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casebrew · 05-07-2007, 10:57 PM

This is from another, non-beer forum I frequent, the guy started with 5l on Heinekin:

Quote:

"I finally cut all the way around and lifted the top off. There was a plastic pick-up tube attached to the tap fitting on top (duh) and a White cylinder glued to the bottom. I pulled that off easily enough. It looked like one of those Ronsol butane canisters, and it was about the same size, too. The can had something in it that made noise when I shook it. I sounded like it was full of gravel. I figured I'd need to open it to find out what that was. I was going to just pull off the cap assembly, but I was afraid there might be some residual pressure, so I needed to figure out a way to depressurize the thing.

I decided a pellet gun would do the trick (heh heh heh)

Well, there was no pressure in there at all, but what was in there was very surprising. Charcoal. Hmmm? Anyone here in the liquified gas industry can explain what that would be for?

Oh, and the cap was a rather ingenius balanced regulator made of plastic to maintain the proper pressure.

All in all, a very clever and useful bit of engineering. Certainly this will have a bigger impact on all of our lives than the Segway personal scooter.

But seriously, why the charcoal?"

So, now I am wondering how the mini-kegs work. Some chemical reaction to make CO2, that leaves charcoal? Some other technology that we need to know?

Moonpile · 05-07-2007, 11:49 PM

That's odd.

The ones I have are just big cans. You prime your beer and fill them up and put a bung in the hole. The bung has an inner part that gets pushed into the keg by the dip tube of the tap. Then it just pushes out beer using CO2.

Nothing exotic to it at all.

I wonder if they're trying to make like the draft cans of Guiness, except in 5L size!

Moon

casebrew · 05-08-2007, 11:07 PM

Somebody on that other forum found the patent info,
<http://www.google.com/patents?id=Bi8JAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&d q=Vlooswijk#PPA3,M1>

Seems the charcoal acts like the diamataceous earth in an acetylene tank- the gas gets "absorbed" into the pores of the charcoal, and so it takes much less pressure to keep it in the coal. Sort of like keeping it a near liquid at only 150 msi (ten atmosheres?) Anyhow, the patent says 40 ml of carbon holds enough co2 to dispense the 5l of beer. Or 4 would do for a corny? Or, sell bigger ones? disposables, or rechargables?

Ain't gas physics fun?

skou · 05-09-2007, 02:05 AM

It isn't DE in an acetylene tank, but the acetone that is soaked into that DE. They used to use cotton balls, instead of DE. Acetylene dissolves into the acetone, and comes out of suspension, when you open the tank valve.

Well, I guess I was somewhat wrong. It is a different porous filler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agamassan

Casebrew, I think you're right about the Co2 being dissolved in the charcoal. Makes sense to me.

steve