Powered Dip / immersion coolers

[barneey]

Just wondered if anyone had any experience with powered dip coolers ie https://www.akribis.co.uk/adverts/techn ... ooler.html? for cooling wrot after boiling or fementation?

Thanks

Clive

[Kev888]

I've not used one, but it looks like a mini version of what people on here have made using a beer line cooler with recirculation/python lines. I can't see any specification of its cooling abilities, but it looks rather small so I'd be a little suspicious of how much umph it has.. I'd imagine that it could keep a small very well insulated FV cool (Naich even managed this with a peltier device, prompted by space restrictions IIRC) but I heard that even beer coolers can struggle to be effective with a mass of just-boiled wort.

Cheers
Kev

[barneey]

Well I have just tried an experiment with the cooler this evening, I filled my 38ltr pot up with tap water 1/3 full, put the coil in and switched on, unfortunately I forgot about it for a couple of hours, when I returned I found this creation in the bottom of the pot

I dare say if it was left for longer it would have frozen the whole lot. (I was however not willing to risk any of the build.)

The tap water was approx 20 degrees so this wont be any good to bring the temp of boiling wrot down, but I was thinking along the same idea as you Kev, as using it in fermentation controlled enviroment or as an indirect crash cooling device.

If nothing else it will come in handy as a beer bucket cooler for a barbecue.

Any thoughts anyone?

[barneey]

Just another question, anyone know the best sort of antifreeze liquid that I could use to see how low I can get the temp to?

Thanks

Clive

[Kev888]

Well theres no denying that it cools!! I guess that it could have quite a lot of potential with an FV then, but you'd need to iron out the cold-spots somehow.

The way a beer cooler does things is to cool a water-bath/ice-bank with its immersion coils, and its the water from this intermediate bath thats recirculated around the FV in some way. My beer cooler has an agitator to stop the bath freezing completely and already has a recirculation pump (used to cool python beer lines). However I'm thinking of using separate smaller pumps in some way, partly to let me control separate FVs and partly because if I try to stop the recirc pump to control cooling to the FV, the agitator stops too so my beer cooler reservoir may freeze solid..

I understand from other threads that glycol can be used in some beer coolers to stop freezing.

Cheers
kev

[Aleman]

Just another question, anyone know the best sort of antifreeze liquid that I could use to see how low I can get the temp to?

Polypropylene glycol is food grade, alternatively a brine mixture can be used.

Ethylene glycol is lethal!!! No seriously it is Fcuking lethal . . one or two (*) drips contamination and you run the risk of killing someone . . . or at the very least seriously injuring them, Don't use it ANYWHERE near food

(*)Perhaps a slight over exaggeration there, but it really does not take a great deal

[barneey]

Just another question, anyone know the best sort of antifreeze liquid that I could use to see how low I can get the temp to?

Polypropylene glycol is food grade, alternatively a brine mixture can be used.

Ethylene glycol is lethal!!! No seriously it is Fcuking lethal . . one or two (*) drips contamination and you run the risk of killing someone . . . or at the very least seriously injuring them, Don't use it ANYWHERE near food

(*)Perhaps a slight over exaggeration there, but it really does not take a great deal

Thanks for the heads up.

[barneey]

Well theres no denying that it cools!! I guess that it could have quite a lot of potential with an FV then, but you'd need to iron out the cold-spots somehow.

The way a beer cooler does things is to cool a water-bath/ice-bank with its immersion coils, and its the water from this intermediate bath thats recirculated around the FV in some way. My beer cooler has an agitator to stop the bath freezing completely and already has a recirculation pump (used to cool python beer lines). However I'm thinking of using separate smaller pumps in some way, partly to let me control separate FVs and partly because if I try to stop the recirc pump to control cooling to the FV, the agitator stops too so my beer cooler reservoir may freeze solid..

I understand from other threads that glycol can be used in some beer coolers to stop freezing.

Cheers
kev

Well yesterday I managed to get approx 8 gallons of 18 degree C tap water down to 8 degree C in two hours before the ice tube formed again, the temperature then remained at 7 to 8 degrees C for the next hour, so i`m guessing that the ice tube is insulating the element from the water. It would seem that Polypropylene glycol is the way to with some sort of circulationg / agitator device as you suggest to stop the ice from forming.

Thanks

Clive

[Kev888]

Ethylene glycol is lethal!!! No seriously it is Fcuking lethal . . one or two (*) drips contamination and you run the risk of killing someone . . . or at the very least seriously injuring them, Don't use it ANYWHERE near food

Useful to know - all the stuff I've read simply says 'glycol'. Obviously I wasn't thinking of adding it to the beer (wasn't there some wine scare some years back about this?) but leaks/spills are always possible..

Cheers
Kev

[Kev888]

Well yesterday I managed to get approx 8 gallons of 18 degree C tap water down to 8 degree C in two hours before the ice tube formed again, the temperature then remained at 7 to 8 degrees C for the next hour, so i`m guessing that the ice tube is insulating the element from the water. It would seem that Polypropylene glycol is the way to with some sort of circulationg / agitator device as you suggest to stop the ice from forming.

I don't know if there's a cold equivalent to the term heat density (as with heating elements) but it certainly seems like you need some way to draw the heat out of the wort much more evenly, and that kind of approach would let you have a much larger/gentler cool interface with the wort. Possibly another advantage could be the ability to control the flow of the cool water/glycol to the FV rather than switching the cooler on and off (for regulation), which may be more responsive and also less damaging to the cooler (if indeed it hasn't got a delay built in to prevent that).

I guess you could instead find a way to recirculate the wort itself past the cooling coil, or move the cooling coil about in the wort, but you may well still get cold spots, and achieving that in a sanitary way (and not oxidising the beer later on, by splashing) could be a big challenge.

The only other method I can imagine at the mo is some kind of huge heat-sink on the coil (to spread the cool as it were )..

Cheers
Kev

[barneey]

Hi Kev,

The biggest problem is that as soon as a liquid touches the coil it freezes on the surface, I have tried tonight to move the coil around abit but the thing still freezes into a tube, so I think direct cooling of the wrot is out at the moment.

I did think of a large tube of metal mounted in the coil to act as a heat sink / to transfer the cooling effect, albeit the cooling end would have to be heavily insulated to avoid air cooling.

The thing itself is just a simple on off switch so no timer etc or temp control, but it would prove interesting with a mix of anti freeze exactly how low the temperature would drop to, to see if it could be used as an immersion bath for a stainless FV. I cannot find any details of the exact machine I have, but the modern equivalent seems to be -20 / -35 C I think a mix of 60 Polypropylene glycol / 40 water has a frezzing point of -20 to -25 c

Its looking at the moment though, if an immersion bath didnt work, I would use it as a Summer bucket beer cooler (very quiet in operation) and wait until I have an eureka moment.

Thanks

Clive

[Aleman]

Clive if you really want a bit of fun, try methanol as the coolant . . .You should be able to get it down to around -70C . . . it actually freezes at around -97C, but -70C was all I achieved using Dry Ice as the cooling source. . . . . Again this is something that you don't want to cool your wort with.

You can also get spectacular blockages in a plate chiller doing this

[barneey]

Clive if you really want a bit of fun, try methanol as the coolant . . .You should be able to get it down to around -70C . . . it actually freezes at around -97C, but -70C was all I achieved using Dry Ice as the cooling source. . . . . Again this is something that you don't want to cool your wort with.

You can also get spectacular blockages in a plate chiller doing this

Aleman just one question ; did the plate chiller survive?

And whilst I might be considered mad by a few, I dont think I`m at a -70c degree level at the moment

I`ve heard of crash chilling my wrot but thats a little too cold for me

Having said all that might be fun to experiment a little, but will now have to buy a new thermometer, that measures below -10c

Cheers Clive