Wort chiller design

I've been designing a wort chiller in my head for a while now (finally switched to 5 gallon boils). I had one of those "eureka" moments this afternoon and have been trying to blow holes in this design for the last couple hours. I was wondering if anyone else would mind taking a look?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14682795@N02/2730053298/

(sorry, not sure how to post pictures from flickr)

Basically, it will siphon the wort from the brew pot and run it through a (copper/aluminum) coil that is sitting in a 0C ice water slurry. The slurry will most likely be in an old cooler I can modify a bit. From here, it continues to siphon right into the primary fermenter.

I figure it eliminates the need to be near a sink. I've been trying to move outside so I don't stink up the apartment anymore.

It wouldn't be that hard to sanitize either, just need to siphon some sanitizer through it and hit the two ends.

I still need to figure out the length of coil and material to get it to come out at around the right temp. That shouldn't be too hard once I find my old thermo books.

The water would most likely heat up really quickly. Any heat you take out of the wort is going straight into that water.

ExpertBrewers said:

The water would most likely heat up really quickly. Any heat you take out of the wort is going straight into that water.

Click to expand...

Damn...works out to about 45 pounds of ice. Going by the differences in heat of fusion (333J/g) and heat capacity of water (4.18J/g*degreeC) I didn't think that would have been an issue. Those pesky laws of thermodynamics are a pain.

We used a somewhat similar design to cool keg beer at one of my jobs. 8 pounds of ice was generally enough for at least 1 keg. Guess the temperature change wasn't nearly as large in that case though.

Around here, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

I don't believe that by making one pass through your chiller the end result will be 75*. I hook a hose up to my chiller to take it down to 100*, and then switch it over to a large tub of ice water with a pond pump that gets it to 75*. Whole process takes about 15-20 minutes with the water re-cycling through the chiller. With it only making one pass and then into your carboy, the wort is still going to be hot.

Do you have the equipment to give this a try? I have been thinking along these same lines of design and would be interested if your idea works.


Your design is not much different from this one:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=73315

The main difference is the counter-flow sleeve.

I say give a try and report back.