Recycling Cooling Water

[markdistills]

Hi all! 

I work at a distillery located in Vermont, we are in downtown and are currently using a lot of the town water. It's wasteful and expensive, does anyone have any recommendations on creating a closed loop water recycling system? I would appreciate any suggestions on equipment needed or if there are companies in New England that specialize in this industry. 

Thanks!

 

[Silk City Distillers]

@MG Thermal Consulting is your guy.  The positive about being in Vermont is you have year round cooler temperatures, meaning you have lots of interesting options that warmer locations can't use (dry coolers, etc).  That said, being in a downtown can also create challenges, especially with the noise generated by external coolers and chillers.

 

 

 

[markdistills]

10 minutes ago, Silk City Distillers said:

@MG Thermal Consulting is your guy.  The positive about being in Vermont is you have year round cooler temperatures, meaning you have lots of interesting options that warmer locations can't use (dry coolers, etc).  That said, being in a downtown can also create challenges, especially with the noise generated by external coolers and chillers.

 

 

 

Thanks Silk City! I will reach out to him. We moved from a smaller town which used spring water so we didn't have a water bill and now we are just getting smoked.

[Kindred Spirits]

In the meantime I would recommend piping that water into tanks to be used for other distillery processes like washdown and whatnot. 

If the water is filtered and very clean, it can be reused for several things depending on the products you are making.

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

We recirculate two 1,800 gallon wine tanks for our cooling needs. We reversed flowed our chiller (chills the water not glycol).  The chiller cools down one tank while we use the other. We've run 730 gal pot still, 300 gal pot still and 150 gal vodka still all at the same time with no issues.

[markdistills]

32 minutes ago, Golden Beaver Distillery said:

We recirculate two 1,800 gallon wine tanks for our cooling needs. We reversed flowed our chiller (chills the water not glycol).  The chiller cools down one tank while we use the other. We've run 730 gal pot still, 300 gal pot still and 150 gal vodka still all at the same time with no issues.

Wow! That's impressive. Are those tanks located inside? We have a similar setup, 500 gallon stripping still, 300 gallon pot, and a 125 gallon pot. But that's good know the sizing of tanks you are using. Thank you, I appreciate the insight.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

I just sent Mark some photos of a distillery with the typical setup- glycol chiller, reservoir, isolation exchanger and process pump along with a winter glycol cooler.  He runs the chiller from April to August, the wintercooler the rest of the time, saving 15 HP of electricity for the 8-10 hrs.

The location is in the Berkshire Mnts. in W. CT. 

Tank size of course depends on the load profile and how that matches up to the chiller and you are sure you have enough time overnight to cool the tank. If you make more than one run per day, you will run out of chilled water unless that is taken into account.

Everyone have a nice Spring!

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

On 4/20/2022 at 10:20 AM, markdistills said:

Wow! That's impressive. Are those tanks located inside? We have a similar setup, 500 gallon stripping still, 300 gallon pot, and a 125 gallon pot. But that's good know the sizing of tanks you are using. Thank you, I appreciate the insight.

Yes, we have a 5,000 sq ft plant. 

[JonDistiller]

I recycle water, to cool my 60 gallon still.    Costs were tight at startup, so rather than purchasing a normal chiller, my partner and I made one ourselves.     We daisy chained several IBC totes together to create a thermal cooling mass (900 gallons).   We then used standard finned copper baseboard pipes.   Usually used to radiate heat into a room.   You can buy them at lowes or home depot.   Placed these on the wall, as part of the water return line.   Back and forth several times.   Less than 30 ft total length.  then rigged standard house box fans to blow over the fins.   Does help with heat in winter tbh.  

It works ok with my 60 gallon pot still, especially with low wines runs.   A 60 gallon spirit run is pushing it a bit though.   It's warmer than I like towards the end of tails.    When I upgrade to a 250, I'd definitely need either more thermal mass, or an increased water/air flow.  Probably getting to be time to shell out cash for the professional equipment actually designed for this though.

You definitely can find ways to do this though.

 

jon 

[crazyhorse67]

On 4/20/2022 at 9:44 AM, Golden Beaver Distillery said:

We recirculate two 1,800 gallon wine tanks for our cooling needs. We reversed flowed our chiller (chills the water not glycol).  The chiller cools down one tank while we use the other. We've run 730 gal pot still, 300 gal pot still and 150 gal vodka still all at the same time with no issues.

Hey Guys;

I just came across this thread and am also trying to design a water reclaimation/cooling system. I am just wondering what size chiller was used with the above system so I can adjust for my situation. I was thinking of using 2-3000 litre (800 gallon)wine tanks to cool/store our process water which consists of ;

1. 650 litre (172 gallon) pot still (which runs 5 days/week) it has 2 columns with  deflaglamators and a final condenser.
2. a  2000 litre (530 gallon) mash-tun (with cooling jacket) twice a week using the previous days cooling water from distillation.

We would like to re-use our cooling water as the current situation is wasteful and hopefully benefit by having our cooling water at a constant temperature and flow-rate to minimize temperature shock at the dephlaglamators. We typically do 2 low-wine runs for 3 days/week in the still.

Any input (words and /or drawings) would be greatly appreciated as we are in a small town with no known businesses that have knowledge of this type of system.

Thanks, Crazyhorse67

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

22 hours ago, crazyhorse67 said:

Hey Guys;

I just came across this thread and am also trying to design a water reclaimation/cooling system. I am just wondering what size chiller was used with the above system so I can adjust for my situation. I was thinking of using 2-3000 litre (800 gallon)wine tanks to cool/store our process water which consists of ;

1. 650 litre (172 gallon) pot still (which runs 5 days/week) it has 2 columns with  deflaglamators and a final condenser.
2. a  2000 litre (530 gallon) mash-tun (with cooling jacket) twice a week using the previous days cooling water from distillation.

We would like to re-use our cooling water as the current situation is wasteful and hopefully benefit by having our cooling water at a constant temperature and flow-rate to minimize temperature shock at the dephlaglamators. We typically do 2 low-wine runs for 3 days/week in the still.

Any input (words and /or drawings) would be greatly appreciated as we are in a small town with no known businesses that have knowledge of this type of system.

Thanks, Crazyhorse67

If you are going to be recirculating your cooling water in a closed system, you won't want to use it for mashing. You will have to treat the water to prevent algae from developing in the system.

We use a 10 ton chiller from Advantage.

[Thatch]

4 hours ago, Golden Beaver Distillery said:

You will have to treat the water to prevent algae

How are you treating your water?  How long can you use the same water prior to changing it out?

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

15 hours ago, Thatch said:

How are you treating your water?  How long can you use the same water prior to changing it out?

We treat it with a fungicide. You don't change it out. We just add make up water to offset evaporation loss.

[Thatch]

1 hour ago, Golden Beaver Distillery said:

We treat it with a fungicide. You don't change it out. We just add make up water to offset evaporation loss.

Thanks. 

Do you use a standard pond water algaecide?

I'm going to have to do something similar.  From what I have read of water storage, if you have an opaque container algae cannot grow, no photosynthesis.

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

22 hours ago, Thatch said:

Thanks. 

Do you use a standard pond water algaecide?

I'm going to have to do something similar.  From what I have read of water storage, if you have an opaque container algae cannot grow, no photosynthesis.

But fungus can...you just want something that doesn't break down over time or cause damage to your system seals and pump.

[Thatch]

1 hour ago, Golden Beaver Distillery said:

But fungus can...you just want something that doesn't break down over time or cause damage to your system seals and pump.

Thanks

[Thatch]

We are adding an additional still.  It is a small continuous column stripper capable to processing 100 liters of wash per hour.  My chiller cannot cool the still fast enough (the chiller pump is the problem along with the size of the condenser) so I an considering chilling water and using a submersible pump to provide the cooling that is necessary to the still.  To see if this will work as I hope, I am going to set up a  55 gallon barrel with water and ice and a submersible pump.  If this works out, I will build a coil out of copper tubing to insert into the barrel to keep the temperature down and be able to circulate the water.  I have no idea how much copper tubing is needed to bring down the temperature of 55 gallons of water from room temperature, 85 degrees F (worst case) to 50 degrees F.  My chiller is set to 42 degrees.  Any idea how much tubing would be required?  Is there a better way to accomplish my goal of moving more coolant through the condenser?

 

 

 

[Triangle Distiller]

What company supplies this column still?

[Thatch]

1 minute ago, Triangle Distiller said:

What company supplies this column still?

https://ferromit.com/

[Workpress]

We simply use three 1000L plastic totes that we pump through our condenser and it drains into an empty tote that goes into our cooler to re chill.

I have to add some chlorine to it once in a while, but it works fine. we go through two totes in a 14 hour distillation day on our 800L still

 

cheers

Workpress 

[daveflintstone]

On 6/2/2022 at 7:23 AM, Thatch said:

https://ferromit.com/

good luck with that.  I had mine, along with a continuous finishing still, for a few years.  Ended up just throwing it away, because it never worked correctly.  Even after bringing Alex all the way to my distillery.  He's a really smart, really nice guy, so I hope he has figured this out now.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

If you use a chiller to chill the water, chlorine will damage the evaporator, even if it’s stainless because off the shelf brazed plate evaporators brazing will corrode from chlorine- you would need a nickel brazed a special order.