Water pump and ice water to chill

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brbecker87

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I had an idea the other day and wanted to run it by you guys to see how feasible it would be. I have an old outdoor water fountain pump that you submerge in a pond to pump water into a fountain. I was wondering if it would theoretically be possible to submerge the pump in a bucket of ice water, run the water into my immersion chiller, and the outlet back into the ice water bucket? Would this work? Would it be worth it? Theoretically this would only use roughly 5 gallons of water to chill 108F wort to 70F for pitching. I know I would need to chill it down to that point to begin with, but this seems a more efficient and quicker way to go from 108 down to 70.

I'm going off of the assumption that I would need 5 gallons of ice water (at 32F) to cool 5 gallons of wort from 108F to 70F? As in I take temp of wort and temp of ice water and average them to get the lowest temp I could get without adding more ice. Somebody please check my calculations and understanding of basic chemistry/physics on this one.
 
a ton of people do this, and yes, it works quite well. the trick is to cool it down to about 100 or below with ground water (takes me about 8-10 min) and then switch over to the submersible pump with the ice water. depending on ambient temp and what kind of wort temp you're going for, 1-2 20lb bags of ice are normally good.

edit: take a look at this thread, it has the whole thing mapped out.
 
I'm sure it would work, but will it really be quicker for you? your assumption works if you're sending the water from the ice bucket through the chiller and then down the drain. If you recycle the water, you'll start getting progressively lower heat transfer due to the warming of the ice water.
 
a ton of people do this, and yes, it works quite well. the trick is to cool it down to about 100 or below with ground water (takes me about 8-10 min) and then switch over to the submersible pump with the ice water. depending on ambient temp and what kind of wort temp you're going for, 1-2 20lb bags of ice are normally good.

edit: take a look at this thread, it has the whole thing mapped out.


Yah cool the water a bit first before you start to recirculate. The initial hot water will melt all the ice your pump is in and make that water hot as it recirculates which means you have to change out your water with more cold water and more Ice. I know this from experience :) But yes, Ice water works great. :mug:
 
a ton of people do this, and yes, it works quite well. the trick is to cool it down to about 100 or below with ground water (takes me about 8-10 min) and then switch over to the submersible pump with the ice water. depending on ambient temp and what kind of wort temp you're going for, 1-2 20lb bags of ice are normally good.

edit: take a look at this thread, it has the whole thing mapped out.

I also use this method, I use 40lb of ice in a cooler and a pond pump, I use the ice water to do all of the chilling and recirculate once I reach 85-90°, but I have to top up the cooler with fresh water from the fridge since my summer tap water is usually over 100°.
 
I drain my wort through a 20' coil of copper tubing housed inside a bucket of ice water. I chill a couple gallons of water in the fridge, and use it with two 10# bags of ice for a 5 gal batch, and four 10# bags for a 10 gal batch. I can chill from a boil to 70F in the time it takes to drain into the fermenter (~15-30min depending on batch size). I started doing it this way because immersion or counterflow chillers don't work very well here in the summer when the "cold" tap water is close to 100F.
 
How does the efficiency of the pump submerged in ice water compare to a ~20ft copper pre-chiller submerged in ice water? Anyone actually test the difference?
 
On my last brew I decided not to buy blocks of ice and recirculate. I just filled my mash tun with cold tap water and sent it through my IC. Instead of sending it back to the mash tun I used the hot water and filled my empty kegs and fermenters and used the hot water for cleaning. It worked like a charm. I do not even think it took any longer then when I used ice. Probably because I was not dumping hot water over top of the ice.

I use a Shurflo 12v pump for the task. A pond pump should work good maybe even better because it is a continuous flow pump.
 
I have tried a 390gph, 310gph, 225gph, 170gph and 120gph, I have found the best results are between the 170gph and 225gph pump, the others moved more water than could effectively transfer the heat, or simply moved too little water. Keep in mind that this works well for me on my rig, with my IC, and in my climate, and may not work well for you.
Get a couple fountain pumps from Harbor freight and try them out, then build SWMBO a garden fountain with the rejects.
 
I think pumping ice water (with a decent pump) is more effective than pre chillers.
I recirculate once the wort is at 100 or lower. My waste water at higher temps is used for cleaning.
 
How does the efficiency of the pump submerged in ice water compare to a ~20ft copper pre-chiller submerged in ice water? Anyone actually test the difference?

I've tried both, and my experience has been that running the wort through the copper is slightly more effective, but it's close either way. I use this method mostly because it's way faster and easier. I shake the coils as the wort drains through, which increases the effectiveness a lot. The downside is that it's more difficult to precisely control the temperature, but I still do have some control by regulating the flow rate.
 
I've tried both, and my experience has been that running the wort through the copper is slightly more effective, but it's close either way. I use this method mostly because it's way faster and easier. I shake the coils as the wort drains through, which increases the effectiveness a lot. The downside is that it's more difficult to precisely control the temperature, but I still do have some control by regulating the flow rate.

I think you misunderstood me. I don't mean running the wort through a copper chiller. I meant essentially having two copper chillers running inline, the first being submerged in ice water to cool down the water coming out of the faucet before if goes through the chiller in the wort.
 
Thanks for the info. I thought this was probably fairly common practice. Sadly, said pump was thrown away last week without me knowing. So I should find a pump that does about 200gpm (according to Azscoob)? Any problems with pressure on the IC? On mine the inlet and outlet hoses are only held on by friction and, i think they're called, pipe clamps (those stainless bands you use a screwdriver to tighten). Any problems with the pump running at such cold temps?
 
Works great for me, but I use a cfc. When I was using a IC there was a marked improvement pumping ice water through the system.
Here is what I do to cool the chill water in order to recirc. it can chill 10 gal of wort with 40lbs of ice and 3 gal of water at roughly a gal per minute.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/integrated-cfc-chiller-waste-water-cooling-155985/

Allow me to apologize in advance, some how this turned into a small dissertation.

If you want to improve your chilling here are some things to consider to determine where a change would be best made.

Over all there are 3 major factors regarding cooling.
1. Temp Delta between wort and chill water.
2. The rate of volume of Chill Water being push through the HEX (IC or CFC, they are both heat exchangers.
3. The efficiency of the HEX, read tube diameter and length.


By using ice water you are addressing the first factor.

Depending on the temperature of the chill water output you can determine whether your flow rate is optimal. In the beginning when the wort is at it's hottest is when you will be pushing the most volume through the chiller. As the wort gets closer to pitching temps is when the flow rate of the chill water will be at it's slowest. The ideal rate for a given HEX is to push just enough volume to keep the chill water output just under the temp of the wort.

Which leads to HEX efficiency. Efficiency isn't simply the amount of surface area and this is one of those cases where more is not always better. The key is the surface area of the tubing divided by the volume of chill water it can hold.. square inches per gallon if you will. The higher that number the more effectively the HEX will heat the chill water.
So the smaller the pipe diameter the better in this regard. The problem with a smaller pipe diameter is it restricts flow. So you either have to build a chiller with multiple circuits of really skinny tubing running in parallel, or find a happy medium of a single diameter and length.

So by increasing one of those three you will have better performance, to a point.

Colder water is good if you haven't hit the peak efficiency of your HEX at a given flow rate. You will conserve water though by reducing the flow slow enough so that it comes out roughly the same temp as the wort.

Faster Flow is better if the chill water exiting the system is the same temp or very close to the wort temp.

Better HEX efficiency and size will allow you to pump more and colder water through the system.
 
Thanks for the info. I thought this was probably fairly common practice. Sadly, said pump was thrown away last week without me knowing. So I should find a pump that does about 200gpm (according to Azscoob)? Any problems with pressure on the IC? On mine the inlet and outlet hoses are only held on by friction and, i think they're called, pipe clamps (those stainless bands you use a screwdriver to tighten). Any problems with the pump running at such cold temps?

My pump has been working great submerged in ice water for about a year now, I have hose clamps like you describe on my lines and havent had a problem thus far. the pressure isnt high enough to blow a line off, but I wouldnt want to take a chance. With my setup the water coming out is indeed about the wort temp, a bigger pump resulted in almost cool water coming out, and the small one took forever to chill.
 
I have found that using a smaller diameter tubing works really well. I am using a 170gph shurflo classic pump with 1/4" copper tubing. It works great. It seems to cool ten gallons down in a very reasonable time period.
 
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