mbwild

I'll drop them an email. I anticipated the mess of it all and figured seeing as we are using a mash filter I could getaway with cooling only the wort obtained by means of plate type heat exchangers. Also the spent grains are being dried by MVR (Mechanical Vapour Recompression), which I highly doubt is going to work now that I've seen firsthand the headaches of heating mash.

Firstlly thanks for the input. I guess I better get comfortsble with the use of steam injection for cooking the grain then. When I say 4 hours i'm not including the grain cooking time, just mixing, mashing, draining mixer and wort recovery. Does that still seem too short for the size of the vessels. By props i assume you mean propeller and a single centrally mounted one? Research let me to believe an offset mixer would be the sure bet though. Mind elaborating on this? You've got to love this non-Newtonian mash and its varying viscoscity. Any easy way you know of to predict thiis value?

As a check I crunched some numbers last night to try and get the viscosity of the mash. I assumed the mixture was a slurry exhibiting Newtonian behavior (unlikely but only formula available in literature). Would the above mixture at a temperature of 60C (4l:1kg) having a viscosity of about 2cP (centipoise) seem sensible to anyone? As a reference water at 20C has a viscosity of 1cP and 0.467cP at 60C. My aim is to size the mixers today somehow once I confirm the viscosity. Also I've run the idea of using torrified wheat or some other pre-gelatinized adjunct past my group members as I believe this is what an actual commercial distillery would do. The heating costs to cook the wheat just seem astronomical to me in the long run and money may be saved this way.

Noted on the tonne. That's a relief designing something you know about through extensive recent research and seeing such large numbers can be a tad daunting. Exactly what I did with Meura for their 2001 mash filter. Sadly things like pumps/mixers I am required to design entirely as this is apparently within the scope of our necessary skills as chemical engineers, so even if I know the approximate size I have to justify data used, cite it etc, this is proving tricky. I have to do a mass and energy balance at some stage. My other group members are designing the rest of the downstream processes. As I suspect my values will change as I tinker with the design i'd rather changes only affect the data I've currently supplied in terms of SG, volume of wort, grain used etc minimally. Steam injection would add mass to the mixture to cook it and i'd rather keep the energy/mass bits separate. Haha this would be ideal in the real world but call me a lazy engineering student if you will!

United Kingdom way east. Yes the long ton 2240. I've searched high and low seems like this is the best forum and i'm hoping there's a couple of members in this line of work or who've toured an operation of this size. As a design project this doesn't have to be perfect just sensible and i'm sure there's a lot of that to go around!

Hello, As my chemical engineering masters design project I've been tasked with designing a whisky distillery. I would greatly appreciate any help anyone could give which is likely to only get more complicated over the next few weeks. Luckily I have a few group members and my section is limited to the grains receiving, milling, mashing and spent grains disposal. Onto the fun stuff then. We are making the whisky using a 10% malted barley to 90% wheat ratio to produce 40000 tonnes of ethanol annually. I understand that the wheat will need to be precooked but I haven't looked into the design of this vessel yet. Looking at the annual production i'm sure you can appreciate we are using a lot of grain. Current details of my design are as follows. Mashing Design I decided to go with steam jacket heated mash mixers and mash filters. I proposed 8 mash mixers assuming a mashing time of 4 hours (filling, mashing, drain, clean, repeat) and 24 hour operation that's 6 mashes a day. I wont be sparging because a thick mash will make sizing pumps further along harder i'm assuming. Mashing 6 days a week with the 7th being a cleaning of vessels and pipelines etc. The values are as follows for one mash mixer for one mash - Ground wheat 10054.688 kg 22120.3 pounds Ground barley 1117.1875 kg 2457.81 pounds Water 44687.5 kg 98312.5 pounds Total 55859.375 kg 122891 pounds Height 6.6 m 21.653544 feet Base (Diameter) 4.25 m 13.94357 feet Dish Depth 0.8 m 2.624672 feet Volume 86.0633 m3 3039.296756 cubic feet Liquid Level 4.2 m 13.779528 feet Heat transfer coefficient was assumed to be 176.1090467217301 BTU(f) or 1000W/m2.K At this stage my questions are as follows 1. Are these vessels too large for an industrial distillery? 2. Does the turnaround time of 4 hours seem sensible? 3. Does the assumed heat transfer data seem sensible? 4. How would I design a mixer for these vessels? Preferably offset and shaft from below to allow for CIP (spray balls and all from top?) 5. Following on 3 how could I obtain viscosities for mash to get calculate accurate thermodynamic data and for pump sizing. 6. Grist hydrator how do these work? I've looked at Steele's Mashers still a tad confused. Any and all help would be immensely appreciated! Thank you in advance.

Hello, As my chemical engineering masters design project I've been tasked with designing a whisky distillery. I would greatly appreciate any help anyone could give which is likely to only get more complicated over the next few weeks. Luckily I have a few group members and my section is limited to the grains receiving, milling, mashing and spent grains disposal. Onto the fun stuff then. We are making the whisky using a 10% malted barley to 90% wheat ratio to produce 40000 tonnes of ethanol annually. I understand that the wheat will need to be precooked but I haven't looked into the design of this vessel yet. Looking at the annual production i'm sure you can appreciate we are using a lot of grain. Current details of my design are as follows. Mashing Design I decided to go with steam jacket heated mash mixers and mash filters. I proposed 8 mash mixers assuming a mashing time of 4 hours (filling, mashing, drain, clean, repeat) and 24 hour operation that's 6 mashes a day. I wont be sparging because a thick mash will make sizing pumps further along harder i'm assuming. Mashing 6 days a week with the 7th being a cleaning of vessels and pipelines etc. The values are as follows for one mash mixer for one mash - Ground wheat 10054.688 kg 22120.3 pounds Ground barley 1117.1875 kg 2457.81 pounds Water 44687.5 kg 98312.5 pounds Total 55859.375 kg 122891 pounds Height 6.6 m 21.653544 feet Base (Diameter) 4.25 m 13.94357 feet Dish Depth 0.8 m 2.624672 feet Volume 86.0633 m3 3039.296756 cubic feet Liquid Level 4.2 m 13.779528 feet Heat transfer coefficient was assumed to be 176.1090467217301 BTU(f) or 1000W/m2.K At this stage my questions are as follows 1. Are these vessels too large for an industrial distillery? 2. Does the turnaround time of 4 hours seem sensible? 3. Does the assumed heat transfer data seem sensible? 4. How would I design a mixer for these vessels? Preferably offset and shaft from below to allow for CIP (spray balls and all from top?) 5. Following on 3 how could I obtain viscosities for mash to get calculate accurate thermodynamic data and for pump sizing. 6. Grist hydrator how do these work? I've looked at Steele's Mashers still a tad confused. Any and all help would be immensely appreciated! Thank you in advance.