Running cold Refrigeration through Immerson chiller

My uncle is in the COLD air business. He suggested to me he could build me a machine that could run cold refrigerant through the immerson chiller. My question have this been done before. How safe is it? He assured me that there is no leaking from his system and no ice or condensation would get into the wort. Any suggestion from the forum?

Seems sketchy, i could see it working but at what cost? Going from 15 minute chills to 10 minute chills?

as long as there are no leaks, and it's in a sealed refrigerant system, it could turn a 40 minute chill into 10 minutes. fuzze: note he is is fla, so that means hot ground water. i'm in texas.. i can relate

Youre likely to get a lot of condensation on the chiller coil that will drop into the beer

Gartywood said:

Youre likely to get a lot of condensation on the chiller coil that will drop into the beer

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as long as the chiller is sanitized, shouldn't be a problem

There is no cost since he is building it from spare part. According to him copper or SS will work with his machine. Yes South floria water could be extremely hot at time.

The real issue here is superheat, you will not be able to cool the compressor. When your wort is near boil temp and you start your refrigeration system your suction (evap pressure) will blow the valves out of the compressor. If you are going to go ahead and try it video your adventure from at least 10' back.

grendle77 said:

The real issue here is superheat, you will not be able to cool the compressor. When your wort is near boil temp and you start your refrigeration system your suction (evap pressure) will blow the valves out of the compressor. If you are going to go ahead and try it video your adventure from at least 10' back.

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I believe he will run it as a chilled water system otherwise....Youtube "Hey watch this" +1

Can you not use a traditional Immersion chiller to cool the wort to 110, discharging the water out of the system, then switch to the refrigerant?

I agree with grendle77, unless he builds a really, really big set up with a very large compressor and a huge radiator with a large fan blowing on it, you're likely not going to get very far. A typical refrigerator or air conditioner compressor is not designed to handle that much heat. Its a lot easier to cool air then it is to cool water and even the biggest industrial size air conditioners aren't designed to pull temps from 212 to 70 degrees (especially not that quickly)

Would love to see a video of someone trying though. Who knows, maybe we're wrong.

beaksnbeer said:

I believe he will run it as a chilled water system otherwise....Youtube "Hey watch this" +1

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I hope this is the plan.

http://forums.morebeer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=27957

Anything's possible with enough coolant. A plant I used to work with makes American cheese slices. We use a "chill roll" to cool them. Hot cheese (180-190F) gets metered onto a 4' diameter stainless cylinder flooded with glycol (which is cooled using an ammonia refrigeration system). As the drum makes 3/4 of a revolution (in 8-10 seconds), the cheese gets to about 40F, and knives/scrapers take it off as ribbons to go to slice/wrap machines.

grendle77 said:

The real issue here is superheat, you will not be able to cool the compressor. When your wort is near boil temp and you start your refrigeration system your suction (evap pressure) will blow the valves out of the compressor. If you are going to go ahead and try it video your adventure from at least 10' back.

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If the Evap coil is in direct contact with the wort, very yes.

beaksnbeer said:

I believe he will run it as a chilled water system otherwise....Youtube "Hey watch this" +1

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Exactly, what I was thinking. I've seen this once before. I think in a different spot than the board post linked below.

Hex said:

http://forums.morebeer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=27957

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This will work. BTUs are your friend. You are essentially creating your own very cold water supply. It's like brewing with winter ground water year round.

"The real issue here is superheat, you will not be able to cool the compressor. When your wort is near boil temp and you start your refrigeration system your suction (evap pressure) will blow the valves out of the compressor. If you are going to go ahead and try it video your adventure from at least 10' back."

The above statement isn't necessarily true. If his uncle is into refrigeration and knows his stuff. He will install a back pressure regulator. Maybe a pressure limiting TXV, maybe a suction accumulator and oil seperator. Then, maybe he will liquid inject the compressor using a de-superheating expansion valve to cool the heads. However, if the guy is an appliance repair type guy. Using a condensing unit gutted out of the family Maytag or the lettuce cooler in Taco Bell. Then, hooks a copper coil to it. Then yes, I'd say you are quite correct...Not only can the valves be damaged. Much worse, the fusite can blow out of the side of the compressor, catching the oil on fire. Burning down the house. It's best to stay away from Rube Goldberg designs..... Like the one on More Beer. It's evident that the guy has absolutely no knowledge of refrigeration. Except, that when he opens the refrigerator, the kids orange juice is cold.

I find running water through a traditional Immerson Chiller is such a waste of water. Plus city water is pretty hot in SFL. The machine he is building for me is a super freezer type. This type of machine is use to freeze 3-4 inch pipe so they can do repair on the line without shutting down main water source. WIll post Vid or pictures once it is built. Stay tune. thank you for all your input.

Trub wow a suction side accumulator is a tank to prevent flood back to the compressor, an issue for low temp freezer and Super market Rac system not this dream. A TXV pressure limit head, limits the pressures related to temp of suction line temp to prevent floodback on start up or after a defrost cycle, it slows the flow of refrigerant to the evap coil to make sure it does not flood and boils off. The rest for your post is never going to happen.

I just did some back of the envelope calculations, and 5 gallons of 1.08 SG wort requires 6500-7000 Btu to cool from 212 to 65F. Doing that in 15 minutes would require a 28,000 Btu/hr refrigeration system with perfect efficiency. An AC unit of that size is $800 or so, and needs 240V/20-30 amp service.

A smaller unit could do it with a bigger reservoir of coolant, but you lose the ability to cool continuously. For example, if you went with a half-sized refrigeration system, and allow a 25-degree rise in your coolant (15-40F) at the end of 15 minutes (versus a 150-degree drop in wort) you'd need a 30 gallon coolant reservoir.