CONDENSER RECIRCULATION W/COOLING CHILLER

[Dehner Distillery]

On 3/15/2019 at 2:11 PM, MG Thermal Consulting said:

You could run water through a dry cooler as well.

I use them with chillers as winter operation for glycol cooling...saves on the power of running the chiller up North, but you could use them to take out heat of water as well.

 

I agree. Dry Chillers are really great. 

[Silk City Distillers]

On 10/21/2020 at 11:47 AM, Pollyanna Ed said:

Thanks for that. Any idea what the treatment would be? I would like to see what you have for ozone injection.

You can find small ozone generators with air pumps available on ebay that should be more than sufficient.

However, be very careful generating free ozone in tank headspace.  Ozone as a gas is dangerous.

One option that's a bit safer, is to use an ORP controller (Oxidation Reduction Potential) to measure the ORP of the holding tank water, and to use the controller to dose ozone into the water, via an airstone.

This is an ORP controller, they are similar to pH controllers:

https://pentairaes.com/milwaukee-orp-controller.html

You can find tons of small ozone generators on eBay, with integrated air pumps.  Depending on the depth of your tank, you might need something larger, or with a bigger pump.  For under 1000 gallons of clean water, you should be good with 100mg/hr, if you recycle water more often, you might require 200mg/hr.  Here is an example of a generator with air pump (this is cheapy stuff, it'll probably last a year and need to be replaced):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ozone-Generator-Redox-Water-Aquarium-Ozonizer-Purifier-w-Air-Pump-200mg-hr/231358883252?hash=item35de1065b4:g:-qEAAOSwizlazt8K

Set your ORP controller to 500-600mV, it will turn the ozone unit on and off as necessary.  The nice thing about this, is that it only uses ozone when necessary, doesn't over dose ozone (safer), and ensures you are always holding water in a state that's antimicrobial.  The meter will give you a real time readout of water quality.  You can dial back or up the ozone as necessary to safely maintain water quality.

Just keep in mind, you aren't using something like this to clean or disinfect stank water, if you get to that point, you need to dump, clean, sanitize, and start over.  The ozone is good enough to maintain, but not correct.  Otherwise, you need significantly more ozone capacity, and you move into a more dangerous territory.

[starcat]

You can run straight glycol, but as noted above the return temperature is beyond the design limits of the chiller. Generally you do not want anything more than 90F fluid coming back and then not for long. The continuous return fluid temp needs to be lower when the DX heat exchanger sees it.

This can be overcome by:

1: removing heat from the fluid before it gets back to the chiller.

2. oversizing the chiller and the return well and running a certain amount of bypass after the condenser return TEE's into the main return line.

You still then technically have an open loop because the glycol well is at atmospheric, and it does not really get contamination if your fluid is the right kind of inhibited glycol and water.

This also Simplifies your setup considerably and stabilizes your condensing media temp as long as you are not undersized on capacity. Glycol is a very different animal to contain and will leak where straight water will not. This is especially the case at threaded connections and transitions between different types of material. There are strategies to deal with this.

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

 

[RodneyAdrain]

On 3/14/2019 at 10:45 AM, B-RAD 22 said:

Hello,

Has anyone have experience with a closed loop recirculation for the water needed for the condenser and deplemigator?

Where I am going to be operating there are strict rules on waste water and I will get charged for all that goes down the drain. Since I am new to this I am not sure what is in industry standard on the equipment (more specifically the chiller) that I can use for this.

Please note that I am a small craft distillery with a 500L (130 gallon) pot still, will be producing vodka and gin. Looking for a cost affordable solution.

if you require any additional information please let me know.

 

Thanks,

Brad

Hi Brad:  I am very new to this but run a closed system using a air-driven 1in inlet/outlet pump.  I went with this to have one less potential electrical hazard/fire/explosion situation. I  re-circulate water into a 80gallon Flex tank that I used in winemaking.  I have one pipe breaking off with value to regulate flow to deplemator and a straight flow to condenser.  The top outlets of both come out and drop to flex tank.  The tank sets outside where water is nearly ice.  On bottom of Flextank I have return using old 1in sanitary pump tubing back to intake on air pump.  I hand regulate the psi and need about 25psi max to run both.  Now some will think this was over kill and the pump could of been smaller. I will need to place my air compressor in a different room and the pump should be vented outside with its muffler.  The sound is that of a steam engine/piston is in the pump.  So all together at present the sound level is to much for comfort.  Very industrial sound but not relaxing.  So I plan on moving both eventually outside under a covered porch area to protect from elements.  Does it work....Great.  Right now its simply to loud.  I own a 105 gallon still.  The pump was $600, 3/4 inch galvanized pipe another $100. I already owned a 60 gallon compressor which they are about $400-600 depending on sales.  I did my own wiring, plumbing etc.  Knowing what I have described I could have went with a smaller 1/2 inch air pump for about $300 or so.  The air pump is my way of reducing potential fires and my brain child.  Yes why buy the water and waste it? It will pay for the pump.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

Going back to avoiding too warm glycol return on chiller-  

1. I used a two stage heat exchanger for crash cool, stg 1 uses hybrid cooler, stg 2 uses chiller with large reservoir.

2. Another case I am using a bypass to bleed chiller cold glycol to the chiller return until return temp is acceptable.

Next proposed distillery will use a large hybrid cooler plus chiller but will have enough winter temps to run hybrid dry, saving 115 HP in winter use. Mash tun is 2500 Gal with two still runs per day.

If you need information on the HYbrid Cooler, email me for engineering data.