Cooling water

Anything cooling/condenser related.

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BamaBill
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Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

I see lots about condensers and worms but not much about the water cooling them. I used my HVAC background to solve a problem I have. It took 3-4 bucket changes recirculated. Constant water flow is a a waste. I'm running 15 gallons of mash on 5 gallons of recirculated cooling water. I made a home made cooling tower to cool the water as it returns to the bucket. YouTube evaporative coolers for a variety of build ideas.
It's ugly, but a prototype. I ran 15 gallons last night in 2 1/2 hours and the cooling water never got over 113°
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BamaBill
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

My biggest concern was load. I wasn't sure 5gal would hold the heat of a 15 gal system on propane. No problem. I have $15 in a fan and $15 in a goldfish pond pump. The rest was laying around. The media is ac filter media.
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Kareltje
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Kareltje »

You heat 15 gal in a keg without insulation and get it through a thumper? In 2,5 hours?
And cool the result with 5 gal recirculated water and a gold fish pump.

I am curious, because a friend sold me a still of about 15 gal and electric heating of 2.9 kW. And of course a watercooled condenser. I am since then trying to figure out how I can use this still. Time needed, isolation, preparation, cooling, etc.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

Kareltje wrote:You heat 15 gal in a keg without insulation and get it through a thumper? In 2,5 hours?
And cool the result with 5 gal recirculated water and a gold fish pump.

I am curious, because a friend sold me a still of about 15 gal and electric heating of 2.9 kW. And of course a watercooled condenser. I am since then trying to figure out how I can use this still. Time needed, isolation, preparation, cooling, etc.
Yes, I ran all 15 gallons, one run through a thumper, at 2.5 hours. And had 2 1/3 gallon of yield at 110 proof (all mixed).
You are limited to your condenser capacity on how hard you can push. Notice mine is in a 2" shell. That helps some. Also, water flow makes a difference.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Truckinbutch »

Lot to be said for your setup :thumbup:
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Pikey »

THat's a lot of knockdown power. 8)
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

Thanks guys. I honestly didn't post this for bragging. I was hoping to share a way I had figured out how to conserve water usage and if anyone else was out there changing out buckets sharing a way to make it easier on them.
.
Prior to this run, I had never run less than 4 hours. I just asked on another thread two weeks ago if I would lose capacity if I pushed harder. I think that 2" Liebig and 500 gph pump helped with the speed. I was trying to point out the cooling tower loop handled that load.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by bilgriss »

Care to share a cross section drawing of what's in that tower?
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

I'm no artist, does this help?
I drilled holes around the two rims and tie wrapped them together. Taped the seam. Water trickles thru the media and airflow cools it. The fan needs to pull ALL of its air thru the media. I used tape around the edge of the fan grate to make sure it did.
Like I said, this is a first prototype to check capacity. I thought I was gonna need to make it out of a 15 gallon or 30 gallon plastic drum but 5 gallons worked great.
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Kareltje
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Kareltje »

BamaBill wrote:
Kareltje wrote:You heat 15 gal in a keg without insulation and get it through a thumper? In 2,5 hours?
And cool the result with 5 gal recirculated water and a gold fish pump.

I am curious, because a friend sold me a still of about 15 gal and electric heating of 2.9 kW. And of course a watercooled condenser. I am since then trying to figure out how I can use this still. Time needed, isolation, preparation, cooling, etc.
Yes, I ran all 15 gallons, one run through a thumper, at 2.5 hours. And had 2 1/3 gallon of yield at 110 proof (all mixed).
You are limited to your condenser capacity on how hard you can push. Notice mine is in a 2" shell. That helps some. Also, water flow makes a difference.
How much energy do you use for that result? I have at max 2.9 kW and according to my calculations it will take a long time to heat up, let alone distill. I calculated a run of at least 25 hours!

I like your idea! I use a spiral cooled by air as a condenser. That limits my speed, but on the other hand it is a reliable and very safe method. And failsafe, once regulated well.
When I am in a hurry and push the run, I can cool the windings of my spiral by putting damp clothes on them. When I see the water vapours coming off them I know the alcohol vapours inside the spiral are condensing.
I pondered about a kind of glove of cotton around the spiral, kept wet by a thread hanging from a glass with water. When designed properly, it should work. Never took the trouble to really make it.
Point is: the vapourizing of water takes up much more energy per litre or kilo than the heating of water.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

I am using gas on an outdoor cooker. The picture in my original post shows it. I run it wide open until my vapor starts to my thumper. Then, I turn it down some until my thumper heats up. Then, I regulate it.
You know, rather than an air cooled condenser, you could put that into a bucket and make a worm and do alot faster than you are now?
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Kareltje
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Kareltje »

BamaBill wrote:I am using gas on an outdoor cooker. The picture in my original post shows it. I run it wide open until my vapor starts to my thumper. Then, I turn it down some until my thumper heats up. Then, I regulate it.
You know, rather than an air cooled condenser, you could put that into a bucket and make a worm and do alot faster than you are now?
Yes, I know. I have a watercooled Liebig condenser now, several, even. And always thought about putting my worm in a bucket and fixing the leaks etc.
But you know: air cooling never fails (well, as long as ambient air is not 60 dgr C, that is!)
It runs slowly, but that is no problem and I can leave my system alone for some time. It has only 1 valve: the gas. Which is reliable!

I wondered how much energy you used to finish your 15 gal run in 2,5 hours. It must be a lot more than the 2.9 kW I have at my disposition.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Appalachia-Shiner »

And in the real world.
I am using a 55 gallon barrel of recuriculated water to cool my 15 gallon run since I moved my still to a place without running water. It just barely gets the run finished before the water gets too warm to cool my Liebig.
I sup pose I need to use something like this when the weather gets warmer.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by bilgriss »

Thanks for the drawing. That's helpful. Seems like something I might get around to.....
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Pikey »

I like it 8) - I use 1 Litre /minute to knock down something around 2 kw which takes nearly an hour to bring 25 litres of wash to distil point. So I'm guessing you need around 5-6 litres / minute from your pump. For KAreltje's convenience, it takes me a further 3 hours to distil from an abv of around 12-14% (Pot mode)

The crux of the matter seems to me to be the cooling flow - so how big a fan are you using ? Would you mind saying - what is Air conditioning filter medium and how thick a layer are you using please ? Does the system lose any significant amount of cooling water due to evaporation of water in the cooling medium ?

To me the cost benefit analysis relates to the electric used against the cost of the water saved.

So now (assuming I make somethig like this - THANKS for the guidance BB ) we have 3 ways of dealing with cooling water :
1) use the warmed water to fill a fermenter (at 1 litre / minute - I get about 180 litres tepid water for my 220 litre fermenter from a 25 litre distil)
2) Preheater - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 87&t=66230 (Saves masses of water AND electric AND time ! )
3) This neat little cooler which would fit nicely with the Leibigs in the "preheater" thread. :thumbup:
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Pikey »

What was the abv of your final product ?

And how much did you end up with ?
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

Pikey,
I ended up with 2 1/3 gallons of 55% abv.
The quickly put together prototype (I put together the hour before I kicked off my last run) I had sealed the two buckets with duct tape. It started leaking. Between evaporation and a slight leak, I had three gallons of 113° water circulating when I finished the run. I never added water from the initial 5 gallons.
Also, the filter media I used was about 3/4 to an inch thick. Really, as long as it's saturated it probably doesn't matter the media. If I had not had the media handy, I would have used a towel.
I used a cheap Honeywell 3 speed fan on hi speed. I am not sure of the cfm
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Kareltje »

I seem to have lost my post. :thumbdown:
Thanks Pikey for your information.

The heat of evaporation of water is 2.260 J/gr, while the specific heath is only 4,2 J/(gr.K). This means that evaporation does cool more than 500 times as good per gr of water.
If I understood you correctly, BamaBill, you use the evaporation to cool your cooling water, but it can also be used to directly cool the distillate. That would in theory cost only 1/500 th of the normal amount of water.
One should wind the cooling pipe with some cloth and keep that wet. Preferably in a environment that is vapour proof, so not close to your iron tools in your shed or near a cold spot in your house!

I think I will try it some time.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

So, I ran 15 gallons of mash on Fri, 15 on Sat and 15 today. Used the same 5 gallons of cooling water on all runs. (I lost about 2-3 gallons due to evaporation or drip leaks over the three runs)
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Shine0n »

That's pretty cool bamaBill, I'm trying to figure out how I can make one for my 35 gal worm barrel so when I have a different condenser I can use it.
I MAY just stick with the worm but options are nice too!

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Re: Cooling water

Post by kimbodious »

Thanks BamaBill for sharing the inspirational evapourative cooler idea :thumbup:
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BoomTown »

Very nice rig. Very practical.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

BoomTown wrote:Very nice rig. Very practical.
Thank you sir. Since this post, I have turned that liebig into a shotgun condenser and built a parrot.
My next mash is at 1.050, so I haven't tested it yet.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by kimbodious »

I am fascinated by this simple but elegant design. A factory where I used to work had massive cooling towers with huge fans!

How loud is the system when running? Is there any chance of a video so that we can hear for ourselves please?
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

kimbodious wrote:I am fascinated by this simple but elegant design. A factory where I used to work had massive cooling towers with huge fans!

How loud is the system when running? Is there any chance of a video so that we can hear for ourselves please?
The design idea was from industrial cooling water towers. (I have an HVAC background and this is where I got the idea). I don't have a video, but it's only as loud as the little cooling fan I'm using- not much. The pump is submersible and silent.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by kimbodious »

:thumbup: thanks for the info Bama Bill
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Re: Cooling water

Post by kimbodious »

My local Council have installed smart meters to remotely monitor water usage. Until now I have used coolant water from the domestic supply to top up my inground pool. We face seasonal mandated water restrictions. I never reach the annual allocation of water but on the other hand take water for cooling when it is convenient and not always when it is "my turn". The smart metering changes all that. I have looked for other ways for managing cooling water and I can't help but keep coming back to this design.

Most other designs cool a vessel to cool the water inside but your system cools the water directly - it has to be a more efficient method!
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Re: Cooling water

Post by Bushman »

This sounds great, I am a very visual person and can follow most of your drawing. When your not doing a run if it comes a part easily would be great to see individual pictures with explanation for us non HVAC guys.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by BamaBill »

Well, it hasn't been apart since I built it. As a matter of fact, I ran it this weekend and it still had the same water in it I finished my last run with three weeks ago.
I probably use a total of 10 gallons of cooling water to distill 45 gallons of mash. Maybe lose 4 gallons to small leaks and evaporation.
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Re: Cooling water

Post by raketemensch »

kimbodious wrote:My local Council have installed smart meters to remotely monitor water usage. Until now I have used coolant water from the domestic supply to top up my inground pool. We face seasonal mandated water restrictions. I never reach the annual allocation of water but on the other hand take water for cooling when it is convenient and not always when it is "my turn". The smart metering changes all that. I have looked for other ways for managing cooling water and I can't help but keep coming back to this design.

Most other designs cool a vessel to cool the water inside but your system cools the water directly - it has to be a more efficient method!
I use my in-ground pool as my cooling reservoir. At first I thought I might even heat it a little, but the hoses are too long, so most of the heat is lost by the time it get back to the pool.
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