Hi tech cooling - saving water during a drought?

[picturegeek]

Clearly using Ice in recirculation to cool the distillate and the column is a better alternative to using water from the tap, especially during a drought. Are there any high tech methods for cooling the recirculated water that don't use ice? Is anyone using refrigerants as a method, or any other high tech method to cool recirculated water?

thanks!

[Dnderhead]

some use heat exchangers (radiators) and fans

[myles]

I did wonder if you could build a coil to fit inside one of those small beer fridges, you know the ones that are the size for 4 or 6 beer cans? could be an option unless you can think of some way to reuse heads for evaporative cooling. would need good ventilation though otherwise BIG BADA BOOM!!!!

[Hack]

For my 15 gallon beer keg still with a thumper I use a five gallon bucket with a 20' worm in it. I fill it with cool water when I start and don't need to add any more when I run. I suppose if I was really water concious, I could have built it so I could put the lid on after it cooled down and save it for use on the next run. It's not high tech or expensive, but it would conserve water.

[Puma]

You can get a recerculating chiller, not sure its worth the cost though.

[Mud]

You can make an air cooled worm. Deathwish (as in DWWG) has one. I think it's 5/8" copper with pretty tight spacing between the coils. It sits on a bench top with a small fan on top blowing up. The air is drawn in through the sides.

[blanikdog]

For my 15 gallon beer keg still with a thumper I use a five gallon bucket with a 20' worm in it. I fill it with cool water when I start and don't need to add any more when I run. I suppose if I was really water concious, I could have built it so I could put the lid on after it cooled down and save it for use on the next run. It's not high tech or expensive, but it would conserve water.

I do the same, hack. The condenser needs a gradient from warmish to cold to work properly anyway and by following this system I use around twenty five litres of water each run, which finishes up on the garden.

blanik

[rezaxis]

You can make a chiller from a small window AC unit.

[Dnderhead]

your putting in 50,000--150,000 BTUs most of that has to be displaced by the condensers, that whould be one heck of a refrigeration unit.

[Puma]

your putting in 50,000--150,000 BTUs most of that has to be displaced by the condensers, that whould be one heck of a refrigeration unit.

Your are right on that one Dnder, but only if it is directly cooling the run. If you make (or buy) a smaller cooler you can use to pre-chill a resavoir of cooling water. Then continue to re-use the same cooling water for each run....Or you could just stick a bucket in the frig

Or, if you have the cash, I have a 10 tun glycol chiller in my driveway that my wife would be happy to get rid of.

[myles]

I normally run a Liebig condenser off a barrel of water with a pond pump recirculating the water back into the barrel. I just tend to have a few plastic milk cartons full of water in the freezer. They are in there anyway to take up space to maximise the efficiency of the freezer.
I just dump one or more into the barrel of water to keep it cold during the run. Keeping the water very cold lets me use a smaller barrel of water.

I do have some big rainwater harvesting barrels but have not got around to completely plumbing them in yet. I supose the cheapest way is just to utilise the largest volume of water possible as a heat sink. Store as much water as you can and use it to absorb your heat.

[eternalfrost]

if you have a big enough reservoir, you can get by on practically zero water. if you have a couple hundred gallon tank and recirculate the water with a pump. at the end of a run the tnk will only have warmed up a few degrees

its basic thermodynamics. the cold input water absorbs energy and becomes hot. alot of us just dump it down the drain at this point. but it is still plain water just like when we started, simply with more thermal energy. Imagine putting a big bucket over the drain. the distilling process would be exactly the same but at the end you have a big bucket of (hot) water.

to be "sustainable" you simply have to remove the extra heat from the bucket of water. this can be done by simply letting it sit long enough. or through more active means like circulating it through a radiator etc.

if you cant remove the heat out of the system as fast as you are putting it in, you simply need a big enough 'buffer' to absorb the excess until you finish.

[ratflinger]

I use a 40 gallon plastic horse tank with about 30g in it. I can run all day on it.

[Avatar]

Hi tech you say?
Look up Peltier Cells.

I'm certain that you could build a condenser from these things with no circulation water, pumps etc, required at all........
Just sayin...

[WhiteLightening]

Those things are rated at only a few hundred watts. check your element rating and see if it matches. Ill bet it doesn't.
Try this and tell me if it works if your serious, been on my mind for a while, I got a dehumidifier and i was thinkin of pulin the coils and stikin them in my coolin tub to pull some heet out of it not for the hole thermal input but for the added benefit of lowering the net overall btu input into my heatsink ie. my 55g cooling tub

[HookLine]

From memory Peltier cells are pretty power hungry, so they might save water, but use more electrickery instead. And you still have to remove the heat from one side of them.

[picturegeek]

I really like the idea of dismantling a dehumidifier because they are adept at being around wet conditions. I also like the IDEA of a peltier cell, but I can't seem to find one that efficiently removes heat from water, so far refridgeration is winning. I found someone talking about heat pipes as well, but I'm not sure how they can be directly applied to cooling recirculated water. The recirculated chiller is by far the best solution I can find, but difficult to maintain (for me) and expensive. Is this what large scale distilleries are using? The small beer fridge idea is not large enough, but i like it. Air cooled exchangers/radiators are effective but fluctuate throughout the day as the ambient temperature changes.

Eternalfrost worded my big problem eloquently. "if you cant remove the heat out of the system as fast as you are putting it in, you simply need a big enough 'buffer' to absorb the excess until you finish." The problem I have with removing the heat out of a system using radiators is that I have run my reflux still for 36hrs at times. The temperature swing between night and day is dramatic, or always changing. I asked the original question "Hi tech cooling - saving water for a drought" for two reasons. I need to remove heat consistently over long periods of time, and I have to conserve water. I was poking my head out my back door today looking at my distillery (ok, it's a garage!). At the moment my yard is all torn up from building the garage last year. I asked same question to myself. How do I recirculate water through a radiator without big temperature swings? I thought the only thing that stays cool all day, even during the summer the ground. I little light went off, and I'll ask ya'll. What if I bury a large custom built copper exchanger deep in the ground? Thoughts. . .?

[eternalfrost]

a heat exchanger like that COULD work, but i think you are underestimating how big a project they are.

for a sustainable technologies class at Uni last year, we covered them. they are fairly common for passive home heating. basically using a refrigeration cycle, you cool down the working fluid, pump it way down to where its a constant 65F or so, it absorbs energy gets pumped back up, compressed so the temp shoots up, and radiates the energy into the home.

much cheaper energy and money wise because you are simply transporting ambient energy rather then creating it

however, they are a HUGGEEE project. tens of thousands of dollars. you have to get tens of meters down to hit stable temperatures. it requires crane size drilling equipment. its not something you can simply bury with a shovel. you also need specialized expensive tubing. copper will corrode with the ground salts, and plastics wont transfer heat well.


again, your best bet is just getting a 55gallon drum off ebay for 30 bucks or so and filling it with rain water for a big old reservior

[picturegeek]

Do you really think I would need to dig that deep? There must be a difference between using the ground to cool water for a small still and the ground to use as a passive heater for a house. I don't think I would need to dig that deep to reach 65 degrees in northern California (though I have never measured,Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll get the shovel out tomorrow and test). If I find ground that is 65 degrees I think that a few passes of tubing, perhaps a few rows of eight feet length tubes would do? Hot water in, cooler out? I would like to know more about the specialized tubing. Hey, thanks for taking the time. I really love the topic and the replies. In the end, I'm afraid the 55Gal tank awaits. : |

[Dnderhead]

they do have plastic pipe that is used in radiant heat, as in the floors/concrete etc mite be better?

[eternalfrost]

for ground systems to work well, you really need to have some sort of compressor/refrigeration cycle going on as a heat pump.

thy use the same cycle as any refrigerator or air conditioner. the fluid is expelled to low density, this makes it cold by basic thermodynamics. this cold gs is run through the heat source and absorbs energy(the greater the temp difference, the greater the efficiency) then this ambient temp gas is run through a compressor back into a HOT liquid, this hot liquid then radiates off the energy, and the cycle repeats.

for distilling you might be able to get away without a compressor if you run your output really hot (close to 90C) but really, if you just hd the same length of tube above ground in n old school coil with maby a fan, it would work just as well and be much simpler. that way you could also use copper which would make it extremely more efficient as well.

I still stand by my recommendation, as big a water reservoir as you can get. big enough, and youll need zero water input, if not, it will still cut bck on the tap water you are using, you only need to make up the difference. If you fall behind, running the reservoir water through a fan cooled copper worm should kick the reservoir temps back down. most pumps require a "recycle" line to avoid back pressures, running this through the coil would work perfectly.

check out punkins godly setup for inspiration. http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... a&start=45" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Hack]

I was just reading the post about a ground loop and got to thinking about some of the studying up I've done on natural building and passive solar. When it comes to building thermal mass into a house, a water tank in the sun is the best. The next best thing is stone, or concrete, or sand. It is capable of absorbing large amounts of heat and slowly reradiating it. So here's my simple low tech idea for saving water. Why not put a worm in a large garbage can or 55 gallon drum and then fill it with sand? You might need a bit more volume of sand compared to water, but I'm sure it would work. Just think ahead before you do it because it's not going to be very mobile.

You might not need that large of volume either. You may be running for 36 hours, but it's more related to the volume of vapor you need to knock down than the amount of time.

[HookLine]

So here's my simple low tech idea for saving water. Why not put a worm in a large garbage can or 55 gallon drum and then fill it with sand?

Water has way more heat capacity than sand.

[eternalfrost]

So here's my simple low tech idea for saving water. Why not put a worm in a large garbage can or 55 gallon drum and then fill it with sand?

Water has way more heat capacity than sand.

by my reference book here the heat capacities of sand is about 0.19 and water 1.00 (cal/gram C) so yes sand would not work as well, its temperature will rise faster then water given the same ammount of energy input.

also,more practically, sand cant move and must conduct heat away, while water can also remove it through convection. that is, the sand is stuck in place, where it touches the coil will get very hot (and therefore poor at absorbing more energy) while the sand further away will remain relatively cool, the heat must conduct through it. water however is free to mix, the water touching the coil heats up, becomes less dense and rises away, new cold water takes its place and the cycle continues. this is how old fashioned radiator heaters work.

water has one of the highest heat capacities of common materials, and copper the highest thermal conductivity

[HookLine]

Also, sand has lots of small pockets of still air, which are very good insulators that slow heat transfer right down.

[bronzdragon]

I have a 5 gal. boiler and use a recirc pump in about a 8 gal container with water. I find that a couple hours into the run I have to start using frozen milk jugs. I understand that a bigger reservoir would be the direct answer but I run into space limitations.

I have been contemplating using a new motorcycle radiator with fan set-up to blow on it. I don't know exactly how that would perform though.

~bd~

[Ugly]

It's fairly easy to calculate... if the motorcycle had a 100 hp engine running at an outside max of 30% mechanical efficiency, that means it gave off a total of ~230 HP in wasted heat... assuming half that heat went out the exhaust manifold, that leaves 115 HP of waste heat to deal with... 746Wx115HP =85790 W...

Basically the radiator in the above example is capable of shedding 85790W of heat energy with a fairly decent temperature differential between the coolant and the outside air... one you will stay under since the coolant in your example is distillate and won't exceed 100C whereas a mixed coolant solution in a vehicle usually reaches 110C or thereabouts.

This example is for air, submerging the rad in water makes more efficient at the same temps...

[eternalfrost]

just to clarify, since i was confused by the above post until i looked up some definitions...

1HP = 746 W

[Ugly]

C'mon eternal, I did show multiplying the 115hp by the appropriate 746 watts, keep up

[big_daddy_d]

Ok gentelman heres my Idea take an used stand up freezer cut holes in the side and run as much pipe coiled up in it as you can turn the temp up to around 33 to 34 deg farh. Circulate that water through a 55 gallon barrel. Use a sepearate pump to run still.