Silicon Hose Versus Copper For Herms Heat Transfer

[Lemon]

Bandito,
Copper has very good heat transfer, only exceeded by aluminium, very difficult to come by in standard tube sizes etc.
Silicon, and many polymers are in comparison quite good insulators.

Thermodynamics is the field that will answer your question definitively, but not many hot water heaters are made of silicon.

Hope it helps

Lemon

 

[Bandito]

Bandito,
Copper has very good heat transfer, only exceeded by aluminium, very difficult to come by in standard tube sizes etc.
Silicon, and many polymers are in comparison quite good insulators.

Thermodynamics is the field that will answer your question definitively, but not many hot water heaters are made of silicon.

Hope it helps

Lemon

Thanks for the reply, I didnt want this thread to go dead, but actually, gold has the best heat transfer - density seems to be the driving factor.

I have wanted to start a thread on this topic for quite some time, and although I dont want to hijack, I would like to end up with a definitive answer in the form of an excel spreadsheet that could be used to determine the length of copper or stainless or silicon or whatever tube required to achieve an effective heat transfer.

The photos I linked to in post #2 were photos of a few pages from the thermodynamics section of my 1442 page physics bible.

Google is showing a wealth of hits - there is hope yet!

http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&source...07bcdde4ac46065

 

[LethalCorpse]

Bandito, the question has been answered three or four times now. We're all acutely aware of your affinity for obscenely complicated or expensive solutions to quite straightforward problems, and your complete inability to listen to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. Plese keep your quixotry in your own thread and stop clogging Brad's.

 

[Bandito]

Comon lethal! I know you have the brains to formulate a proper equation to give an actual formula! An answer like
"its a good insulator" just doesnt cut it at this level of thermodynamics - we need comparable figures taking the wall thinkness and flow rate etc into account. Help us out? Please!

 

[Bandito]

Plese keep your quixotry in your own thread and stop clogging Brad's.

Exactly! Zackeys is when you ass hole and your body smells exactly like dog shit:

Jakob, keep things directed at me in my thread! You will see an apoligy from me there

 

[benchick]

You forgot the obvious or left it out so I got confused.

Use the plate chiller to heat and then use it too cool.

Not sure how to calculate if the second pump would be cost effective. If you are running 100C water through it to heat the wort it would not take much and it may be less expensive to just dump the hot water. A second pump would be convenient and may be the best idea. You could calculate the step and only heat the water to what you need to make your change to the wort. Also if you have a bunch of hot water left you could pre-heat the wort when transferring it to the boil kettle.

Times like this I am glad I BIAB.

the plate chiller seems like the ultimate herms answer if some one is running 2 pumps but no one seems to use that idea, is it maybe due to clogging the plates with mash liquid? maybe do a recirc on your mash tun to establish your grain bed filtration to clear the liquid then recirc it through the plate chiler to heat the mash? would be a lot easier than coiling copper and attaching fittings to a vessel etc. and then it would double as a chiller after the boil to chill the wort.

 

[pb unleaded]

I use a chiller for my herms system. It's very efficient. The chiller also gets a good clean during the process.
The second pump is from an old dishwasher.