Single Heat Exchanger for Heat and cooling

I am in the middle of designing my new brewery. I am sizing everything to be able to do 15 gallon batches. I like the idea of a HERMES setup but Having a dedicated HERMES for heating the mash and a separate wort chiller seems redundant to me, they are both heat exchangers just using different working fluid sources for heating and cooling. So my idea is to use a single heat exchanger for both heating and cooling of wort. In the heating phase wort would be pumped from the mash turn through the heat exchanger and hat water from the HLT would be used as the working fluid to heat the mash similar to a HERMES. After the Boil valves would be switched on the working fluid side of the heat exchanger to switch from the HLT supply to cold water for the cooling phase. I am also trying to size the Heat exchanger so i can get a single pass cooling to fermentation temp so i can just pump wort from the boil through the heat exchanger into my fermenter. This is the Heat exchanger I am looking at using. It's original use is for solar heating swimming pools and is rated for 155k btu so i think it would do a hell of a job on a 15 gallon batch

http://www.nlsolarheating.com/solar-pool-heat-exchanger-stainless-steel-sp155k-p-8.html

any thoughts on this heat exchanger or on what i plan to do???

any thoughts??? I am really excited about my heat exchanger find... anyone else???

Not at $750
I used a copper cfc to do double duty for a long time and was very happy with it. It does require 2 pumps though.

wow... i think that is a problem with their website it was listed at 240 yesterday and the 300k BTU (the much larger one) is still listed at 350

http://www.nlsolarheating.com/solar-pool-heat-exchanger-stainless-steel-sp300k-p-9.html

it appears they don't have the 155k stainless one listed anymore only in Titanium and even that one is way less than 750..... i think 750 is a pricing mistake on their part

Similar surface area to a 30 plate chiller from Duda Diesel for under $100.

I'd also worry about a heat exchanger that's not designed for wort (or at the very least, that doesn't have a long history of use by home brewers). Depending on how the thing is sized and spaced, it's possible you'd find it unable to deal with break and hop sludge. It certainly might work, too, but I'd be more inclined to go with something tried and true. What does this offer that the standard plate chillers don't?

I thought about a plate chiller but i have a concern with it clogging during the mash heating phase. Even with a false bottom on my mash ton I would think clogging would be a problem pumping mash through it. Also i think a shell and tube would be allot easier to clean

that plate exchanger you reference has cooling power of 1-5KW while the shell and tube has a rating of 45KW with similar surface area mostly because the shell and tube has a much higher flow rate

Unless my assumption is wrong flow rate of the working fluid has as much to do with the effectiveness of a Heat exchanger as does surface area. for example lets say i can pump 1gpm of wort through a chiller and get an outlet temp of 70 degrees using 2gpm of cold water as the working fluid. Theoretically (at least in my head) doubling the flow rate of the working fluid (cold water) should double the rate at which you can pump the wort through reducing your chilling time in half to 70 degrees. To me this isn't all that important on the chilling side because chilling to 70 in 5 or 10 mins doesn't make all that much difference. But on the mash heating side, for a stepped mash I would want to get to get from 122 to 152 as quickly as possible

ajm163 said:

Unless my assumption is wrong flow rate of the working fluid has as much to do with the effectiveness of a Heat exchanger as does surface area. for example lets say i can pump 1gpm of wort through a chiller and get an outlet temp of 70 degrees using 2gpm of cold water as the working fluid. Theoretically (at least in my head) doubling the flow rate of the working fluid (cold water) should double the rate at which you can pump the wort through reducing your chilling time in half to 70 degrees. To me this isn't all that important on the chilling side because chilling to 70 in 5 or 10 mins doesn't make all that much difference. But on the mash heating side, for a stepped mash I would want to get to get from 122 to 152 as quickly as possible

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Certainly that's true to an extent, but you run into the limitations of the rest of your equipment. If you're cooling from a faucet, you've got a relatively fixed maximum flow rate. Same goes from any liquid being moved with a pump.

Planning a build now that will use a Chillius Convolutus CFC for mash control and chilling. I did look into the shell and tube exchangers for a while though, everything on probrewer is in regards to steam heat, but I did dig up an old thread with some discussion of the design and some DIY:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/high-volume-rapid-chiller-120861/

As far as I can tell, building/buying a copper CFC would be more cost efficient if you are concerned about the clogging issue (which I am as well, since it will be used as a HERMS with an external boiler). But if you do end up going with this, be sure to post the results, you've piqued my interest...

I completely agree. There are always limiting factors. But a March pump can pump at a max of 7.2 gpm so assuming that that is on the wort side even the best 30 plate chiller from DD can only do 2.9gpm on the wort side. so in this case the chiller would be the limiting factor.... For the cold side I am thinking of a closed system a 20-30 gallon plastic water container inside of a fridge and a pump to recirculate through the exchanger so i would not be limited by the faucet flow rate..... same on the heating side but the source for that would be the HLT

ya 240 may seem expensive but the 19.8g HLT i am looking at adding the HERMES coil is almost $200 and then getting a good CFC would be more expensive than this all stainless Heat exchanger that at least on paper seems to be way better

I use my HERMS system to crash cool hot wort but I fill it half way with cold water and drop a 2 large blocks of ice in the water. I make the ice blocks in the freezer using the same can I wrapped the copper around for the HERMS coil. Fits in nicely, cools the beer and when I'm done all I have to do is refill the cans and drop them in the freezer.

Exactly my plan, put a HERMS coil in my HLT for this exact thing. The using a can that sized for the coil to make the ice blocks is a sweet idea I was just thinking of throwing a couple bags of ice in there

gopherh3 said:

I use my HERMS system to crash cool hot wort but I fill it half way with cold water and drop a 2 large blocks of ice in the water. I make the ice blocks in the freezer using the same can I wrapped the copper around for the HERMS coil. Fits in nicely, cools the beer and when I'm done all I have to do is refill the cans and drop them in the freezer.

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