Simple Flash Boiler

I have been trying to come up with a simple DIY flash boiler to cut down on the time it takes to heat up water for brewing in the kitchen.
Inspired by another thread I thought what if you made an "immersion heater" and stuck it into a counter top deep fryer. By adjusting the flow pressure of watering entering into the immersion heater you would be able to adjust to the desired output temperatures.

Just a concept at this point
Curious about others input

Cheers
BeerCanuck

To heat up 5 gallons of water from 50*F to boiling requires 7200 BTUs which is just over 2000 watt-hours. So if you have a 1200 watt countertop deep fryer it would take an hour and 45 minutes if you could design it well enough to get 100% efficiency. You would have to reduce the flow rate to around 6 ounces per minute to get it to work.

Only way to speed it up is to have more watts or a gas burner with more BTUs per hour.

Good point Having-A-Homebrew.
After checking on some steam infusion threads using a pressure cooker I figured a deep fryer would be under powered. I like the idea of using cooking oil in a heat exchanger so that evaporation isn't a concern.

Cheers
BeerCanuck

This thing seems kind of interesting.
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Mike

support 9 1500 watt electic watter heater elements in a circle at 45 degree angles to one another... mount an aluminim plat on top and on bottom conneted between one another to transfer heat between the two think aluminum plates... and support the burner so it will hold a 6 gallon stock pot... mount assemablly onto a mettle plat so the heat transfers properly and doesnt start your floor or back yard on fire... then attack a ring of aluminum rods around or thin strips or a solid rim that would be about half way up your brew pot (will increase heat transfer)... that will be 13.5 KW burner, and get you decent heat transfer efficenty... say 85%??? so 11kw... or just short of 40,000 BTUH??? that should boil your water in about 15 minutes... you could control tempature by using seprate toggle switchs to turn one or off/on individual burners. Have a main disconect for total power feed... only problem with this is that youd need a well over 120amp circut 220 to run the damn thing and each burner would cost 20-30 dallors and the aluminum will cost a pretty peeny... youll also need to weld to assemble it... so this isnt simple....

heres a better idea Take an old water heater burner setup, mount it on a grill stand, cover it with a salvaged aluminum water heating plate in the upper part of the flames... you'll need to use Natral gas but that will give you a 40,000 BTU burner with about 70% efficenty, say 28,000 BTUH... that will take longer but will be easier and cheaper to run... using propane will cut that in half and take twice as long and youll get a soot build up on the bottom of the plate and get worse heat transfer... Simply change the oriface with a larger one (or simply drill it out a little bit) and that will increase your burrner output and thus youll boil faster.... thats the best i can think of...

It's easy, just hang some copper tubing over a large flame and run water thru it.

My flash boiler

FSR402 said:

It's easy, just hang some copper tubing over a large flame and run water thru it.

My flash boiler

Click to expand...

This is also a good idea

Cheers

Needs a relief valve

I've lurked these forums for a while and joined for this thread.

When I order my soft copper tubing it comes in a spiral shape and I have a big KAB6 burner. Why not just pull the inner end up for your in water, attach a valve to the outer end for out with a valve? Maybe build some kind of ceramic enclosing to trap the heat in.

I'm sure there's something I must be missing because ya'll would of thought of that before cutting up a keg or blistering your hands but, I went to college to be an engineer and graduated a philosopher so I don't know.

You can also use chimney vent rather than a keg. You want something to focus the energy from the flame for maximum contact time and concentration hence the vertical tube see GreenMonti's post as well
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/flash-boiler-153116/
I think I want to make one too, but somewhere closer to FSR42's but maybe borrow some ideas from GreenMonti.

Having-A-Homebrew said:

Needs a relief valve

Click to expand...

Why does it need a relief valve? There is zero pressure in the system.

Bendavaza:
My idea was to lay the spirals coils right on my large burner and then build a radiant insulated box to enclose the coils and heat. It would seems in my naive minds eye this would give the water and copper maximum exposure to the flame and not let the heat escape.

GreenMonti:
Not a pressure relief valve, I may have mistyped. I mean just a regular valve to control water flow in.

I know I'm going to wind up building one of these, the idea of an infinite HLT it too tempting. I think I know a good way to make a 55 gal mash tun then my brew pot is my only limiter for a 1 bbl system.

Sorry if I misspelled your names, it's from memory.

Well I guess the best way to find out is to try it and tell us how it works out. I'd be curious, too as I have the same large burner and I could just slide something like you're describing into place when needed, since my bk hangs over the burner rather than resting on it.

If you want to do the flash boiler the vertical chimney method is the main method used for steam, the up flow allows air to seperate and not block flow in multitube designs. If just hot water you might try an copper tubed oil cooler over the burner and enclose that in a box to retain hot gasses. The brazed connections would have been done with Phos-copper filler as it is the cheapest available and is used in domestic water applications. The finned coil approach would be a direct copy of the "RayPak" boilers and the instant tankless water heaters out there, the only difference is the others have copper fins instead of aluminum fins for durability.