Co2 Regulator in fridge

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UNOmar

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I just read this on the morebeer.com website:
Regulators work best at room temperature. If you must use your regulator in the cold it will take up to 4 hours for the adjustment to register. For example: If you are at 10 PSI and you change the pressure to 12 PSI the regulator will move to 14 or 15 PSI over the next 4 hours. Once you have found the correct pressure the regulator will work perfectly fine but it will take some trial and error to get it adjusted.
Is this the case with all regulators or just theirs?
 
I have found this to be the case. I have my tank with the primary regulator, and a dual secondary regulator in my kegerator. When making adjustments I noticed that over time it would overshoot my original setting by about 2-3 psi. I was told by a rep at Micromatic that this is due to the fact that the elastomer that the diaphragm is made of reacts more slowly to a change made by the user to output pressure when it is cold, because when it is cold it is not as pliable. Not a big deal when you get to know how it will react.

B3's claim that a regulator works "better" is a bit misleading. Better is not the proper word. I would say that it will work just as well, only differently. You will just have to take into account that it will be slower to react to changes in output pressure. That just means that you would need to make smaller adjustments until you get to your desired serving pressure.

John
 
They are all about the same. My primary is outside and the secondaries are inside. Any time I adjust the secondaries I check them in 3-4 hours & tweak them as needed.
 
So, it's hard to tell from their description and I just obtained my keggerator and haven't had a chance to play around with it yet. Do the cooler temps cause the regulator to react slower or read differently? If the latter is there any sort of temperature/pressure conversion table?
 
They react slower, which means that sometimes you'll get the impression that they 'read differently'.

For instance, if you set a cold regulator from 3 lbs to 12 lbs you might go back a couple hours later and find that it reads 15 lbs. I've not had that trobule with smaller changes. (10lbs to 11lbs for example).
 
UNOmar said:
So, it's hard to tell from their description and I just obtained my keggerator and haven't had a chance to play around with it yet. Do the cooler temps cause the regulator to react slower or read differently? If the latter is there any sort of temperature/pressure conversion table?

The output pressure will react more slowly to changes made due to the cold, but when it stabilizes 12 psi is 12 psi. The tank pressure however, will change based on the temperature that the tank is sitting at. As long there is liquid in the tank the pressure will stay the same, for a given temperature, until all of the liquid has been vaporized. Once only vapor exists, the pressure will drop rapidly.

CO2 has a direct pressure/temperature relationship that can be seen in the chart below.

CO2_liquid_gas_chart.gif


John
 
Not sure if these answers pertain to changing the regulator setting, or the actual pressure itself. Can someone clarify? If I set the pressure at room temperature, and then put my regulated growler in the fridge, will it dispense at the right pressure right when I take it out?
 
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