Best way to chill your mash????

[MG Thermal Consulting]

Be careful pumping ethanol/water solution through any kind of electrical powered unit such as a chiller- any leak forming an ethanol fume is both flammable and explosive.

 To add cooling you need a fan unit and another heat exchanger ( or coils submerged in your pond). I offer a glycol cooler with pump that works great- just ask Jesse at Trident Stills who bought one for the distillery he put up.

[Southernhighlander]

19 hours ago, twalshact said:

Glenlyon, how big is your chiller ?

Do you use a reservoir tank ? How big?

twalsh,

 

What's your tap water temp?  Are you on a well or municipal water?  Is your water cheap?

[Georgeous]

so how do you use one of these tube in tube systems? i assume you go from bottom drain of mash tun to pump to chiller then back in to mash tun until desired temperature is reached?

[Silk City Distillers]

You could use these kinds of heat exchangers all sorts of different ways.

Recirculating on the tun, single pass from tun to fermenter, you can use them to preheat mash water using hot stillage, hell you could probably pass steam through the shell side to heat mash if you were really daring (pretty sure Paul wouldn't recommend this).

It's just a heat exchanger.  Clean fluids, hot or cold, on the shell side, process fluids, hot or cold, in the tube side.

 

[MG Thermal Consulting]

Single pass on the mash for city water cooling (low flow, high temp diff on water), multi-pass for chiller/reservoir cooling (higher flow, low Temp diff on water side).

[Georgeous]

i think a much more efficient design would be a 2" inner tube and a 4" outer shell ran in counterflow. You would have twice the cooling passing through. However this would be a shit load more expensive. 

[Georgeous]

Back when i bought my system from china they tried to sell me a similar chiller, but i did not understand the tech drawing they sent me, i guess i do know. they sent it to me in chinese and cold not envision it. i guess this is the standard. i am attaching drawing they sent me back then

2管道换热器（2019.05.pdf

[Roger]

This cracks me up

[Tom Lenerz]

1 hour ago, Georgeous said:

i think a much more efficient design would be a 2" inner tube and a 4" outer shell ran in counterflow. You would have twice the cooling passing through. However this would be a shit load more expensive. 

A set of smaller tubes in the shell (or tube-in-shell) has much more surface area = more cooling capacity than a tube-in-tube like you are describing in the same footprint. The most efficient in surface area in a physical footprint is a plate exchanger. The disadvantage is particle size and ease of cleanliness, its easier to clean and pass larger particles through a tube-in-tube than a tube-in-shell or a plate exchanger. We use a tube-in-shell, 4 pass with 3x 3/4 inch tubes. It works awesome for 30 gallon beer, but can be plugged if you aren't careful. It would be much harder to plug a 1.5 inch or 2 inch tube-in-tube, but much less efficient and more expensive to get the same cooling rate.

[Georgeous]

On 5/15/2019 at 10:05 AM, Roger said:

This cracks me up

why Roger?

[Georgeous]

On 5/15/2019 at 10:51 AM, Tom Lenerz said:

A set of smaller tubes in the shell (or tube-in-shell) has much more surface area = more cooling capacity than a tube-in-tube like you are describing in the same footprint. The most efficient in surface area in a physical footprint is a plate exchanger. The disadvantage is particle size and ease of cleanliness, its easier to clean and pass larger particles through a tube-in-tube than a tube-in-shell or a plate exchanger. We use a tube-in-shell, 4 pass with 3x 3/4 inch tubes. It works awesome for 30 gallon beer, but can be plugged if you aren't careful. It would be much harder to plug a 1.5 inch or 2 inch tube-in-tube, but much less efficient and more expensive to get the same cooling rate.

that definately makes alot more sense, as that would have more cooling to heat exchange. where did you get yours Tom?

 

[Silk City Distillers]

4 tubes would not be considered sanitary.

Can anyone guess why?  Tricky, but once you see it, it’s obvious.

The dairy guys know exactly what they are doing.

 

[Georgeous]

I still enjoy making beer from the hobbyist level. I make 10 gallon batches. When i chill after boil i use a blichmann plate chiller (no grain in mashes with beer) i pump to the chiller and back in to the wort in a loop until the entire batch is at pitching temperature. This being a 60plate chiller it will bring my wort from boil to ground water temp + - 2°F. I dont have to recirculate it back in to the hot wort but it does help reduce cold break plus aerates the wort prior to pitching. Problem for me is ground water temperature in texas is about 90°F just about year round. Yeah for about 2 weeks of winter i may get ground water down in the 70's and man i brew a lot of beer then. This technique is the same as the local brewery i use to volunteer at did theirs and it worked well for them. 

[stevea]

On 5/18/2019 at 1:03 PM, Silk City Distillers said:

4 tubes would not be considered sanitary.

Can anyone guess why?  Tricky, but once you see it, it’s obvious.

The dairy guys know exactly what they are doing.

 

Why is that SD ?  I'm missing the trick.

 

[twalshact]

On 5/18/2019 at 12:03 PM, Silk City Distillers said:

4 tubes would not be considered sanitary.

Can anyone guess why?  Tricky, but once you see it, it’s obvious.

The dairy guys know exactly what they are doing.

Why? 

[Silk City Distillers]

On each transition from elbow/180 degree U to 4 tube heat exchanger, there would be a small gap between the inner wall and the HX inner tube, which at best would prevent it from being fully draining,  but worst would cream possible dead spots/buildup - which would necessitate regular breakdown for cleaning.  The worse the orientation, the  greater the potential transition gap.

From a microbiological perspective, a mash cooling HX would be the most vulnerable point in the process.  Similar situation with milk cooling in the dairy industry.

[stevea]

On 5/12/2019 at 9:39 AM, Silk City Distillers said:

Solids in a grain mash can plug, we are talking about grain-in mash, not wort.

 

On 5/12/2019 at 9:42 AM, Georgeous said:

right i understand, but in that case i would think 1.5 inner for grain in mash and 2" or bigger for cooling. but on these are they run in counter flow so grain in mash goes from top down or vice versa and cooling water come in the opposite direction?

Actually the larger diameter may be easier to plug!!   You want to keep the mash velocity in the tube(s) well above the sedimentation velocity of the solids, and ideally in turbulent, not laminar flow..  The other thing  I recently discovered is that vertical & horizontal tubes are harder to plug than tubes on an incline.  Civil Engineers have been dealing with 'slurry flow' for a long time.

https://giw.updatesfrom.co/which-pipe-design-should-i-avoid-in-my-slurry-pipeline/

 

What are you all using for grist-in mash pumps?  

 

[Southernhighlander]

1 hour ago, stevea said:

 

Actually the larger diameter may be easier to plug!!   

 

For grain in corn mashes that have been properly liquified, our crash cooling tube in tube heat exchangers with larger diameter diagonal tubes, never plug.   The design is proven and in use by a great many distilleries. 

 

[Silk City Distillers]

Yeah I agree with  Paul, straight through tubes won't clog, and just based on their nature, will tend to stay clean.

[stevea]

9 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said:

Yeah I agree with  Paul, straight through tubes won't clog, and just based on their nature, will tend to stay clean.

Then I've done the impossible ... again (never in a good way).  Tubes will clog/wad-up/plug given a sufficient incline and a low enough flow-rate or else on/off pumping.  I expect that Paul (and Richard1's) system has a shallow enough incline and high enough flow rate to avoid that.     Back when I was fussing with this problem we were using a peristaltic pump, and tho' they can handle some solids in a slurry, they don't like that big wads of particles on the inlet side.

Tube-in-tube, like Paul's, has an advantage in that the pump will apply a lot of pressure to any clog/wad.  In Richard1's heat-exchanger with the multiple tubes-in-shell, if one tube clogs, the others limit the pressure available to break-up/move the clog.

[stevea]

13 hours ago, Southernhighlander said:

For grain in corn mashes that have been properly liquified, our crash cooling tube in tube heat exchangers with larger diameter diagonal tubes, never plug.   The design is proven and in use by a great many distilleries. 

 

Hey Paul, that's a fantastically priced tube-in-tube, HX. So how exactly is it operated?  The 2" inner tube seems to drop ~3+ft over ~40ft length, so that would cause a 50-60 gpm water flow due to gravity.  Because of that I assume you pump mash in at the bottom (to avoid airgaps), and water in at the top (for a counterflow).  But aren't there airgaps in the water jacket???  

[Silk City Distillers]

Totally don't understand.

If you are clogging a straight-through HX, it means your pump can't build sufficient pressure to pump against the back pressure of the tubing.  There are zero occlusions in a straight-through flow path to cause any kind of blockage, build up, or otherwise.

So how on earth does a more restrictive setup result in less chance of clogging?  Especially one that now includes obvious inclusions.  You'd face significantly more head pressure with a 4 tube design, because it's more restrictive to flow.  Your maximum solids size now becomes the inner diameter of the smaller tube.  

If I bought a 4 tube design and one tube clogged, so that I needed to break it down to clean it, I'd ask for my money back, because that's garbage design.

[Silk City Distillers]

Quote

What are you all using for grist-in mash pumps? 

We have a pair of 2" Viking Duralobe positive displacement pumps.  Pretty much all of the stainless PD lobe pumps work in the same way, even if the lobe styles/shapes are different.

[Georgeous]

Does anyone have a diagram or automation / video of how you use this thing? Am i wrong in thinking you will need two pumps to make it work? one for cooling water from chill tank and one for the mash from mash tun?

[Southernhighlander]

8 hours ago, stevea said:

 

 

8 hours ago, stevea said:

Then I've done the impossible ... again (never in a good way).  Tubes will clog/wad-up/plug given a sufficient incline and a low enough flow-rate or else on/off pumping.  I expect that Paul (and Richard1's) system has a shallow enough incline and high enough flow rate to avoid that.     Back when I was fussing with this problem we were using a peristaltic pump, and tho' they can handle some solids in a slurry, they don't like that big wads of particles on the inlet side.

Tube-in-tube, like Paul's, has an advantage in that the pump will apply a lot of pressure to any clog/wad.  In Richard1's heat-exchanger with the multiple tubes-in-shell, if one tube clogs, the others limit the pressure available to break-up/move the clog.

This basic tube in tube HX design has been used for years.  Saying that they are prone clogging and are otherwise a bad design is like saying that the wheel is a bad design and doesn't work.   

Imagine if someone told you that the wheel is a bad design for rolling down the road.  Now you are in our shoes.