Scrap Plate Chiller

[chrisluki]

Hey guys

If all goes well I might be lucky enough to score an old (but still in great nick) plate chiller form a building demo.

My question is, can this bit of equipment work in two ways:

Budget: Immerse the plate in ice water, hook up to garden hose and pump tap water through it and then through my immersion chiller so the water is chilled before cooling the wort?

Not Budget: Buy a food grade pump and circulate the wort from the kettle through the chiller plate and then into the fermenter (Or back into the kettle?)

Any tips would be appreciated, lads!

Cheers

Chris

 

[razz]

The non budget version will be more efficient in cooling and the money you saved on getting the chiller you can spend on a pump.
I think the first option won't be very good, you need to have the ice water circulating through the other side of the chiller in order to really cool down the tap water to be effective.

 

[Matplat]

Yeah budget option won't work well at all, its not how they're designed to work....

 

[S.E]

You can use a plate chiller without a pump and just let the wort gravity feed in to the fermenter or a cube if head height is an issue. Pumps are better and particularly make cleaning easier with plate and counter flow chillers, but not usually necessary if you are looking for budget.

 

[real_beer]

Hey guys

If all goes well I might be lucky enough to score an old (but still in great nick) plate chiller form a building demo.

My question is, can this bit of equipment work in two ways:

Budget: Immerse the plate in ice water, hook up to garden hose and pump tap water through it and then through my immersion chiller so the water is chilled before cooling the wort?

Not Budget: Buy a food grade pump and circulate the wort from the kettle through the chiller plate and then into the fermenter (Or back into the kettle?)

Any tips would be appreciated, lads!
Cheers
Chris

Are you talking about one of these

Or one of these

 

[S.E]

Good point, he could be talking cold plate rather than plate chiller.

 

[klangers]

I would be very cautious using a plate heat exchanger (option B in real_beer's post) that is being tossed out. They are very prone to fouling and you don't know what the condition is inside the unit. It might have been used for fluids other than beer and could be a long way from sanitary.

 

[chrisluki]

This is the chiller....

http://www.sondexaustralia.com.au/products/heat-exchangers/plate-frame-heat-exchangers/

Think it will be in pretty good nick, its fairly new and is food grade, used for heating water.

Thoughts?

 

[klangers]

You would run hot wort in one side a cold water through the other for a very good wort chiller. Can the HEX be disassembled like the ones in your example?

This example looks like it is built for far higher heat exchange duties than what you'll want for chilling home brew. Unfortunately there is such a think as a heat exchanger that's too big - they are built for certain flow rates and below these flow rates the internal fluid velocities are too low for effective heat exchange. Also, the volume of fluid in the HEX might be rather high, which could result in high losses of wort.

Usually commercial or industrial heat exchangers should have a data plate on them. If you post that I can comment more thoroughly.

 

[chrisluki]

HAvent actually got my hands on it yet, but i believe it is about 500mm x 300mm and 100mm deep?

 

[klangers]

HAvent actually got my hands on it yet, but i believe it is about 500mm x 300mm and 100mm deep?

Yeah mate that's killing a fly with a sledge hammer... unless you're brewing at least 500 L.

Although it's probably worth grabbing - these are worth a bit and you may be able to sell it.

 

[Brooa]

I agree with Klangers. We use these style heat exchangers at work with flowrates in the thousands of litres per hour. Admittedly, ours have probably 3 times the number of plates.

 

[chrisluki]

Yeah mate that's killing a fly with a sledge hammer... unless you're brewing at least 500 L.

Although it's probably worth grabbing - these are worth a bit and you may be able to sell it.

thanks for the heads up!

 

[fraser_john]

Well worth getting, if you still want to use it, just remove 3/4 of the plates and it will work fine for low volume use. Benefit of these commercial jobs is the ability to tear them down and fully clean them from the inside.

Good score!

 

[Matplat]

'Wilson Brewing Company' may even be interested in buying this off you as he is currently setting up his 500L brewery, then you can go buy a homebrew sized unit...