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what does everyone do with cooling water


Guest tom

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We need to find a way to recover our cooling water. This is my idea, and I want some feed back, what are you doing with your cooling water. I am proposing a 1000 gallon reserve tank, with a chiller to keep the flow of water to the still between 60 and 40 degrees F. And tie either a radiant system in the floor or an air forced heat exchanger, into the loop to heat the building. What are everyone's thoughts?

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We need to find a way to recover our cooling water. This is my idea, and I want some feed back, what are you doing with your cooling water. I am proposing a 1000 gallon reserve tank, with a chiller to keep the flow of water to the still between 60 and 40 degrees F. And tie either a radiant system in the floor or an air forced heat exchanger, into the loop to heat the building. What are everyone's thoughts?

We have a 210 gallon mash kettle which we cool with water. We have one 450 gallon plastic stock tank the ones you see in the back of a pickup truck. In that tank we have a 18"x18"x6" cooling coil suspended in about the middle of the tank. We have a small 110V compressor like a small refrigerator one that we plug in a day or two before we need it. It takes about 200 gallons of water @40 F to cool one run. We are going to install a second tank to collect the warm water thus keeping it from warming up the cold water. It will take only a day or two for that tank to cool down then we will drain it into the cold tank for re use. One tank is on top of the other stacked so no other pump is needed. We use a small Grundafaus, not sure of the spelling, re-circulating pump. I think two 450 gallon tanks work real well. Coop

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We have a used, 500 gallon fermenting tank with an external mounted chilling system attached, that we got dirt cheap. We just set that up with 5% glycol (the food safe type) and a pump to circulate the coolant to the brew kettle chilling plate, the fermenters, and condensers on the stills. It basically cost us the pvc pipe to circulate, and the pump which we also got used, dirt cheap. I'll let you know how well it works and the cost effectiveness.

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We have a 210 gallon mash kettle which we cool with water. We have one 450 gallon plastic stock tank the ones you see in the back of a pickup truck. In that tank we have a 18"x18"x6" cooling coil suspended in about the middle of the tank. We have a small 110V compressor like a small refrigerator one that we plug in a day or two before we need it. It takes about 200 gallons of water @40 F to cool one run. We are going to install a second tank to collect the warm water thus keeping it from warming up the cold water. It will take only a day or two for that tank to cool down then we will drain it into the cold tank for re use. One tank is on top of the other stacked so no other pump is needed. We use a small Grundafaus, not sure of the spelling, re-circulating pump. I think two 450 gallon tanks work real well. Coop

What size is your still? They are telling us ( jacob carl) we will need about 200 gallons per run. And that could add up to maybe 2000 gallons on a long day. What temp is your water exiting the condensor. Sounds like we need a beefed up version of your system.

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We need to find a way to recover our cooling water. This is my idea, and I want some feed back, what are you doing with your cooling water. I am proposing a 1000 gallon reserve tank, with a chiller to keep the flow of water to the still between 60 and 40 degrees F. And tie either a radiant system in the floor or an air forced heat exchanger, into the loop to heat the building. What are everyone's thoughts?

If you're using a chiller would you really need that large a tank? We use a chiller on our fermenters, and I like the idea of reusing condenser water but since we're about a mile away from the one of the largest fresh water supplies in the world (that never gets much above 60 deg F) and waters pretty cheap in these parts it just wouldn't make sense for us. However, I would like to recover the heat as it seems we're putting quite a bit of energy down the sewer. It gets pretty cold around here so we could use the extra therms. I've been meaning to buy a heat exchanger to run the discharge through, add a fan and pump and we just might get comfortable on distilling days. Ebay seems to be a good source for some inexpensive water to air heat exchangers, of course by the time I get to this it'll be June and maybe 60F outside. :D

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What size is your still? They are telling us ( jacob carl) we will need about 200 gallons per run. And that could add up to maybe 2000 gallons on a long day. What temp is your water exiting the condensor. Sounds like we need a beefed up version of your system.

We have a 300 L still but I thought you were trying to re use water that came from cooling your mash kettle. Our condensing column uses very little water but could be reclaimed in the same manor. Our column has a thermostat which only induces just enough water to keep it at whatever temp we want. Only the warm water at the top is flushed out and only a little at a time. coop

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We have a 300 L still but I thought you were trying to re use water that came from cooling your mash kettle. Our condensing column uses very little water but could be reclaimed in the same manor. Our column has a thermostat which only induces just enough water to keep it at whatever temp we want. Only the warm water at the top is flushed out and only a little at a time. coop

They are telling me that if I use a smaller tank I will need a 50 ton chiller. Way to expensive and we cannot give it back. We can irrigate with it in summer, but winter would be a problem.

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They are telling me that if I use a smaller tank I will need a 50 ton chiller. Way to expensive and we cannot give it back. We can irrigate with it in summer, but winter would be a problem.

A firm that does cooling tried to sell us a 7 ton chiller for our 450 gallon tank. Like I said we made our own with a total cost of $956.00. The water coming out after cooling over night is in the low 40F. The cooling coils in the tank are about 24 inches of a frozen block of ice. coop

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We need to find a way to recover our cooling water. This is my idea, and I want some feed back, what are you doing with your cooling water. I am proposing a 1000 gallon reserve tank, with a chiller to keep the flow of water to the still between 60 and 40 degrees F. And tie either a radiant system in the floor or an air forced heat exchanger, into the loop to heat the building. What are everyone's thoughts?

Most commercial distilleries have two different cooling loops. The first is a tradditional chilled brine or glycol loop running at around -4C (sorry can not work in Farenheit) used to chill the fermenters, spirit at the bottling head etc. The other is of much larger capacity and is usually uses a closed loop water recirculation system, cooled normally by a fan assisted falling water cooling tower. Remember that with cooling the condensors in the stills you only need to bring the distillate down to room temperature less 2-3 C. Cooling a still condensor with sub zero glycol will ultimatly lead to metal fatiuge and a host of weird thermodynamic problems. We have two towers one at 20 ton, andthe other at 200 ton (ice per hour). They are brought up as needed depending on demand.

Cooling towers are superb for this application as the cooling effect is provided by evaporation, not refrigeration. Here in Australia, I regularly get effective cooling even when the air temperature is over 30C and the humidity os over 65%RH. There are strict management concerns with cooling towers with regards to keeping the water loop bacteria free. They have been linked to Legionaires disease, but a simple automatic anti-bacterial dosing system will solve all that.

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  • 5 months later...
Coop, that is really cool you guys built your own cooling tower( no pun intended). Just out of curiosity, did you use a crossflow or counterflow? How tall was it and what kind of fan did you use or did you use ambient air flow?

Well it is not a tower but a tank, and we cool it by refrigeration with a cooling unit about the size of the ones in a home type freezer. Simple but real efficient. I am a believer in the saying KISS, keep it simple stupid. http://adiforums.com/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif

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