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Direct steam injection


Okperioimplant

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Yeah, eductors are great.

As already pointed out if you are planning on using DSI then you need culinary grade steam.

Additionally DSI will add volume, so allow for a 20% increase in volume.

Would that be 20% gross increase not including removed spirits or 20% net increase after reduction of striped spirits? I'm not a math major but my figures came out no increase in final volume in the still at the end of the strip. I could have calculated incorrectly?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just a follow up, after speaking to the guys at NCI, we went with a single 3/4" - did a test run with water to see how it performed, very impressive. Either this is going to work great, or we've made the worlds largest cappuccino foamer.

James, the single 3/4" was installed in the 600 gal mash tank referenced above? Installed bottom of tank, pointed up? Did you track the heat up time? Was the nozzle noisy? Any chance you took a video?

Sorry for all the questions, we are a week out finishing up the boiler and getting antsy to see how they performed.

-Dave

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Dave - Yes in the mash tank. No not pointed upwards, we use a converted open top bulk tank, so the injector is horizontal, pointing along the long axis of the tank.

I'll post back once we run the first mash through, but the agitation with only water was significant using just the eductor (no agitator). We'll see how it does with a more viscous mash though.

I'll take a video for you in the next couple of days. The nozzle running about 11 pounds average was pretty loud. We only had the tank 1/3rd full, and only water, so not a good test of heat up time (it's fast, two would be very fast).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dave - Yes in the mash tank. No not pointed upwards, we use a converted open top bulk tank, so the injector is horizontal, pointing along the long axis of the tank.

I'll post back once we run the first mash through, but the agitation with only water was significant using just the eductor (no agitator). We'll see how it does with a more viscous mash though.

I'll take a video for you in the next couple of days. The nozzle running about 11 pounds average was pretty loud. We only had the tank 1/3rd full, and only water, so not a good test of heat up time (it's fast, two would be very fast).

James, did you ever get around to shooting a video? Our boiler s just about done and believe it or not I'm getting antsy to se how they work...... Happy New Year! -Dave

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Sorry, it's pretty tough to get a good video, just too much steam once I lift the lid. Here you go, not much to see, the sound is more impressive than the video (although someone dropped something mid-video).

Condensate addition absolutely needs to be accounted for - At full power I am adding 35 gallons of water per hour. Which translates into a bit less power than I expected. However, I don't need to run the steam to keep the liquid comfortably in at the 195 mark - probably 50% of the time, or less, but my tank is insulated.

It tops out at about 198-199 before I lose the ability to condense 100% of the steam in the liquid. Once I push past this, the educator starts to lose the ability to agitate as well, and I get larger steam bubbles breaching the surface of the liquid. I'm not sure if this is going to cause you problems with stripping. I didn't bother to attempt to modulate the pressure, since this is a simple on/off control.

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James, thanks for the video and pic's. Looking foward to getting ours put to the test. BTW that's a sweet Honeywell PDI? Is it a stand alone temp controler or part of a panel? What's the model number, I would like to investigate it.

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  • 1 month later...

We experience full steam collapse with just bringing 200 gallons of water to a boil in 1 hour. I don't know your reference to a 140F restriction from the manufacture. The rep that we dealt with suggested the model we use and so far so good. Will be striping with it in a couple of weeks when we finish our condenser. I will say with just water it is a bit on the loud side but works GREAT. Hope the thickness of the mash absorbs a bit of the noise??? When we start striping with it I will post a video and comments. And if it doesn't do what we want, the way we want, I guess you can say "Steam Coil"............

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My experience with direct steam indicates that many small nozzles are MUCH quieter than one large one.

Also you need a sanitary boiler.

I ask a question, if you use sanitary steam why do you need a filter? If it is to stop a bit of scale getting into your mash then in my opinion it is a waste of money. I really can't see that scale is going to hurt your mash or still.

Please tell me if (and why) I am wrong.

Tapping off a recirculating steam system will give you shitty steam even if it is filtered.

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Here is a good overview.

http://www.spiraxsarco.com/Documents/Food_and_beverage_best_practice_guide_to_managing_steam_quality-Sales_Brochure.pdf

Regulatory does come into play. In the US - this would be something an FDA inspector would be accustomed to seeing in a food processing facility in which steam was in contact with a food or beverage product. Could you argue that it's not required for mash? Sure. Do they need to accept it? No, in everything I've read, there doesn't appear to be an exclusion.

3a standards specify specific filtration and criteria for culinary steam (609-3). This would be for the filtration of what's commonly called plant steam. However, there are other requirements regarding boiler additives and steam quality that would apply.

Not sure how you would define a sanitary boiler, but FDA and 3A do specify the appropriate approaches for creating steam intended for contact with food and beverage, and those don't require the kinds of systems that might be required for medical or pharmaceutical uses - sometimes called clean steam or pure steam - steam to steam heat exchangers, end-to-end sanitary pipelines, stainless electrically heated boilers with reverse osmosis feed water, etc, etc.

On the 140F upper limit - it certainly seems to work better, the colder the water is, but we regularly push to 195-200f. We don't go above 200f much, because we do start to lose some steam out of the liquid. However - we have a shallow wide tank, not a tall narrow tank, and I would very much believe tank geometry would make a big difference here.

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Has anyone used a heat pump chiller to preheat the inlet water for the steam then switch the cycle back to cooling after the mash is cooked up?

I am supplying heat recovery chillers using refrigerant to city water exchangers and dual set point chillers to automatically switch over from 45F to 25F glycol for chill filtering and to reduce chiller load and make hot water out of the hot refrigerant gas..

I would think it would reduce the boiler load as well, especially where the makeup is water is cold. I am using heat recovery off the chilled water return for this as well when the customer has a hot liquor tank available to store up hot water.

Just curious.

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  • 1 year later...

They don't have much usable capacity.  We're talking like 3-6-9kw of power with a steam bath unit (~10,000-30,000 btu).  You probably have a workable capacity of 10-30 gallons or so, maybe not even that.  You hit a point where they are nearly as expensive as boilers, or in some cases they are just traditional steam boilers.  For example, the 18kw Mr Steam is a relabeled Sussman electric boiler, that require all the fit and finish of a traditional boiler, and is just as expensive.

For a very small steam injection setup, it might work, but you would need to find a workaround for the safety shutdown timers - otherwise you'll need to manually reset and restart the unit a few times every hour.  Most small units aren't designed for any kind of continuous commercial use - doesn't mean they wouldn't work - but I wonder how long a cheap unit would realistically last.

Be safe, a boiler is a boiler.

 

 

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I have a portable 18kW steam generator here and while they are bloody cheap to buy the running costs would need to be looked at. Unlike a boiler which is capable of heat recovery by returning the condensate to the feed tank the steam generator is a one shot deal.

Typically the steam generators have a safety timer built into the operation, 60-90 minutes from memory. This requires the base coding to be changed for them to be used for an application like described above. Doing so would void any warranty and place you in no-mans land from a legal perspective.

They also run at a much lower pressure/temperature, ie just over boiling point rather than the 2-10bar pressures most boilers can achieve.

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  • 1 month later...

Direct Steam is good, but consider;

  1. Its noisy, very noisy.
  2. It needs proper injectors to avoid over cooking and hot spots
  3. The quality of the steam. Poor quality steam (rusting steam lines) can taint the mash.
  4. Plan your boiler sizing carefully, Direct Steam can use a lot of kg/hr.

 

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