Plate Chiller

[minesa1664]

Hello All

Would any one know if i can use a heat exchanger (new) from a combi boiler instead of the expensive plate chiller from hop and grape to chill my beer?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-Plate-Heat ... 3f19d3248e

or

http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/public/det ... HE20185871

Thanks for all your help

Will
Building my new brewery in the new forest
PM me if you are lcoal with any experince as any help would be brilliant

 

[graysalchemy]

What you need is something a bit larger

one of these

Its a combination of size of plates and number of plates I think. :thumb: :thumb:

Hopefully Aleman might see this and give you a definitive answer. :thumb:

 

[Swift Pint]

Minesa, I've got a plate chiller similar to the first link you posted but with 12 plates. I bought it from Brouwland in Belgium when I was there a few years back.
http://www.brouwland.com/shop/product.asp?cfid=4&id=2753&cat=400&dt=24&l=2
It does fine for 5gallon brews, chilling them down in 15-20mins, although this will depend on the temp of the water your using to chill with.

As greys says, more plates are better as it'll chiller faster.

That one's got 10 plates so will take slightly longer than mine, but for the price it looks like a good deal if your happy with 20/25mins (guestimate) to cool the wort. Obviously this will be longer if you're doing larger batches.

 

[Vossy1]

The 60 plate linked will be fine, I used a 30 with no problems for 5 gal batches.

Nearly all plate chillers will do the job, it's a question of the flow rate output you require that will restrict you. If you have the time to wait for a longer chill you can go for a pc with fewer plates, if you want to do it faster then more plates, though you will reach a point where the coolant temp will hinder you.
The key to all contact chillers is the temperature difference between coolant and product in the chiller, the gap needs to be as big as possible for effective chilling.
It is possible to buy a chiller with too many plates, ie, it won't be of any benefit to have more, as once you've got a tiny temp difference between product and coolant the cooling takes a lot longer.

 

[cnelsonplumber]

I took this plate heat exchanger out of an old combination boiler to see how effective it was. I must admit it works very well and is a massive improvement on my twin coil immersion chiller. A quick count of the plates gives a total of 12 so it's quite small compared with some of the commercial ones mentioned above, :grin: Although it is the surface area of the contact plates which really counts.

Cooling from boil to below 26 C takes a little over 20 mins by recirculating back into the copper, I'm pretty sure that this could be reduced by recirculating into another container. :thumb:

Connection onto the four post was a bit of a pain :hmm: as there are two pairs of different size holes and I ended up resin bonding the copper fittings into the stainless holes. This is not ideal so I will go for a bigger cooler with decent fittings next evolution of the brewery although I need to do the math and see if cooling in a single pass is possible with ambient tap water temperature.

Here are a few pics.
[img]http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j373/cnelsonplumber/IMG_3430.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j373/cnelsonplumber/IMG_3428.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j373/cnelsonplumber/IMG_3429.jpg[/img]

 

[darkonnis]

http://www.dudadiesel.com/heat_exchangers.php
Chart for heat exchangers:
Belter, the difference in price is down to the efficiency. It really is a question of how water efficient and time efficient do you "need" to be?
For a 20 litre batch size you could use a 20 plate, it would take 7.5minutes and use 77 gallons of water (according to that chart) (B3-12A 20 plate)
For a 20 litre batch size you could use a 30 plate, it would take 2.5 minutes and use 26 gallons of water. (B3-23A 30 plate)
For a 20 litre batch size you could use a 60 plate, it would take 2 minutes and use 20 gallons of water. (B3-23A 60 plate)
For a 20 litre batch size you could use a 60 plate, it would take 11 seconds and use 1.8 gallons of water. (B3-95A 60 plate) (provided you could pump that fast!!!)

Now I've just put those in, as you can see between the 2 60 plate exchangers there is a big difference in time and water used. From an industry standpoint, I cannot honestly think of a reason why you would want your cooler to be the bottleneck in your system, therefore you'd go for the biggest meanest HE you could find. Transfering 23 gallons of wort a minute though, for homebrew use just isn't needed. (no matter how die hard you are on saving water, I think this is a bit much )
this would work quite well, basically anything in the B3-23A range or higher is good, if you click on any of the HE's Clive listed and scroll down to the top of the product listing under the ebay gumph, it has a code written in black, they're all B3-**A.

All depends how much you want to spend, I am looking purely at the table supplied to come to my conclusions and they're not from experience (my IC works just fine), perhaps someone with a 12A product could correct me, but from that table, if you want to save on water you'd be looking at something like i said. Do not confuse more plates with being better. More plates means greater surface area and as a result use less water to cool the same amount of wort, they are also more expensive and more difficult to clean (more plates, more crannies), that 30 plate i listed uses 6GPM more than the 60 plate, and will take an additional 30 seconds, but it will be easier to clean and just over half the size (4mm). Hopefully my explanation hasn't been too confusing and you can see how I've arrived at my conclusion and now understand enough to come up with your own, safe in the knowledge you're buying the right one for your needs.

I've copied this from the other forum, with the accompanying charts. I believe as the serial numbers are the same, it is very likely they are from the same supplier. I am not sure what difference the serial actually makes and HOW exactly they transfer more heat, I'm guessing it's to do with either the material used to join the plates (different grade of copper perhaps?) or a change of some sort in the internal plate design (like ridges or channels). But going off that chart, I'd say the 30 plate looks like the "best" option. The 60 for the same price doesn't really offer much in the way of benefit and has more plates to worry about getting clean. Of course, thats from the charts, so there is every chance they're wrong and then of course, so am i.

 

[Vossy1]

Great reply there D I did go down the route of speed and a larger pc (micro size pc), but I do larger batches, usually 10 gallon. In order to pump at the speeds I was using (14ltr/min) I had to redesign my copper filter (vertical) and install an in-line filter. If using a suitable in-line filter you wouldn't need to strip the PC down that often, unless you leave it with break in to dry out :sick: If I were to change my system to smaller batches I would not use my larger plate chiller...it's just too much trouble to go to for smaller amounts, a small pc maybe. Of all the chilling methods I've used, single IC, double IC, quad IC, cfc and double cfc, I have to say the double cfc was my fav. I found the IC's just took too long (I'm impatient) even with agitation, and I was never comfortable with leaving the lid slightly ajar for the IC pipes

 

[darkonnis]

Cheers, I just hope it's of use. I was under the impression that those plate chillers are welded? So i guess all you can really do is backflush them, flood them with sanitiser then bang them in a pressure cooker prior to use and/or recirc hot wort through em prior to going to the FV.

 

[Vossy1]

The combi ones are usually copper braised, they're the ones you want. There is another braising material that's not suitable for food/beer but I can't remember any more which it is

So i guess all you can really do is backflush them, flood them with sanitiser then bang them in a pressure cooker prior to use and/or recirc hot wort through em prior to going to the FV.

I ruined a sealed pc by allowing hops into it when my back was turned...then it just got progressively worse until it was near blocked...threw it away I didn't let that happen to the second one and simply forward/reverse flushing with hot water cleaned it well enough, naturally then sanitising before use. I didn't have a pressure cooker and wasn't going to buy one for brewing, though I did try baking it in the oven which worked, but again I was too impatient to wait for it to cool down to continue doing it that way :lol: