Recycling co2

Has anyone tried to recycle the CO2 produced in fermentation to dispense the beer from a keg?
Here are my thoughts;

Put a plastic bag in a carboy.

Run a line from the fermenter to inflate the bag in the carboy.

As the bag inflates it displaces the air in the carboy.

Use a plug for the carboy that has 2 holes tightly secured.

2 tubes in the plug. One attatched to the bag the other to a water supply.

As you put water to the carboy the CO2 is forced out of the carboy to the keg dispensing the beer.

Any thoughts?

Pressure will work against you in all manner of areas.

You'd need an enourmous amount of CO2.

CO2 is recycled by the big boys.
Here is a CO@ scrubber in the Point Brewery (on the smallest side of the big boys).

Couple thoughts:

I doubt the CO2 is clean (at least clean enough to be comfortable dispensing beer with.

I doubt you'd be able to collect enough CO2 to be able to do any dispnesing because I don't think you'd be wouldn't be able to get a high enough pressure in the keg.

If you weren't on top of releasing built up CO2 from the other fermentor, the fermentation in your primary might be retarded by CO2 pressure that is too high.

Teedocious said:

I doubt the CO2 is clean (at least clean enough to be comfortable dispensing beer with.

Click to expand...

Exactly.
Hence the need for a scrubber by the Commercials.

A carboy cannot handle pressure.

I recycle my CO2 two ways: first, I have a gadget that lets me connect a keg to the water line. When I pull the empty soda water keg out of the kegger, it has 30 psi of CO2 in it. This gets absorbed as the main pressure forces water into the empty keg.

Second, I use floaters to force cleaning solution through tubing, faucets, etc. I have a short hose with two gas connectors & connect the floater to a keg of solution.

Ain't being cheap, it's 40 miles to the welding shop and they aren't open on weekends.

david_42, in the first case, you are talking about soda water right? No need to clean the keg every time like you would a beer keg. Just want to make sure I understood you.

I don't understand the bit about floaters. Can you elucidate?

http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=7848

I hope you enjoy reading, lol.

Good read! What got me thinking here was not so much highly compressed co2but a replacement for air. As if used with something like a beer engine . Would it not be better to inject saved co2 from fermentation back into the brew rather than air. to serve the beer?

Wort*hog said:

Good read! What got me thinking here was not so much highly compressed co2but a replacement for air. As if used with something like a beer engine . Would it not be better to inject saved co2 from fermentation back into the brew rather than air. to serve the beer?

Click to expand...

Teedocius makes a good point above. Commercial brewers scrub the gas from their fermentation to extract only CO2. Re-introducing the possibly sour smelling gas from fermentation without that process wouldn't be the best of ideas.

CO2 is cheap and readily available. Although it's a novel idea to recycle, it's probably not the way to go for homebrewing.