Immersion Chiller ( 3 intermeshed Ring design)

Maybe someone can give this tri-fangled device a better name. The chiller is designed on a ribcage chiller and I felt it would look better and most probably work better with the extra coil. I used some .2inch I.D piping a friend gave me, a pipe with a larger I.D would obviously work a lot better.
I chilled 8 gallons wort from 214F to 140F in 3 minutes. I thought that was wow. As I understand the drop to 140F is the most important. So in that range it works fantastically.
After that the drop in temp was 50F every 6 minutes. My water temp was quite warm at 72F so I was unable to cool below that, the flow rate also very low at 0.7gallons per minute. I think I am going to connect a dishwashing pump to the chiller and see what higher flowrate will do.
Used 12.5gallons of water, perfect to use for cleaning.
The overall performance was a little dissapointing @ 37F drop in temperature per minute, but worked wonderfully where it matters most.
Did move the chiller around a lot to encourage flow over the coils.

Wow, I like it!

I wouldn't be surprised if the second half of coil is doing nothing more than restricting your flow rate. The water is probably pretty close to your wort temp by the time it gets half way through so your dishwasher pump idea could help quite a bit if you can get the cooling water through faster.

Have you checked the discharge water temp in relation to the wort? If they are close you definitely need more flow.

pilotdane said:

Have you checked the discharge water temp in relation to the wort? If they are close you definitely need more flow.

Click to expand...

^^ this. If your temp difference is low, you can increase the flow rate and/or use ice to increase the chiller performance. I use a hose connection to get to 100°F and an aquarium pump with ice to get it down to pitching temp. My tap water is over 80°F

Yes the wort temp and discharge temp is very close, I think getting more water through the chiller will definitely help.

What does something like that cost?

I have made up a 2x5gallon drums of salt water (ratio of 1:5) and it's been in a freezer at 5F without freezing. Any ideas how I can use it as a secondry chiller after using the ground water. I hate the salt depost on my equipment. Maybe a permanent immersion chiller in the drums so the salt water need never leave the containers.

Cost me $60. Was a battle keeping the fingers from being pinched, but a very satisfying build.

What you might be missing is that the 3 rings are actually seperate from each other. I joined the 3 x inlets seperately from the 3 x outlets.
I wanted the water to travel the shortest route possible but also spread the chiller effectively so as to minimise hot spots. I will upload a pic of the connections.

I think that if you are drunk enough and you squint enough, it kinda looks like a shamrock, so I guess you could call it a shamrock chiller, which would probably make it great for chilling that next batch of Guinness

Did you make the chiller yourself? I would like to figure that out and try to make myself one that is lower cost than one you would buy. Not necessarily like the one you have though.

Yes 100% homebuild. Unfortunately I did not take pictures during the process but I will be happy to pass on measurements and how I did tips

Ok, so I'm an engineer and am doing this simply by what I see and what I know.

Your pressure drop across that is comparatively very high and your flow will be correspondingly lower. And therein lies your problem. A higher flow of water will result in better efficiency of heat transfer. Unless you're able to increase pressure, and thereby flow, of the water in that compared to one that's only 25' total length then you'll actually be cooling slower.

Soetmelks_Brew said:

Yes 100% homebuild. Unfortunately I did not take pictures during the process but I will be happy to pass on measurements and how I did tips

Click to expand...

I would love a how to. I am very interested.

I'm still liking it. Add a whirlpool to your BK and RDWHAHB.

Here goes the how to.. I was given a length of stainless pipe which I cut in 3 equal lengths app 27.5ft each.
The keg I use as a boil pot has a 12" hole cut out the top so I made my immersion chillers total od once completed to be 10". Wanted it a little smaller so that I could move it around in the pot to whirlpool, should have made it bigger and used the pump and an angled nozzle to get the required whirlpool action.
In order to get the 3 coils to fit within the 10" spec I decided that each coil should be about 6" in diameter. Each coil would need about 1.6ft of piping coming off from the top of the coil and 2.2ft of piping coming from the bottom of the coil and be long enough to be bent over the edge of the pot.
That left me about 23.7ft of pipe.
I had a 6" pipe about 3ft long and wound the chillers pipe around the 6" pipe which I had clamped in a lathe. To do that I had welded a nut onto the 6" pipe and fed the 1.6ft part of the chiller pipe through the welded nut so that it ran along the length of the 6" pipe. This was just to keep the pipe from getting caught onto something while the lathe is turning. Obviously bent the pipe 90° at the nut so that the nut held the chiller pipe in place while the lathe turned. The real trick was convincing 3 mates to play tug of war with the lathe while it was turning slowly . Without them the piping would not have coiled neatly. This went easier than I had anticipated.
I got about 13 coils per pipe which meant that once I stretched them apart and squeezed the 3 coils together the total height of the chiller coils was 10". Unfortunately that meant the chillers coil is about 2" under my 6 gallon level of the brew pot, 50% its holding capacity.
Once the coils had been wound I did not want to pull them open for fear of over opening the coils and having to battle getting them closed up and tight again. So I rather pressed/forced the coils into each other. At the time my kids said I swore and cursed a lot so be warned.
To get the meshed coils evenly spaced over the 10" diameter I knocked in 7 wooden pegs(2"od ) and bound all the coils together with wire.
Before spot welding a few places I bent a few misaligned coils in place.
The 3 pipes coming of the top where joined and the 3 pipes from the bottom where joined. Each group of 3 where welded into a .75" pipe with thread on the end for my couplings.
I think I was very lucky that the pipe was just long enough and that everything came together so well.
Hope the how to do articles explanation is understandable, if there is something unclear I could add more photographs.