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- CothermanDistilling December 2014
- Diesellover November 2014
- grim December 2014
- razerhawg1 December 2014
- sawman10 November 2014
- TheMechWarrior November 2014
Water Chillers
Has anybody seen or worked with one of these?
CW5200 1400W Water chiller for CO2 laser machine (AC110V 60Hz) @ Lightobject
What are your thoughts.
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Way too small and way too expensive. If you want to find a good low cost chiller, look at the units used for big aquariums.
Actually the size is OK, but the price is still steep.
I saw it was able to keep close temps( 0.3'C temperature accuracy) on the output.
Why is accuracy an issue? Are you thinking of using this without a reservoir? You won't be able to use this without a reservoir.
The reservoir temperatures will obviously be variable as you might pre-cool, cool through the run. While the reservoir can provide additional knock down capability or buffer, it will not be able to keep up over the course of a long run, and even with the chiller running, the reservoir will increase in temperature.
This unit looks like it can potentially knock down about 1.5kw (based on the btu), but that is going to be flow-rate dependent. The flow rate the chiller wants may not be the flow rate your dephlegmator and product condenser want.
This would be a nice sized chiller for a 50-200 gallon reservoir.
grim thanks for all the input, that's the reason I posted this. My mind has been going nuts with ideas sense I started this hobby.
You can get tight temp control, but you are going to need to rig up a PID style controller for the condensers.
Once you have something like that, it can adjust for variations in the reservoir temp, making your life easy.
Amazing how cheap and easy it is to heat something up, and how expensive and complicated it is to cool it back down.
This is the one I am using, My company was closing and this was headed to the salvage yard. Made it to my house instead. I did add an extra 10 gallon holding tank and it will keep up with an all day run on 4" dash 2.
PORTABLE CHILLER CF-1.5A @ Temptek
@sawman10 How many KW do you run during hearts? That's a big chiller.
Hi Grim, New to all this and only a couple runs under the belt. I am still using the beer keg boiler and not sure what kw everything pulls, I have been keeping the water around 75 degrees f. Finally getting a dedicated place to operate and just starting back into it this year.
@grim - Thanks.... I now understand the effectiveness of controlling the RC temp/outlet temp a little more... it was not a big deal with a 4" condenser and city water with a needle valve, but with 8" it is a different animal..
I just did a run with RC recirc into a 1000L tote, and only a 3/4" ball valve on the return at the tank, which was great at full on, but not so great at low flow, but was able to have decent control of the temp and therefore the ABV... I have the PID controller and valve on the shelf, and look forward to hooking it up...
@CothermanDistilling
Consider changing your ball valve for a V-notch ball valve for improved flow control.
Cheers,
Mech.
meh.. I will put the ball and a 1/2" needle valve in parallel(I have one I got on ebay and used for a few things, sitting on the counter now)... I did think about putting a tiny notch in my existing valve... too many things going on...
The Johnson's you have are characterized valves, they have the insert to linearize the flow. Just get that sucker up and running and sit back and enjoy the flexibility of having dial-a-temp.
yeah, I will put that valve with the cute little orifice in it in when I make a housing for the controller and the 24v power supply..
This may be a little bit off, but assuming you had enough capacity what temperature would you run the chiller at? As in can extremely cold water cause any issues? I had tried a 1 ton chiller on a 4" reflux column with 6 plates running right at 3.5 KW and it would not keep up, so I have switched to city water. I also have a 5 ton chiller ( I'm I the refrigeration business ) but have been afraid to try using Chilled water.
my two cents: you should not be running the chiller straight to the RC, but should be cooling a water tank... for the RC, the most efficiently temp is the highest temp that completes the job effectively, for example, if 120F water can reflux all your vapor, and exit at some higher temp, a chiller will be super efficient just cooling the water to 120F, heck, a fan and a radiator can do it... for the product condenser, you want it to room temperature, any lower and you will be wasting energy when it warms, any higher than room temp, and you will lose more to evaporation.
The other issue is the flow rates required by the chiller, the RC, and the PC are all different. What's best for the chiller is probably going to be too fast for the RC. Run the pump at the speed required by the RC, and the chiller loses efficiency, and definitely won't keep up. Run it as fast as the chiller needs to flow, and I guarantee you that it'll be well past 100% reflux.
The coolant reservoir serves two purposes: 1) By using either 2 or 3 pumps, the reservoir acts as a kind of "interface" between the systems, allowing each to run at it's ideal rate and delta t. 2) It provides for additional cooling capacity, above and beyond what the chiller can provide, by pre-cooling the water before a run.
The second point is important, because it lets you trade chiller size for time. By pre-cooling the reservoir, you are "storing" cooling capacity for use during the run. You can simply run an undersized chiller all night to take your reservoir temp down.
My thought on the reservoir is that you take it down to whatever temperature you need to finish your run without running out of capacity. Maybe it's 68, 63, 57, 55, only you'll know. The larger your reservoir, the higher the temp you can get away with.
All of this assumes you have PID control on your condensers, because you'll need it. Through the run as the reservoir temps increase, the controllers will need to compensate by increasing the flow rates.
My description probably makes this seem more complicated than it really is.
@razerhawg1 here is a .xls spreadsheet that you can plug your information into, it calculates for rate, but you can experiment with different temps to find a rate that is close to the rate you want to flow.
Thank. I do understand all that and am working on automating my setup, but I am going to see if a plc can handle water temp control with 4-20 ma valves instead of tri state valves & pid controllers. I typically run 30 gallons of 10% to 12% wash through a 4" column and am shooting for neutral spirits, so I run for 5 or 6 hours at a time, which would be a huge reservoir.
My bigger concern is whether there are any considerations to production quality by using cold ( with low flows ) water instead of tap water or building a cooling tower and using just cool water. Is there any chance of "shocking" the fluids? thanks
If you have a lot of PLC knowledge and know what eBay stuff to buy and not go wrong, it could be a great deal... I am too far gone from knowing what stuff is correct, and I have a passion for network connected, which is usually out of my price range... my BCS-462 does not do 4-20mA, but I am working on implementing a pwm converter module so it will.
I suggest low flow of cold/chilled water through the PC, but a large reservoir of warm water for the RC, just for efficiency's sake... now if you had unlimited cold stream or well water that cost nearly nothing, use it.
5-6 hours of 10% to 95% is either a lot of water in a tank, a lot of water down the drain, or a lot of plates/packing.. the pros or anyone who has to pay for water would likely tell you to do 2 runs...
IMHO, the only issue is if you cooled the reflux too cool, you would just be wasting energy to heat it back up, and that energy would better used for the distillation process.
In the end, unless you find and visit people with the same setup as you have, and copy it closely, you will likely have to try a couple or several attempts at cooling before you are happy and move on to refining some other aspect of the process.
You bring up an excellent point in that if you super cool the reflux too much you just have to heat it back. I have a cooling tower that I ca probably get 20 gpm down to within 7 or 8 degress of wet bulb temp and that may be the best for this application. Thanks
I would agree.. 20GPM would do a 12" column I bet (I use 1-2gpm of 80F on 11Kw on a 8") and you could use that same water for a first stage of product cooler, then use a tiny fraction of chilled/tap water to cool product to room temperature ( if desired)