Boiling with a FB

I started this thread cause I didn't want things to get too far off track on the calandria build.(MK-I) This is just kinda a sharing of experiences with the quest I have been on to build my new brewing system.

Today, I ran the boiler with a recirculating system for the condensate and boiler feed. Still an unpressurized setup like before. I am just feeding the boiler with the spent hot water. This makes a huge difference in fuel consumption. Much more then I thought it would. Once my water tank was up around 200* I was able to run the boiler at what I believe is half fire. Once the brewery is setup I figure if I let the boiler generate steam the entire mash schedule, I could just divert the unwanted steam from the mash to the water tank for preheating. During the mash, the boiler will be running at a very low rate of fire, so I would actually be saving more fuel this way. Anyway I starting to ramble. Lets get to the info.

I started the total system from a cold start. All the water was at 54*. The kettle had 14 gallons in it this time. The new coil shroud made some big changes. What I did was limit the flow into the shroud so the contact time was increased. The coils require a 6" diameter tube to fit inside of. I tack welded on a bottom plate and made a hole for the coils to pass through. I then drilled eight 1/8" holes for the flow. I took the temp reading inside of the cylinder where the coils were at and also read the kettle temp.



....................................inside the cylinder............kettle temp
Starting temp 54*
5 mins in..............................130*...........................54*
10 mins in..............................165*...........................62*
15 mins in..............................185*............................90*
20 min in...............................196*...........................124*
25 mins in..............................207*...........................157*
30 mins in...........................212-213*........................180* Tons of little bubbles
32 mins in..............................213*............................186* Pushing water upward
33 mins in...........................213-214*........................190*
34 mins in...........................214-215*........................194*
35 mins in...........................214-215*.........................200* Pushing water upward more hard
38 mins in.............................215*............................206* Light boil
40 mins in.............................215*............................208* Gentle boil
42 mins in.............................216*............................208* Full boil
The water tank was now at 160*, with a full on flame.
When the water tank reached about 180* I had to turn down the fire to keep pressure down in the boiler. When the water tank hit 195* I turned down the fire more, to 1 1/2" turns open on the regulator. Again it was building pressure. Now I have to run my fire at a solid 2 turns open when direct firing my kettle and doing a 6 gallon run. This things was boiling 14 gallons baby.

I'll be right back for a couple of pics and a video or two.

This gives you an idea of how tall the coils are next to the cylinder


A closer shot of the coils.


The bottom of the coils


The coils inside the cylinder.


The connection on the bottom.


A view inside the cylinder. Trying to show the small holes for flow.

This is how the water tank started out. I raised the water level, you will see that in one of the videos.


A shot of the setup.


I put a flow gauge on the boiler.


A couple minuets into the run. This puppy was full.

Since I can't seem to post mutiple videos in one post they will be in seperate posts.

First one. This was at the 45-50 mins in mark.
http://s385.photobucket.com/albums/oo300/pentair/?action=view&current=P1010007.flv

This is after turning down the fire a bit. Pretty much the same stuff as the first video just all kettle action.
http://s385.photobucket.com/albums/oo300/pentair/?action=view&current=P1010008.flv

This is after taming the beast and getting the boil down to a pretty good level. I think this is a good boil. This is only running at half fire. At this rate I decided to add water to the kettle cause it had been boiling for an hour now. I lost a little over 2 gallons during that hour. When I added the cold water to the kettle I just about lost the boil. I did nothing to the fire rate as I wanted too see how fast it would recover. By the time I shut off the hose and turned back around it was starting to roll. About a minuet, minuet and a half it was back to a rocking boil. Here is that boil.


Edit: sorry for the noise. My pump got a little loud when the water tank got up to 190-200*

http://s385.photobucket.com/albums/oo300/pentair/?action=view&current=P1010010.flv

If you are using propane, would you mind weighing your tank before and after? Nice to know the energy going into the system. Thanks.

Very impressive, by the way. Those are some tight coils.

There are several threads running on this thing...

Very nice craftsmanship BTW.

I took information on burner pressures, BTU output, heating times etc... and came up with a breakdown in another thread that went as far as total BTUs used to boil for an hour with a 1.5 gal/hr boil off rate. All based on Monti's numbers, pressures and BTU calculations.

Based on the turns on the regulator, he was using about 75,000 - 80,000 BTUs while reaching the boil per another thread where he posted those numbers.

The volume and heating times above show a transfer of about 27,000 BTUs (36% eff.)

This is a marked gain over a direct fired kettle with no special shroud.

If the burner eff. was linear, then it would take about 34,000 BTUs from the burner to create the 12,000+ BTUs to achieve a 1.5 gal/hr boil off rate. Total BTU useage would have been about 89,000 BTUs to reach a boil and boil off 1.5 gallons.

This is based on Monti's BTU/pressure numbers in another thread, and the heating time and volume from this thread. Though weighing the tank before and after would certainly be more concrete than just using the math, that will take into account all of the variables.

This kind of makes me want to build a steam generator with electric elements. Relief valve, moisture seperator, condensate pump... hmm...

passedpawn said:

If you are using propane, would you mind weighing your tank before and after? Nice to know the energy going into the system. Thanks.

Very impressive, by the way. Those are some tight coils.

Click to expand...

If you have the means to weigh the tank to a fraction of a pound, just run a quick 10 minute test at your normal burn rate. Water temps, etc, don't matter for this test. If I know the exact time duration, and the before & after weights of the tank, I can precisely determine the BTU/hr blowing out of the burner. You've seen the simple equation I posted before probably, but just post the numbers here and I'll do it (or, likely, quick willy will beat me to it).

passedpawn said:

If you have the means to weigh the tank to a fraction of a pound, just run a quick 10 minute test at your normal burn rate. Water temps, etc, don't matter for this test. If I know the exact time duration, and the before & after weights of the tank, I can precisely determine the BTU/hr blowing out of the burner. You've seen the simple equation I posted before probably, but just post the numbers here and I'll do it (or, likely, quick willy will beat me to it).

Click to expand...

I can't weigh the tank to any great accuracy. I did a burn test at the boiling firing rate. I weighed the before, during and after the burn. I burned it for 1 hour just like I would if I was using it. I wanted to see the cooling on the tank. What I came up with was a usage of 1 pound of propane for the entire hour. I now need to get numbers on the heating time to know that usage rate. My copper coils do a much better job them my poorly built calandria. I do need to run the copper coils again though, and use the heat recovery coil I made. It helps out for sure. I ran that coil on the calandria and was able to boil at the same firing rate as the copper coils. A very good thing. I know I have a lot of info out there on this, it gets confusing as to what I have done. Sorry about that.

I don't know what temperature steam you have there.

I do know from personal experiences related to me by guys who did the work: that on old battleships which used superheated steam they would search for leaks in the pipes with brooms. They'd pass the brooms across suspect areas and when the invisible superheated steam hit the broom it sliced the straws off neat as you please.

Just sayin.

Cliff897 said:

I don't know what temperature steam you have there.

I do know from personal experiences related to me by guys who did the work: that on old battleships which used superheated steam they would search for leaks in the pipes with brooms. They'd pass the brooms across suspect areas and when the invisible superheated steam hit the broom it sliced the straws off neat as you please.

Just sayin.

Click to expand...

That gave me chills!

Cliff897 said:

I don't know what temperature steam you have there.

I do know from personal experiences related to me by guys who did the work: that on old battleships which used superheated steam they would search for leaks in the pipes with brooms. They'd pass the brooms across suspect areas and when the invisible superheated steam hit the broom it sliced the straws off neat as you please.

Just sayin.

Click to expand...

I am quite sure the pressures they were running was a heck of a lot higher then mine. I am in no way trying to lessen the danger of steam in any way shape or form. It does give as Kladue would say "A sphincter puckering" awaking.

When I am generating the superheated steam my system is running at 0 PSIG. It isn't till I start the boiling process that I get pressure in the system. Then I keep it "low" at 5-6 PSIG.

I can tell you that the steam power plant I stood engineroom watch in (for over four years) ran on saturated steam ... but it was in the neighborhood of 400 psia - and ran most effectively under water.

diatonic said:

I can tell you that the steam power plant I stood engineroom watch in (for over four years) ran on saturated steam ... but it was in the neighborhood of 400 psia - and ran most effectively under water.

Click to expand...

I am glad I am running PSIG and not PSIA.

Woop Woop! Very nice stuff. I'm still lurking and watching the science in action here. You go boy!

I dont miss the power plants where the steam is 2K Psi and 1,000 degrees at the throttle of the turbine, or working with 750 psi natural gas in compressor stations. GreenMonti, I was contemplating the possibility of a spiral coil arrangement for 3 - 1/2" copper tubes in a 3" inner diameter to 11.5" outer diameter that would allow one to do 5 gallon batches in a 1/2 barrel keg. I need to do a bit of calculating for surface area, and then see if it can be fabricated from hard drawn tubing with inside start of coil 4" above end of coils for condensate flow. The design I might try will have 3 tubes in a vertical ribbon spiral to assist thermosiphon flow.

kladue said:

I dont miss the power plants where the steam is 2K Psi and 1,000 degrees at the throttle of the turbine, or working with 750 psi natural gas in compressor stations. GreenMonti, I was contemplating the possibility of a spiral coil arrangement for 3 - 1/2" copper tubes in a 3" inner diameter to 11.5" outer diameter that would allow one to do 5 gallon batches in a 1/2 barrel keg. I need to do a bit of calculating for surface area, and then see if it can be fabricated from hard drawn tubing with inside start of coil 4" above end of coils for condensate flow. The design I might try will have 3 tubes in a vertical ribbon spiral to assist thermosiphon flow.

Click to expand...

The coil setup I have now will facilitate a 5 gallon run. Unless I am mistaken. I do believe it will though. In a 5 gallon situation, I don't think the outer shroud is needed. I wonder, just how fast a 5 gallon run could be brought to a boil with the recovery coil in place?

Things happen crazy fast when the water tank is at temp. At least on the high side that is.

Maybe this was mentioned before to me somewhere. I can't recall though. My most recent thought on using the FB to do my boiling....Why can't I mount the boiler directly under my kettle?

Seems like a great idea. My exhaust gasses are about 250-300 degrees from what I can measure. That is at 6.5 PSI for the firing rate. I would not be able to capitalize on all the exhaust heat but, I would gain some from it. This would allow for heating my kettle while I was making the sparge water. So my run off would be getting heat input. If anything, I think it might act as if there was insulation wrapped around it. The only down side I see is when I will be making the strike water or the steam for the mash. My kettle will be dry at those times. But if I am only hitting it with about 300 degrees, it should handle that no problem right? I guess I could build a removable heat shield for those times. Like a tray and just slide it out.

Any thoughts?


Also this is a shot of the last condenser I made to use instead of the coils. I used the cone from my Keg tool to pull the copper like that. I soldered it from the inside so the depression would be full and the solder could make its way through the joint. I also trimmed off about half the length of the end caps. I don't need the soldering surface area to be that large.

I placed the boiler under my kettle and gave it a run. It just didn't work out like I thought it would. It developed a lot of condensate on the underside of the kettle and that dripped into the boiler, but I didn't see any real gains. I can't see the condensate being a problem in a real run, since the run off will already be about 160* the kettle wont be cold. Oh well.

Hey GM, a lot of the pics in this valuable thread are missing due to Photobucket expiration. Can these be updated to a HBT album ?

LooyvilleLarry said:

Hey GM, a lot of the pics in this valuable thread are missing due to Photobucket expiration. Can these be updated to a HBT album ?

Click to expand...

Your not kidding.

Looks like when my account went bad it messed up a whole lot of stuff on the re-load. For crying out loud I have pics of a reef tank in here.

Unfortunately, when I lost that data I lost it. I don't have the pics anymore. I guess this one needs to be deleted or just dismissed.


Sorry all.

Hmmm, I'm looking at those pics above and it looks like you have corallimorphs growing in your fermenter. That's a new one!