Cooling Water

[CountySeat]

What are people using to recirculate cooling water for their stills and heat exchangers? Does everyone buy a chilling system and recirculate? Or do some people just run the water down the drain? We would prefer to recirculate and run a cooling system but the cost is pretty high. In our location, we likely will not have to pay for water but it is a shame to waste so much.

Thoughts?

[MG Thermal Consulting]

I offer closed circuit cooling systems which use refrigeration chillers and outdoor air- water/glycol coolers and auxiliary equipment for the entire cooling system.

See my website for pictures of various items: www.mgthermalconsulting.com.

Call or email and I'd be happy to give you some ideas and budgets.

Regards,

Mike

[NEPA-still-chillin]

Closed circuit will surely be the most effective and energy saving.

I plan on doing it when we get our jacketed mash tun, but a few places I worked we just always caught as much as the runoff water as possible. Re-used for cleaning or additions or what ever calls for water.

Also we have a homemade chiller (needs improvements) but its basically a network of copper pipes inside a chest freezer and with a glycol/water solution surrounding it.

Doesn't work that great for mash but I'll be trying water through it when we upgrade

[Salishseaorganicliqueurs]

Hey Mike,

Know of any reservoir-less cooling systems? We would love to find an affordable one for our still however we do not have the space for a reservoir tank in addition to our still.

[Silk City Distillers]

Saw an interesting setup a few months back using a 300g plastic IBC tote and an aquarium chiller, he said he just set the timer to turn the chiller on very early in the morning. I've got an old 1hp aquarium chiller out in the shed that I've been meaning to try (it was able to keep my 300g reef tank with over 4,000 watts of lighting from boiling, but at about 12000 btu, maybe not enough).

Would imagine from a cost perspective, the reservoir approach allows you to trade time for a lower initial investment. By pre-cooling your reservoir temp prior to the run, and then through the run, you can get by with a smaller chiller (or no chiller depending on your climate).

Is there an easy sizing rule of thumb? Say, if you are pushing 250k btu to heat your boiler, you need to knockdown somewhere around 250k btu on the condenser, or is it even higher?

[thomasedwin]

I have a 15 gallon still and most times I run batches in the winter time. I don't know where you are but where I live in winter it gets well below freezing. The kitchen is in the back of the house not 10 feet from a back porch window. I use a 30 gallon plastic storage container and I purchased a 425 GPH outdoor fountain pump from ebay for $18. The storage container sets on the back porch in the cold. I fill it about half way with water, drop my little pump in the water and run a length of vinyl tubing in the back window to my condenser on the kitchen stove and then another hose takes the water back outside to the container. I throw a couple good shovels full of snow into the container, the snow floats on top and the pump sets in the bottom with suction cups, this supplies me with a constant flow of 35 F cooling water for 7 to 9 hours. If my condenser thermometer starts to go above 40 F I just go outside and throw in more snow. If you do this type of thing you only need to make sure the pump you use has enough pushing power to supply your condenser. I use a shotgun condenser that has one hose in and one hose out so it's easy to hook up and run but if you are using a worm and water tank type condenser it might be a little harder to get your drain water to flow back outside to the cooling container.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

Hey Sal,

I use the reservoirs to capture more cooling (as many describe)- this is most effective when you have mash to cool, which is time dependent (2-3 hrs). To chill mash without a storage tank, you need to oversize the chiller which makes it about twice or more the size of what you can accomplish with a storage tank piped in.

That being said, the chiller I offer can be used without tanks, but you are making the system much more unaffordable. You have to make other allowances like an external bypass arrangement to pre-cool the hot water coming back from the still. We can discuss it at length, if you wish.

James,

The method you use is not very accurate to size the chiller, certainly in the case when you're cooking mash, then taking heat back out. To complicate it, the size (actual performance!) of the condenser is directly responsible for sizing the chiller load. You can either get the manufacturer tell you how many btu/hr the condenser will reject, test the condenser with city water as close to 50F as practical, or if you already have the chiller sized for the mash cool and have one still-one mash tun, you're covered since the mash load is much larger (btu/hr) than the still cooling load. But your right about the chilled water tanks, but you do lose btu's coming off the open top , tho. I have talked to guys that use old dairy bulk milk tanks to store the cold water, too. The old refrigeration systems from them can't be repaired, so they scrap them- but that's ok, you're chilling the water and just storing it where the milk would be.

Where there's a will, there's a way- but you still need something to get your water down to 50F for best results, no?

[Salishseaorganicliqueurs]

MG

I'd be using it to cool the recirculating water from my condenser on our 500L copper alembic. But because of space restrictions and not being able to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a cooling system we'll just let the water run down the drain. We only really have a small corner (1.8' by 2.3') where we could place a reservoir tank so unless you know a super tall and skinny tank that would work we're kinda out of luck.

[MG Thermal Consulting]

Sam,

I could get a galvanized vertical air tank which we could fit for chilled water. Where were you going to put the chiller? This would be closed loop with some inhibitors put in the water to keep it from making rest and such in the loop.

I'm pretty sure you would be way under $10,000.

I have another fellow looking at pressure tanks for me & I'll ask him.

Mike

[Salishseaorganicliqueurs]

Thanks Mike,

We were actually at the ADI conference in seattle today and met some people who make miniature ones. They've got one that would work for my still for around $6500 and only measures 30"x30"x30". I'll get you the specs when I get back home. I want to double check with a few people that it would work for my still to cool my condenser water before we looked at buying it. It'd also probably be an investment that is a year or two down the road since we have limited capital at the moment.

[mendodistilling]

Most people who use drain to waste systems are pulling in river water and discharging it back into the river/pond.