Recycled copper pre-chiller

I just finished my new pre-chiller for use with my IC. I cannabalized an art school project/scuplture for the copper. It's not the most optimized thing in the world, but since I already spent tons of money on the copper tubing and fittings, I thought it was a good idea to use it for something useful. Luckily I had enough 45º elbows to make a decent size pre-chiller. I plan on placing this in a bucket of salty ice water and using it to cool down the water going to my IC to near freezing. I usually do a partial boil of ~3 gallons, so I plan on doing a test with 3 gallons of plain boiling water to see how much faster I can cool the wort. I won't get to do the test for about 3 weeks, so I'll post results then.

Should work!!! Are you going to circulate the water in the pre-chiller's bucket to optimize its cooling effect?

Fargin'-A. That's brilliant. Ugly, but brilliant!

hamiltont said:

Should work!!! Are you going to circulate the water in the pre-chiller's bucket to optimize its cooling effect?

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Yea, I'm going to have to stir both the wort and the water for the pre-chiller. At least with the pre-chiller I can just use the chiller itself to stir the water.

worxman02 said:

Yea, I'm going to have to stir both the wort and the water for the pre-chiller. At least with the pre-chiller I can just use the chiller itself to stir the water.

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Good as GOLD!!!! :rockin:

Someone needs an aquarium pump. I picked up 2 power heads from my local fish shop, screened the intakes, and man do they work great. 20 bucks out the door. Circulates the water great.

StoutFan said:

Someone needs an aquarium pump. I picked up 2 power heads from my local fish shop, screened the intakes, and man do they work great. 20 bucks out the door. Circulates the water great.

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How do you have them set up? Are you using one to circulate the wort around in the kettle? Or just for recirculating the chiller water?

Just for recirculating the chilling water and ice. I use a 20 gallon round trash can and have one by the inlet of warmer water and one at the bottom pointed at the wall to create a circular motion. Works for me.

Gotcha. I think I'll steal the pump from my parents water fountain/feature thing

Should work great. Just tell them your using it for test purposes.

Seems like I've heard that salt water will eat up copper pipes. I don't know if that's true or not, but maybe someone here will know for sure.

But, the chiller looks cool...

Copper Pipe Corrosion

Copper has good resistance to corrosion by all types of freshwater. Corrosion rates of Copper Pipe are from 5 to 25 microm/yr (0.2 to o 1 mpy). Corrosion rates for water saturated with air and carbon dioxide are an order of magnitude greater than those for municipal or distilled water. Copper also has good resistance to corrosion in seawater. Because of its outstanding resistance to fouling by marine organisms, it is wideiy used for sheathing on surfaces exposed to seawater. Copper is sometimes used in seawater piping, but copper pipes are subject to corrosion-erosion where the flow velocity is greater than 0.9 to 1.2 m/s (3 to 4ft/s). These velocities are often attained at changes in copper pipe cross section or flow direction.
From:
copper pipe corrosion
So as long as its not in there for extended periods of time under massive fluid motion, it should be just fine.