle that can brew 300L (allowing some boil room).
What type/kW element would be required to get the job done?
I have ruled out gas at this stage. Is gas a realistic option?
Thanks in advance.

 

[crozdog]

Brendon,

I'd suggest that you speak to expert suppliers for example:

Hotco.com.au for electric elements &

Gameco.com.au for gas.

As they work with this stuff all the time they would be best positioned to provide you with appropriate advice.

There are others around, get out the yellow pages & see what you can find locally. For what it's worth, you may find that gas is cheaper as far as usage charges goes, I know it is cheaper to heat my home with gas than electricity.

Hope that helps

 

[Jim_Levet]

Try Wess Smith or one of the other "brewing consultant" types that are around. If no luck there, go ask at a micro brewery where they got there one.
James

 

[Shunty]

A pilot brewery in wellington? I'm intrigued..... Are you setting up a new brewery?

I know Emersons use a gas burner for their 100l pilot setup - probably easiest to go that route rather than electric. you're going to need some serious wattage - anything less than 2400 watt in a 20L setup is painfully slow

Who's building your gear? John Timpany from down south does some fantastic work, might be the man to talk to

 

[Gulf Brewery]

The idea is to brew in 200L fermenters and have a kettle that can brew 300L (allowing some boil room).
What type/kW element would be required to get the job done?

Hi Brendon

We use 48kW (12 + 12 + 24 ) of elements to boil 16 hl in around an hour, so you will probably want at 6 - 8 kW. You will want multiple elements to make up this as you don't need as much to keep boiling once it starts.

Cheers
Pedro

 

[brendon_mackenzie]

Thanks all for the replies...
So, I went into the local electrical wholesaler and after a few gazed looks he directed me to the hot water cyclinder elements. There was a range of wattages (2 x 3000W seemed to be a good fit). These were copper plated... in everyone's humble opinion, will this make a difference? Should elements be stainless steel?
A friend and I are costing out a small pilot plant. We would like to start a brewpub but are quite content to brew 23 L at a time at the moment (we just drink it too fast at the moment!). Yes, I know 200L batches is very very small indeed!
Early, eary days! Any advice from others who have been through this mental torture is welcome!

 

[MHB]

Given the option go for the SS elements; they have a lot longer life than do the Copper ones in a slightly acid wort.

Hot water systems have a huge sacrificial anode running down the middle, this is made of Aluminium, Aluminium/Magnesium alloy or in hard water areas sometimes pure Magnesium. These protect the Copper elements from corrosion.
Your kettle wont have a sacrificial anode, and a wort is a much more challenging environment than a hot water tank. Definitely go the Stainless elements if you can.


MHB

 

[Millet Man]

Thanks all for the replies...
So, I went into the local electrical wholesaler and after a few gazed looks he directed me to the hot water cyclinder elements. There was a range of wattages (2 x 3000W seemed to be a good fit). These were copper plated... in everyone's humble opinion, will this make a difference? Should elements be stainless steel?
A friend and I are costing out a small pilot plant. We would like to start a brewpub but are quite content to brew 23 L at a time at the moment (we just drink it too fast at the moment!). Yes, I know 200L batches is very very small indeed!
Early, eary days! Any advice from others who have been through this mental torture is welcome!

6,000W will only evaporate 9.6 litres/hr assuming no heat loss, I'd reckon you'd want at least double that (triple if you count heat losses) to get somewhere near 10% evaporation per hour and have a half decent boil.

A 130,000 btu LPG burner (38kW) would be much more suitable, even at 50% efficiency.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Gulf Brewery]

[6,000W will only evaporate 9.6 litres/hr assuming no heat loss, I'd reckon you'd want at least double that (triple if you count heat losses) to get somewhere near 10% evaporation per hour and have a half decent boil.

Hi Andrew

How did you work out the 9.6 litres per hour? I am interested in the maths for this, not questioning your figures

We aim for 5 to 6% evaporation loss as you don't want to waste any more energy than you have to when you are boiling.

Cheers
Pedro

 

[Guest Lurker]

Pedro

2 years ago you gave me some good advice on barley wines on the Grumpys forum and that beer is tasting pretty good so let me return the favour, and suggest what Andrew did.

At seal level (atmospheric pressure) assuming no change in temperature, ie water at 100 deg to steam at 100 deg takes 2258 kJ of energy per kg. Note this is quite a lot, and this is why steam burns are much worse than water burns.

If we ignore the energy required to keep the kettle at 100 deg, which makes up for radiation and convection, and is reasonably valid, then we assume that all the heat going in to the kettle is making steam. So it gives us the max evap rate.

A 6000W element delivers energy at 6000J/s, thats how a watt is defined.

In 1 hour, a 6000W element can deliver 6000 * 60 * 60 = 21,600,000 J
= 21,600kJ

If we can evaporate 1 kg of water (pretty close to 1 l of water) for each 2258 kJ of energy added, then the evaporation over an hour is 21600/2258 = 9.6 kg = 9.6 l.

 

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

So GL, how many watts in a white hot rock?

 

[Guest Lurker]

So GL, how many watts in a white hot rock?

Depends how big the rock is, but I picked quite big ones, so....heaps!

 

[Millet Man]

Pedro

2 years ago you gave me some good advice on barley wines on the Grumpys forum and that beer is tasting pretty good so let me return the favour, and suggest what Andrew did.

At seal level (atmospheric pressure) assuming no change in temperature, ie water at 100 deg to steam at 100 deg takes 2258 kJ of energy per kg. Note this is quite a lot, and this is why steam burns are much worse than water burns.

If we ignore the energy required to keep the kettle at 100 deg, which makes up for radiation and convection, and is reasonably valid, then we assume that all the heat going in to the kettle is making steam. So it gives us the max evap rate.

A 6000W element delivers energy at 6000J/s, thats how a watt is defined.

In 1 hour, a 6000W element can deliver 6000 * 60 * 60 = 21,600,000 J
= 21,600kJ

If we can evaporate 1 kg of water (pretty close to 1 l of water) for each 2258 kJ of energy added, then the evaporation over an hour is 21600/2258 = 9.6 kg = 9.6 l.

Well put GL. :beer:

My experience with 2,400 W elements is that they give a smidge above 3 litres evaporation per hour, equating to an efficency of 80-85% (heat losses).

For the gulf brewery using 48 kW it would equate to an evaporation rate of 76.5 kg of water per hour assuming no losses, pretty close to 5% per hour. At our contract brewery the evaporation is about 10% using a steam jacket.

I am actually toying with the idea of a steam infusion system at home as 1 kg of steam has the heating potential of 20 kg of boiling water. There's some examples on the HBD, just need to give it a go. B)

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Gulf Brewery]

Thanks Andrew and GL

I don't know if I feel better knowing the maths now or not <_<
We are about 100 metres above sea level - wanna alter your maths ?

Nice to know the Barley Wine came out fine - a good one is a very special beer to be appreciated.

Cheers
Pedro

 

[ausdb]

I am actually toying with the idea of a steam infusion system at home as 1 kg of steam has the heating potential of 20 kg of boiling water. There's some examples on the HBD, just need to give it a go. B)

Keep us informed, I have played with using steam for step mashes but had trouble generating enough steam safely (using a pressure cooker as the steam generator) to effect reasonably quick temp rises on a 40L batch size but it worked ok on 23L batches. I did see some info on injecting steam into the boil as well, it sort of balances the evaporation rate out a bit as well if I remember correctly.

 

[Millet Man]

I am actually toying with the idea of a steam infusion system at home as 1 kg of steam has the heating potential of 20 kg of boiling water. There's some examples on the HBD, just need to give it a go. B)

Keep us informed, I have played with using steam for step mashes but had trouble generating enough steam safely (using a pressure cooker as the steam generator) to effect reasonably quick temp rises on a 40L batch size but it worked ok on 23L batches. I did see some info on injecting steam into the boil as well, it sort of balances the evaporation rate out a bit as well if I remember correctly.

My interest is because I end up with a 4 lt/kg mash ratio as a minimum due to the full decoction I have to do. If I could knock the ratio back to 3.5 or so by using steam it would help hitting higher OG's for big beers.

Steam injection for boiling would add volume as any energy losses would end up as condensed steam/water.

Cheers, Andrew.

EDIT: Cracked the ton, look out Rick Ponting, on a roll, etc...