Plate Chiller, the draw backs...

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RabMaxwell

Post by RabMaxwell » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:25 am

Get your torch & solder out & make one of theses babies then you wont need to worry about blockages
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Andy
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Post by Andy » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:38 am

Rab - can you talk us through what you've got there ? I've seen that picture many times but have never worked out how that collection of copper pipes acts as a heat exchanger.
Dan!
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Aleman
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Post by Aleman » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:14 am

Looks as though its several 15mm inside 22mm coper pipes, but not coiled up. I have one length from my original attempt at something like this. It worked relatively well as I reacall. And certainly No possiblity of ever getting blocked.
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RabMaxwell

Post by RabMaxwell » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:04 am

Basically 22mil outer 15 mil inner cut in lengths that fit under my fermenters all soldered together 35 - 40 feet temperature gauge & inline aerator & connected to my RG550 pump. I think it would have been imposible to try & bend 2 pipes at once without collapsing the inner pipe so took the easy option
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Vossy1

Post by Vossy1 » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:23 pm

Hmmmm :-k

I like it :lol:
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Chiltern Brewer

Post by Chiltern Brewer » Tue Oct 02, 2007 7:30 pm

Well after a few happy hours of tinkering :roll: I have made my first immersion wort chiller. 8)

I'm hoping to test out it's cooling ability later this week on my first brew of the new season. So far I've just checked that it doesn't spring any leaks. I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks to DaaB for the advice.

Oh, and I've christened it Zebedee! :lol:
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beardybrewer

Post by beardybrewer » Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:38 pm

Whoa, what have we here? The debris there is worse than I imagined. If the chiller were small enough to boil, do you think that would help (combined with flushing)?

Well my small H&G immersion is actually doing the job (or was all along) now that I have an accurate thermometer... Learnt my lesson, just cuz its digital don't mean its accurate! :lol:
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Aleman
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Post by Aleman » Wed Oct 03, 2007 8:13 am

newkie wrote:Whoa, what have we here? The debris there is worse than I imagined. If the chiller were small enough to boil, do you think that would help (combined with flushing)?
And yet I get no Debris from my small PC when I flush. And I use the RG550 to recirculate hot water from the kettle round the PC. That could be down to my use of a hop stopper (30 gauge mesh) more than anything though.

Then when I've finished that, the entire PC goes into the pressure cooker filled with water and it gets 30minutes at 15psi, Once the pressure has been released I then screw on some blanking plugs and put it away ready for the next session

I like PC's they are very small and neat, but the drawback for me is that the flow rate through them has to be so slow that I may as well use an IC (Of course My Thermometer probes might need recalibrating :) ). I am considering one of the bigger outdoor wood furnace HE's from the USA, but have more interesting things to spend my money on at the moment :)
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Vossy1

Post by Vossy1 » Wed Oct 03, 2007 11:37 am

TJB, are you recircing boiling wort through the pc to sanitise ?

If so does the RG550 thermo trip....... 'trip' ?
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Aleman
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Post by Aleman » Wed Oct 03, 2007 12:52 pm

DaaB wrote:What do you mean by slow though?
Wort is probably down to 1L per min, which for a 75L batch is just too long to cool the batch, I can do it with my IC in 1/2 the time
Vossy1 wrote:TJB, are you recircing boiling wort through the pc to sanitise ?

If so does the RG550 thermo trip....... 'trip' ?
No, I Sterilise the PC in a pressure cooker before use. Than after use, and I have cleaned up the boiler I heat a few gallons of water to almost boiling and recirc that at full bore, reverse flushing the PC. Then I bung it full of water into the pressure cooker again, and seal it up for the next brewing session.

Does the RG550 Trip? Yes it does, It did it twice this brew, which I find difficult to understand as I had chilled the wort significantly using the IC. I really suspect that the RG550 does not like being run at low speeds using a power controller for any length of time . . . . It does get very hot. My other pump (similar design), will quite happily run with hot wort for a long time.
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Vossy1

Post by Vossy1 » Wed Oct 03, 2007 1:00 pm

TJB, Do you cool straight to primary? How many plates is your pc?
Just wondering why the flow rate is so slow at 1 ltr/min.

At least winters round the corner...I had to throttle the coolent back last winter to get 20 deg c...that was when I was very happy with my pc...summer has been a different matter!
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RabMaxwell

Post by RabMaxwell » Wed Oct 03, 2007 4:19 pm

Hello TJB what i have done to solve my RG550 pump tripping when using my king keg hop-back. Since i started using a rather large sealed hop-back in conjunction with my RG550 pump i started having problems. I used to circulate my wort from my CFC back to the kettle until the kettle was about 70 oc thus obtaining the correct pitching temperature when transferred to the fermenter.But with the hop-back i don't want to send the wort back to the kettle & heat back up those lovely hop flavours extracted from the sealed hop-back. So i created a loop by using the pumps priming port. I circulate wort back to my hop-back thus reducing the flow the pump doesn't heat up & trip anymore. You could divert the wort from the port back to your kettle.
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