Interesting Herms Idea. Would Like Thoughts

[seravitae]

Hi.



So, I just had an interesting idea and was wondering if anyone would like to comment on it.

I know most HERMS people out there are using copper coils in containers with a heating element.



However what if you used a Mashmaster Chillout plate heat exchanger in reverse? Use a march to pump the liquid through the chillout while supplying hot glycol to the water inlet. (this would require a liquid pump that could handle about 100 celcius, but it would not have to be food grade. I am not sure where to get these?)

I think it may be of use to some people with limited space as you could have a very small joint chiller/heater HERMS unit. If you put a radiator and a valve in paralell with the glycol line, you could open the valve, turn the heating element(s) off and continue pumping the wort around, which would now have the plate heat exchanger working in (regular) chilling mode.



Just a thought.

edit: just thought, boat bilge pump possibly handle these temperatures, not sure, but a hot water booster pump would handle these temps easily)

edit edit: perfect, car radiator pump.. designed for pumping glycol at rediculous temperatures.

 

[3G]

I have thought of using the plate heat exchanger hooked up to a maybe 4 litre reservoir of temp controlled water.
The only draw back is you would need two marsh pumps.
eg Mash is at 50 degrees and need to raise to 66
reservoir to maybe 70 degrees
pump wort throught heat exchanger and 70 degree water through
cant see why it wont work

 

[seravitae]

Yes, spending a lot on a second march pump is wat turned me off.



However i was just talking to a mechanic and he said that a car radiator pumps can handle extreme temps. New pressurised radiators (15psi) means water boils at 125 celcius.

He said that a radiator pump might be about $30-60 at the car wreckers. Running glycol would mean that it wouldnt boil so you would not need a pressurised system - just an electric DC motor and a fanbelt on a frame...

 

[reVoxAHB]

Well, one concern would be the odd bit of grain coming through your falsie and getting stuck in the plate chiller. If this were to happen with a standard copper coil setup, you'd just push it right through the system back into the tun. The ChillOut MKIII features 9 wort flow paths, but not sure how large each of those paths is.

Also, I went the HE herms route and it cost me $10 15L stainless kettle (slavos), $50 2000W bolt on element (Helios, Melb), $60 9M copper, $15 misc. fittings/bits and bobs.. $135 all up, for consideration.

reVox

 

[mika]

Car radiator pump would be belt drive so getting the drive for it could be interesting. There are electric radiator pumps around, but I believe they're about the same price as a march pump anyway. The problem with the heat exchanger, when you're running out of the kettle you've only got hop pellets to worry about blocking it up. With a HERMs system you could have chunks of grain running around. What makes it thru the false bottom is going to be fairly small I guess, but could be an issue.

 

[seravitae]

Driving it would be fairly easy, just use a fan belt and a DC motor (to adjust speed).

But you have a point about clogging up the heat exchanger... I think if a good fine SS filter is used it should prevent any bits of grain from entering. Beerbelly's hopback which is designed to go between the kettle and a plate exchanger is obviously designed to prevent stuff (hops) from clogging the heat exchanger, and it has 2mm holes in it. In my setup I am plannning to use a 'slotted copper pipe' drain system, so i was thinking i could use a 2mm or 1mm drill bit and drill holes all through it and use that to ensure the chillout cannot get clogged.

 

[mesa]

Interesting idea. Couple of things come to mind.

1) the HX is probably efficient enough (especially for such small temperature changes) that you will want to run the hot fluid side at almost exactly the temperature you want out. Your only going to be moving the temp of the wort by around 20C when a HX is designed to move it about 70C when cooling. I'd suggest water rather than glycol because you will probably never want it over 100C (and I don't like the possibility of glycol contamination)

2) How big a tank of hot fluid are you going to use? Will you pump it continuously though th HX and use a PID to control wort flow or will you switch the flow of the hot fluid as well? If the tank is too small are you going to need a PID to keep the hot fluid temperature stable when you start and stop wort flow?

Something else to think about. I think most people don't try to temperature step using the HERMS/RIMS because you can't really add heat fast enough to make a decent step. Adding a hot water infusion is a faster way to step. If on the other hand you have a large hot fluid tank that you add heat to "slowly", and a really good HX you can add heat to the wort faster than a "regular" HERMS/RIMS. Of course this assumes you can get your wort flow rate up without getting the mash stuck. I imagine it would still take a few minutes to bring the temp up (you've effectivly got to cycle all of the wort through the HX and I can't imagine a flow rate above a few litres per minute)

 

[Thirsty Boy]

You ca easily temp step with a HERMS RIMS or some variant thereof - commercial temp programmed mashing ramps (yeah I know, not steps) at about 1C per minute and a decently designed HERMS etc can do just as well. I have no doubt you could, given a chunky enough heat source, do even better with a plate heat ex-changer.

If you were careful to circulate your mash in a path around the plate filter - you could get pretty clear wort with minimal chunks, that could be taken care of by a small mesh filter - so don't think clogging with chunks of grain is all that big an issue... however, I do think that clogging with break material is going to be a issue. At the hot surface interface in the heat-ex. An amount of protein is going to form up on the surface and slowly or quickly, it will clog up your heat exchanger.

To keep it going for any appreciable time, you will need to circulate it with pretty decent detergent, more or less every time - and even then I am guessing that its lifespan wont be all that great. I suspect it will lose efficiency pretty quickly, then flow rate, then just clog.

Not sure or anything, but thats what I'm betting would happen

 

[technocat]

There is a pump available made by or distributed by King Pumps. The pic is of a hot water pump but I am not sure it will handle boiling water 100C. Sells for around 160 bucks


View attachment 26610

 

[Offline]

Nearly all car coolant pumps have no housing, the impeller gets bolted directly into the engine. The electric ones are self contained but expensive by comparison.

 

[seravitae]

mesa:
1) I am running glycol simply because even at 80C, the vapour pressure of water is quite high. Some molecules are at 100C,
meaning there is a chance for pressurisation and evaporation. Using a glycol mix (food grade propylene glycol) at the very least ensures the vapour pressure goes right down, so even at the maximum temperature ever needed (100C) there is little chance for pressurisation and evaporation.

2) I will be using PID to control the temperature. The container will be relatively small, enough to support the two heating elements. I will probably get a mate to weld up a small box. Perhaps something about the size of a shoebox or two.

With regards to your statement about HERMS/RIMS not adding heat fast enough to do step fusion, this is *precisely* because the heat flux is too low. You can easily step infuse if you used steam instead of water, because the temperature difference would allow you to have a very high thermal transfer. That is the other reason for using the glycol - if the glycol temperature is 115 celcius, you can safely raise the temperature of the wort very quickly without burning, just like the big distilleries (and maybe breweries) use steam heating coils. This may be "the way" around the very issue you discuss.


Thirstyboy:

I agree with you - grain clogging/hop clogging negligable issue, but protein clogging may be an issue. The question is, will the HX clog within the time required to do a single or double batch. I dont really know. However since the wort-side is being used, I would be back-flushing every run regardless to ensure it is clean. I was going to implement a valve system to 'reverse' the flow thru my march pump so i could backflush anything that needed to be.


Beernut:

Yes that is where i got the idea of the hot water pump - that exact booster pump. Its max temp is 80C, and its cost was appreciably higher than a salvaged car radiator pump so i am steering away from it. Thanks though.


Offline:
Yep, they require a baseplate. Luckily I have access to multiple CNC's so I can either make my own baseplate to match the block layout, or alternatively I was planning on either making a simple gasket and bolting it to the bottom of my glycol tank (gravity drain), or even (if possible) just weld it to the case permanently.



I found on another site that trub particles are 30-80 microns in size. I would have thought that with a decent amount of head pressure from the march pump that these particles wouldnt be able to stick to the walls of the heat exchanger long enough. I suppose however deposits could form due to non-laminar flow. Also i can do a long protein rest to try to minimise trub. Im not sure how that will affect the overall beer though, have to read more into brewing chem.

I think i will try it just for the hell of it. If i dont end up using it for this project ill just use it for another project. If the heat exchanger becomes clogged I will just update the system to use a copper coil which I already have.

 

[MHB]

Long protein rests actually cause more protein to go into solution than do short or no rest. Apart from exasibating the problem of coating the heat exchanger, too much protein in the beer is head negitave with modern malt I would generally avoid or minimise the protein rest.

The other point to consider is that if you are putting that much heat in will you be killing (denaturing) the enzymes as they pass over the 100^oC + surface of the heat exchanger. I know it's not a really difficult challenge to raise the temperature a lot faster than 1^oC/minute, yet whether jacketed or coil heated 1^oC/m rates of rise are the industry standard, could there be a reason?

MHB

 

[mika]

Nearly all car coolant pumps have no housing, the impeller gets bolted directly into the engine. The electric ones are self contained but expensive by comparison.

I was going to use that argument, but then remembered that there's Toyota's out there with a complete pump and think there are more, just can't put my finger on it at the moment.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Thirstyboy:

I agree with you - grain clogging/hop clogging negligable issue, but protein clogging may be an issue. The question is, will the HX clog within the time required to do a single or double batch. I dont really know. However since the wort-side is being used, I would be back-flushing every run regardless to ensure it is clean. I was going to implement a valve system to 'reverse' the flow thru my march pump so i could backflush anything that needed to be.

still, I think backflushing isn't going to be enough - you should see what falls out when they open up the wort heat exchangers at work - and those things are CIP circulated every three brews.

I reckon it will work just fine - But I think you shouldn't expect a massive lifespan out of your heat exchanger thats all

 

[mesa]

Hey Thirsty,
could you tell us a little more about protein formation please.
Like what temperature do you start to get significant clumping (or does it happen at all temperatures and we just don't notice in a regular mash) and does mechanical action play a roll in protein clumping (I'm sure I've heard people talk about a rolling boil in connection to hot break as well as hop utilisation. I've also heard people talk about boiling too hard breaking up your hot break)

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I'm not so much talking about clumping - as a film of break material forming on the "hot" surface of the heat exchanger. Particles are easy, backflushing etc is going to wash them all out (or mostly anyway), at any rate, they wouldn't be any worse that what comes from a kettle during a wort cool - its the stuff that forms and sticks on the surfaces that worries me.

In a kettle where the object of the game is to get a good protein break, yeah, you want a rolling boil, you want the physical agitation and most of all you want the steam bubbles - but that doesn't mean that you aren't going to get some break forming at lower temperatures. You only have to look in your kettle as its coming to a boil to know that. Start to see clumps of break material well before it reaches the boil.

I dont know what temp it starts to happen - certainly the hotter the better. I will read up tonight (gotta study anyway, might as well look at break formation) and try to remember to get back to you.

I also know that I get significant amounts of break/protein build up on the element and in the housing of my RIMS unit - the surfaces in there are probably a fair bit hotter than anything in your heat-x would be... but I get quite a lot of goo building up even though it never boils. Its designed to be easily pulled apart for cleaning, for exactly that reason.

So I dont in any way know for sure that there will be an issue - and it might be one that a good circulate with hot PBW would easily take care of - or it might not. I don't really know.

 

[Yorg]

There seems to be a lot of added complexity and no clearly articulated benefit.
The only speculation mentioned that points to a benefit for adding an extra pump, particle filter, more involved cleaning, and process risk, is the notion of getting a faster ramp.
The ramp rate is about getting heat from the source quickly distributed throughout the mash, without raising any part of the mash to an unacceptably high level above the mash temp.
As many know, the main variables are enough watts, HEX surface area, and flow rate.
But as Mesa pointed out, of these three, the bottle neck in need of a technical solution in the HERMS/RIMS domain is the flow rate - enough coil and enough watts are easily achieved.
Using a Plate Chiller rather than a coil seems to be a solution to no known problem.

 

[seravitae]

Yorg, the benefit was to *not* need another pump, and to have one heat exchanger to do heating and cooling, rather than two (HX copper coil and plate chiller).

As you state a plate chiller serves no technical advance and I wasnt suggesting that, I was suggesting it was a practical advance in requiring less equipment, and using your existing equipment for dual purposes.



It appears that the conclusion of this discussion is that the current plate heat exchangers for home brewers are designed specifically with one purpose and one purpose only - chilling of whirlpooled and filtered kettle material. This is quite unfortunate as such a good heat exchanger could obviously be used to simplify a HERMS setup by requiring less equipment to be purchased, no coiling/soldering required, and the HERMS tank could be very very small leading to better temp control.

Given the size of the plate chiller and the number of plates, I would happily purchase a "chunky" plate exchanger - something with maybe only 4 plates, and a 1cm gap inbetween the plates - just so that it could double for my HERMS heating as well as my cooling - with little risk to sticking, and a much longer usability time between rigerous cleaning to remove protein scum.

It is just a bit of a shame that the heat exchangers on the market are maybe "too efficient" to be used for this purpose.