MG Thermal Consulting

On 1/2/2018 at 7:31 PM, Silk City Distillers said:

We have a similarly sized still and reservoir.  This time of year with the ambient temp in the distillery in the low 50s, we can probably swing 3 runs a week without running chillers.  Twice a day, probably not possible without more active cooling.  Dry cooler on the roof would be like magic with the ambient temperatures falling near 0F at night, but will be largely useless in the summer unless you are far, far north.

I have done several up North set ups you describe, one in W. CT that uses the "dry" cooler cooling glycol all winter until end of March before he switches over to the refrigeration chiller. Indoors he has a larger poly reservoir for water chilled by either chiller or drycooler by means of a isolation plate exchanger. This means he saves on the running of his 10 HP chiller for almost half the year, payback less than 2 years for the drycooler with it own circulating pump. 

There are more exotic ambient coolers that are hybrid and can use water spray to extend the drycooler function further.

Hey Paul,

Did you get a little bit of drink to go along with it

Happy New Year to you!

Can't wait to see your installation pictures when you're all finished.

We have another chiller going into San Diego in a few months.

Mike

On 1/9/2018 at 4:49 PM, Rum said:

Looking at a new chiller to replace an old one we bought used. Current setup:

Still 1 - 175 gallon hybrid used for finishing runs

Still 2 - 400 gallon double thumper used for stripping runs and finishing runs 

Still 3 - 250 gallon pot used for stripping runs only

Fermentation - about 3500 gallons spread across four tanks - sometimes we need to crash cool from 85c down to 33c overnight

All stills run at least 5 days a week all day long

We have piping installed and working with the current chiller. Have 3 phase available.

1.2 million btu boiler

 

Need room to grow, so I don't want to size exactly for current capacity.

 

Suggestions?

Have I discussed your set up with someone in your area? If not, contact me anytime for a quick call, 770-995-4066.

Regards,

Mike

My dear friend lived in Morgan City for quite a while.  Great peeps to have a crawfish boil with!

Give me a shout if you need any help on the cooling side with chiller systems.

100% RO water will ruin piping that is not designed to withstand it.  RO water will draw ions from many metals and weakening them.

With medical systems cooling, they either add propylene glycol or have complete stainless steel wetted surfaces.  The chiller must be specified for 100% RO as not all wetted parts of the chiller can be used. Premixed glycol is mixed with RO. 

Chemical or ozone treatment is cheaper, first cost, than designing a cooling system to be compatible.

Most closed loops are not pressurized and have a poly reservoir which because it is non-pressurized, must have an opening to the atmosphere.  The dead air can be treated with ozone, which keeps water clean from biologicals. Of you want to isolate the pressurized and non-pressurized flows, you need to add an isolation heat exchanger, very common in the Northern US where the outdoor chiller is charged with glycol mix for non-freezing and the water reservoir indoors is charged with the process water.

If  you need more details, drop me a line or call.

Congrats and if you need lower cost chillers, I have some factory rebuilds.

Merry Christmas!

If you look at large scale ice bins, one or more icemakers are mounted on top of the bin and are operated continuously.

Not very feasible for any large scale distillery- expensive to buy, operate and maintain and inefficient to boot.

An open reservoir must either be treated with appropriate chemicals or a minimum of 30% propylene glycol to prevent bacterial growth. Lower than 30% in an open tank will actually feed bacteria.

If you intend on reusing the untreated water for mash batches, then the way to go is the UV.  The UV treats the air gap between the water surface and the top of the tank.  

I am not sure what Indy uses, but it is more common and is the preferred method for cooling tower water outdoor sumps to prevent Legionnaires.

Good luck River City, if you need any budgets on cooling systems, give me a shout.

Have we talked? I am located in Gwinnett Co., NE of ATL.

You need any help optimizing your cooling system, give me a shout.

Tank & pump sets, for instance- like part of what's in my ID photo.

Mike

Congrats!! If you need a cooling system down the road, please contact me.  I do have a few of Paul's customers as clients for my services as well.

Hey, of you need any chilling equipment, shoot me a call - Huff has one of my chillers and is doing great things I hear:)

Mike

Nope, you need to set up an intermediate flow with a plate exchanger and reservoir tank (similar to photo) with a dedicated process pump for the water flow and the chiller pump for the glycol flow.

You must be careful here to make sure your reservoir water is not fouled with bacteria (untreated) or else your jacket will get fouled up eventually.  Choices here are either a closed pressure tank or a ozone purifier to treat the dead air in an atmospheric tank.

Regards,

Indy,

You shouldn't need any more pump capacity.  I'll get the pump curve and email it over to you Monday and then we can judge. 

Like some up North, buy a glycol/air cooler and run that cooold glycol through a HTX indoors making the water really cold.

You could add a small plate exchanger and cool your city water with the chilled water to make it around 38F.  

Reversing what you can do with water heaters, pre-heating water with hot refrigerant gas.

By the way, this user was one of Paul's customers over at Affordable Equipment.

On 10/14/2017 at 1:13 PM, Silk City Distillers said:

Tube in tube is widely used in sanitary food production, for years this was nearly the de facto standard for milk cooling.

Exactly, plus you can move more product through it as well as chilled water/glycol.

I offer a chiller that uses 100% water down to 35F---handy to start out your mash cooling and get on to still cooling where colder water is not necessary from your water reservoir. I had a client that had a dual setpoint set up for his chiller, one for the colder water set point and one for higher temp (lower temp was for his cold filtering , too).

I have a brewer consultant I work with that makes his own for his clients- he's a whiz on the chemistry and what various types of filtration accomplishes.

PM and I can have him contact you...he's presently putting up three breweries, so it may be after hours.

Mike G

Good Luck, B'ville and if you need any sizing on chillers or an installer, please contact me- I have a couple projects I'm working on in TX, so you're in the middle of a lot of activity!

I can set up a chiller system the same way, in modules.  It does take a little more on the PLC end, but like heat recovery chillers, the front end cost is often more than the customer can bear to save energy every day versus that front end cost, unless it is budgeted up front. It's a battle of explanation upon explanations as well.

...And temp of the cooling water! I can provide chillers using 100% water for cooling down to 35F. You can either pre-cool a reservoir of city water or make it a closed loop.

Other chillers can get down to 40F water, which if you're cooling a tank of water can get to around 45F tank temperature.  Put a feed valve in downstream of the chiller, bypassing the return to the tank and you can have 40F water again to the heat exchanger.

Jackets chill slower, so cooling mash with city water without auxiliary cooling often becomes problematic in the summer.

In Chicago, city water is cold all year round versus city water in Texas in the 80's.

I have supplied chiller systems for several of Paul's projects, of which there no problems, and I continue to supply chillers to his customers.