ASCO Red Hat Tutorial

I need a tutorial. I want to use a solenoid valve on my fermenter. I have my gylcol chiller, which is designed as a beer line chiller. It chills the glycol and circulates it. Where do I go from here?

Are you sure you want to use a solenoid valve, or do you just want to control a recirculating pump? In a closed system, simply turning the pump off should be adequate for stopping the cooling cycle.

I am not sure. the chiller has a recirc. pump, so I should probably figure out how to control the flow through the pump. This is not my strong suit. I had a set-up before that had the chiller maintaining a glycol reserve in a cooler which I then circulated from using a pump controlled by a rancho controller. But that seemed a little over-kill.

is the chill loop chilling other things along the way ? is that way you want a valve to beable to devert the ferminter ?

this kinda stuff is done alot with hotwater heating systems that have a central boiler

Right now the fermenter is all there is, although I have plans to use it with the second zone of my chiller as well.

Brewpastor said:

I am not sure. the chiller has a recirc. pump, so I should probably figure out how to control the flow through the pump. This is not my strong suit. I had a set-up before that had the chiller maintaining a glycol reserve in a cooler which I then circulated from using a pump controlled by a ranco controller. But that seemed a little over-kill.

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That's basically what I was picturing.

Well, if the King of Overkill says it is good, then who am I not to follow his lead. Besides, I have all the parts.

My brew buddy in NM had a similar setup. He used an ENTIRE chest freezer full of glycol to chill his jacketed conical for lagering.

Yuri_Rage said:

My brew buddy in NM had a similar setup. He used an ENTIRE chest freezer full of glycol to chill his jacketed conical for lagering.

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I have seen that done and had thought that was the way I would go until I was given my glycol chiller. What I don't know is what my thermal load will be and how well the chiller will keep up. It should be just fine, especially for lagering, but I will be interested in the results for chilling. I want to run the glycol through the second zone of my heat exchanger. I have done this before with my glycol chiller but I was not trying for as low a pitching temperature as I will want for my lagers.

My other question now is whether it will be better to pump directly out of my Igloo cooler chiller glycol reservoir through my fermenter and exchanger, or to put a copper coil heat exchanger in the Igloo cooler glycol reservoir and run a chilling loop through the fermenter and exchanger.

I agree that overkill is better, I just have to figure which is the overkill!

What is on the cold side of the exchanger? How are you cooling it?

Yuri_Rage said:

What is on the cold side of the exchanger? How are you cooling it?

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Do you mean the Gycol Chiller? It is an Edwards Packaged Liquid Chiller (originally used as a draft line chiller). It has an internal chiller, heat exchanger, reservoir and circulation pump. It can chill the glycol well below zero and has its own thermo controls tied into its internal reservoir.

I would have that unit pump/recirculate glycol in a large Igloo cooler filled with glycol and that Igloo would be the reservoir I would draw from for cooling both the fermenter and the brewing heat exchanger's second zone. The first zone uses well water.

I am wondering if I pump/recirculate directly out of the Igloo reservoir, or put a copper coil exchanger in the Igloo, connected to a Ranco contolled pump. This would be a seperate glycol loop.

Here is a diagram of what I am talking about:

I think you'll see max efficiency by pumping directly out of the Igloo. A second heat exchanger within the reservoir sounds like a source of inefficiency. Would it be possible to circulate the "warm" glycol through the chiller before returning it to the reservoir?