Large scale equipment (500L +)

[Moad]

I got an introduction to a bloke who has access to ex lab/dairy equipment.

I am looking for someone who may have experience piecing something together or someone who has a clue what this stuff is as I don't.

Also I can get an old simons boiler for free, needs a fair bit of work. Anyone know how to work on these?

I think I can get a steam jacketed stirred vessel for pretty cheap (500L), I am thinking it will make an exceptional mash tun and could be fed by the steam boiler.

Equipment link - http://www.equipmenttraders.com.au/used-equipment/tanks/used-stainless-steel-jacketed-mixing-tanks

Boiler is like this - http://simonsboiler.com.au/product/simons-vs-300-electric-steam-boilers/

Would need someone who has experience with this stuff to do the calcs on if this would power a steam jacketed kettle with 6-700L capacity as well.

Or should I base a plan on a 500L brau and put this all in the too hard basket

 

[SBOB]

wow...and I thought your new setup was big enough

 

[malt junkie]

Moad has lots of friends


Moad, the boiler looks more than adequate power wise. If this is for a pro system I'd speak with the pros. If your thinking extra large home group brew system I'd shy away from steam; it's silent, invisible and does not discriminate with what it burns. Steam and it's associated control system needs to be professionally installed, and would guess that wouldn't be cheap.

Certainly don't want to put a downer on your idea, I mean BIG shiny kettles ... whats not to love!

I'm sure we have a few guys here that can give you more of an insight.

good luck with it

 

[///]

There's a heap of this stuff around, but it's all for show. How will you handle and cool the wort as well as manage fermentation? Then what will you do with it?
Those 3 phase boilers chew the juice and can only be installed by a certified boiler mech, work cover certification is required before you can run as well as 12 monthly inspections

 

[MHB]

Having dealt with M&E and a couple of other used equipment brokers my first recommendation would be a large jar of KY, you're going to need it.

If you are looking for a brewery, do a global search for used systems, there are lots of skid mounted container shippable second hand systems - at least they will be sized properly.
A 500L BM is an impressive bit of equipment, compact, well priced and you can get a bunch of support equipment sized to suit. Not a bad way to start a small micro.
Mark

 

[klangers]

I deal with this stuff on a daily basis; I could help you figure out what's what.

In saying that, one would only purchase this kind of thing if they already have a very clear idea of their design.

The pipe fitting for steam and stainless would most likely exceed the cost of the equipment. You don't need very high pressure steam to heat brewery equipment so that helps you out.

 

[husky]

If you're wanting a 6-700L pre boil volume and reasonable evaporation rate of 10% + then you're going to need min 50kw boiler assuming you're running a single batch and only the kettle at that time.
If you want steam and condensate return from three vessels(HLT, MT, KT) then expect to pay $40k for the pressure relief valve, pressure reducing valve to 1BAR, and all the condensate traps and isolation valves and piping(assuming separate side and bottom jackets). Plus there's boiler certification. As a comparison for $4k you can get a 40kW ultra low watt density electric heating circular coiled element to install into the kettle.
A second hand reasonable condition non jacketed 1000L dairy vat wont cost you more than $1000.
Any second hand jacketed mixing vessel will still sell for a reasonably high price and is not really required for a 500L system.
Put some specific equipment links up if you want some specific info, the link only shows all their equipment.

 

[malt junkie]

Note, the Vic swap meet brews 540L and boil is done with a single high pressure burner. There has been talk among the group to increase this, under a vessel that size there more than enough room to have 3 burners running.

I see critical areas being mash in and maintaining/stepping mash temp, so a grits hydrator is essential. I've seen big herms systems out to about 360l. You could run multiple mash tuns to make things more manageable (as we do at swaps).

Many ways to skin said cat.

 

[Moad]

thanks for all of the replies gentlemen, not realising the associated costs I'm glad i didn't go too far down the rabbit hole.

cheers

 

[technobabble66]

This is the setup we used at the last Vic Case Swap brewing session that malt junkie mentioned.
The MLTs are ~300L from memory and that massive drum is the kettle, ~600L full. And I think we pushed ~500L out of it into cubes. The MLTs were heated for step mashing by wiggman's and Idzy's(?) HERMS. HLT volume was boiled in the kettle then transferred to the overhead pots.
It all worked fairly/surprisingly well, though we need to do a little decocting on the fly to ramp up a bit faster. So there's some room for improvement but it basically did the job

 

[///]

If you're wanting a 6-700L pre boil volume and reasonable evaporation rate of 10% + then you're going to need min 50kw boiler assuming you're running a single batch and only the kettle at that time.
If you want steam and condensate return from three vessels(HLT, MT, KT) then expect to pay $40k for the pressure relief valve, pressure reducing valve to 1BAR, and all the condensate traps and isolation valves and piping(assuming separate side and bottom jackets). Plus there's boiler certification. As a comparison for $4k you can get a 40kW ultra low watt density electric heating circular coiled element to install into the kettle.
A second hand reasonable condition non jacketed 1000L dairy vat wont cost you more than $1000.
Any second hand jacketed mixing vessel will still sell for a reasonably high price and is not really required for a 500L system.
Put some specific equipment links up if you want some specific info, the link only shows all their equipment.

Hey Gov, just to confirm you are wanting a 60 odd horsepower boiler to run a 600l Brew kettle. A 30hp unit will run a 2-30hl unit without an issue. And my PRV from Spirax for a 50HP unit cost $5k with instal, $32k for the whole ring mains with certs.

On an old system we had 8kw elements in the hot and 12kw in the boiler. 40kw if available, would blow the roof off and exceed most fellas wet dream. Sorry to be blunt, but your engineering here is just a ways off. Also a 40kw element would char and destroy the wort.

There is no comparison to running electric vs steam on a flavour and an efficiency of cost basis. Steam is worth every cent.

 

[malt junkie]

have to agree steam and electric are two completely different animals, condensing steam is instant energy exchange you can't beat it.

Just sayin the whole HP and Kw thing always confuses the hell out of me, especially when it comes to steam, as it doesn't translate to electrical KW/HP. I'll have to find the video of a flash boiler, (open ended so no back pressure h34r: the good old USA ) running off a single jet burner, brought 100L of ambient water to the boil in 25 mins (home made coloudra). Epic, but scary at the same time :huh:

 

[tugger]

Just something to look at if you do go down the steam path.
This is a 400L steam boiler with recirculating arm and pump.
All you would need is a basket and hoist and a large plate chiller.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

I see critical areas being mash in and maintaining/stepping mash temp, so a grits hydrator is essential.

Preferable, but not essential, I've brewed on a 12 hl system where the grist is just dumped bag by bag over the top. Lots of paddling ensues but it's doable.

 

[malt junkie]

Preferable, but not essential, I've brewed on a 12 hl system where the grist is just dumped bag by bag over the top. Lots of paddling ensues but it's doable.

Heh ohh to be that fit young and energetic.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Moad

The energy requirement calculation is actually pretty simple: the thing to look for is a reasonable rate of temperature rise: in practice if you can heat the wort at better than one degree per minute you'll end up reducing the steam to maintain the boil, this is normal practice.

If you have 500 l of wort at 1.060 that's 530kg, assuming a heat capacity of 4 kJ / kg / K that's 2120 KJ / minute which is ~ 35.3 kW. That's delivered power, it's normal to oversize the boiler a bit so IMO you are looking at a 50 - 60 kW boiler.

As a comparison, brewery I was at yesterday has a 500 kW boiler for a 25 hl brewhouse, that's overkill but they never have to worry about having enough steam capacity to do more than one operation at once.

To see how this compares to boiloff, specific enthalpy of vaporisation for water is 2.26 MJ / kg. Your 35.3 kW is 127 MJ per hour which is translates to a vapour production of 56 kg / hour.

Caveat: I'm not a boiler engineer so best to ask the installer.

 

[klangers]

Caveat: I'm not a boiler engineer so best to ask the installer.

Hit me up if you guys want more info on this. It's my bread and butter so happy to help, but a bit pumped at work so won't write a wall of text unless there's interest.

Gas boilers can easily be oversized as the limiting factor is simply the fuel pipework and delivery pressure. This is a lot easier and cheaper to install or upgrade than an electrical supply to site for an electric boiler.

If you're serious about steam you won't go an electric boiler.

 

[husky]

Hey Gov, just to confirm you are wanting a 60 odd horsepower boiler to run a 600l Brew kettle. A 30hp unit will run a 2-30hl unit without an issue. And my PRV from Spirax for a 50HP unit cost $5k with instal, $32k for the whole ring mains with certs.

On an old system we had 8kw elements in the hot and 12kw in the boiler. 40kw if available, would blow the roof off and exceed most fellas wet dream. Sorry to be blunt, but your engineering here is just a ways off. Also a 40kw element would char and destroy the wort.

There is no comparison to running electric vs steam on a flavour and an efficiency of cost basis. Steam is worth every cent.

I agree that steam is better heating than electric however for a small system < 500L the cost of steam can be prohibitive($40k piped up to 3 x vessels actual cost in a micro in last 6 months) VS $4k for a custom element. I priced a second hank 150Kw boiler at one stage and inc boiler, piping, insulation and cert was up to $60k.
If you go steam you defiantly want min 50kw boiler, not sure what that translates to in boiler horse power bhp(diff to brake hp). I base this on calculations for 1 deg temp rise per min and also > 10% evap rate(need more power for the temp rise than the boil however). Also based on small micros I know of running steam.

I have built a 600L kettle(400L into kegs volume) and plan to do elec due to the much lower initial investment costs(running costs are a different matter). A 40kW element is just more cost effective for me in the short term and since it's a custom element I have spec'd as ultra low watt density of 40kw/m2. Element will be on variable control so you dial in the power you want fro ramping then perhaps half for the boil to suit your evap needs. This is similar power density to my home system and no scorching, charing or destruction issues so far. Red Duck have the same sized system and they run 36kW and advise they wouldn't go any smaller. 40kw allows some up the sleeve but it also doesn't have to be run on 100%.

What size boiler did you run 12kw in? Must have taken forever to get to the boil?

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

If you go steam you defiantly want min 50kw boiler, not sure what that translates to in boiler horse power

Roughly 5 HP.

BTW I like the concept of defiantly wanting steam but I think you meant definitely.

 

[klangers]

1 horse power is approximately 750 watts = 0.75 kW. So 50kW = 66 horse power (an interestingly enough, an actual horse is capable of significantly more than 1 horse power for short bursts).

However, if you're running steam calcs in horse power then you're either a masochist who enjoys excruciating unit conversions in Imperial, or aren't familiar whatsoever in metric. Seriously, the Imperial units for thermodynamic work are painful. Do yourself a favour and do thermodynamic calcs in metric.

Boiler capacity is typically listed in kg/hr of steam at a particular service pressure. This equates to a full load power. The boiler only boils off what it needs to in order to maintain the setpoint pressure. So if you can only condense 15kW of steam at your load, the boiler can only boil off that amount too.

There is also the whole condensate removal and return process which is critical to the performance of a steam system. I won't even begin to start that here.

So, typical process to size a boiler is as follows:

1. Work out your connected loads . Bear in mind that with saturated steam, temperature is proportional to pressure (which is actually the reason why steam is so bloody useful). So, you need to keep in mind not just the kW of your load, but also the pressure. Lower pressure steam needs larger pipework (lower density, kinda like high voltage electricity) and visa versa, so forgetting to understand your delivery pressure will screw you.
2. Work out the sequencing of your connected loads. It is very rare for everything to be running full load simultaneously.
3. Convert all kW values to pressure and mass flow rate (otherwise you can't size pipework)
4. Determine your peak, average and minimum demand in kg/hr at boiler discharge pressure.
5. Boilers have to be sized on worst case, ie peak demand +10%. Accidentally blowing out your boiler will be a rude expensive shock. If your peak is significantly higher than average, you may wish to revisit step 2.