Homemade glycol chiller

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markwilliambrown

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I'm looking to make a homemade glycol chiller and feeling out ideas for the project right now. I've seen posts in which window AC units are ripped apart and the cooling coils are set in a glycol bath. That strikes me as incredibly inefficient. Wouldn't it be better to build a counterflow system? Copper counterflow wort chillers are readily available. Wouldn't it be possible to charge the interior coil with freon, and run glycol through the outside coil?
Now, copper does have issues with pitting over time if the glycol breaks down, but I don't think at low temperatures this is much of a concern. Perhaps I am wrong.
I would think that the counterflow chiller could be put inside a small cooler and then filled with an expanding foam insulation. A separate, larger cooler could house the glycol and be pumped through the coil. On the out side of the coil, a manifold of actuated valves could control if glycol is sent to the jacketed fermenter. I would imagine that the return line could just go directly in the cooler, as a large enough counterflow chiller would get the glycol pretty cold, pretty quickly and the excess heat added to the the cooler with the glycol in it would be pretty insignificant.
Thoughts?
 
Depends on the capabilities and access to tools, etc. for the brewer.

I personally might be able to dismantle an AC, bend it a bit and place it in a bath of glycol, but I have no possible way of sealing the inside of a counterflow with freon and connecting it to a compressor....
 
Water cooled ice makers use copper, counterflow tube-in-a-tube heat exchangers with refrigerant on one side & water on the other. The ones I've worked on are rather compact and do the job nicely. The draft cooling systems w/glycol I've seen maintain a reservoir of chilled glycol with the evaporator submerged directly in the tank. I suppose the thermal storage give a buffer to reduce compressor cycling rather than on demand directly through a heat exchanger?
 
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