I'm starting up a distillery in California where running condenser cooling water to waste is a non-starter. Our still is going to be powered by a 5 MBH (15 hp) boiler. I'm assuming, just for the sake of argument, that we're running 24/7 and that 50 % of this heat makes it to the condenser where it has to be removed. Chillers that can remove 2.5 MBH are expensive and use a lot of electrical power. So I'm wondering, can I use a radiator type heat exchange to dump most of that heat to atmosphere? My condenser has two stages so I could run a water loop from the first stage to the radiator to get rid of most of the heat and then connect a chiller to the second stage to get the condensate as cold as I want to. Presumably this would allow me to run a much smaller chiller.
Has anyone tired this? Is it worthwhile?
Thanks in advance.