Convoluted chiller won't chill

Hello. I am in need of help. I bought the stainless steel convoluted counter flow chiller from williams brewing and can't get the wort to chill. I have checked for the hookups in counter flow setup about 20 times to make sure. I built a new brewery from keggles and testing all equipment prior to brewing. I thought the "wort" which is now just water should be colder when it comes out. It won't go below 140 to 160 degrees. I tried slowing the rate of water, the rate of "wort", both at same time. I used a immersion chiller as a prechiller in ice bath to make the water going in 48 degrees.

What is the method for cooling. Do I have to recirculate the wort first back in to the kettle for a while before it will chill? Any help. I am new to these kind of chillers. Should I return and just get a regular counter flow chiller?

http://www.williamsbrewing.com/STAINLESS-CONVOLUTED-COUNTERFLOW-CHILLER-P3452C107.aspx

Thanks for any help

Are you positive that you have the wort in/out and water in/out hooked up in the proper configuration?

I don't think counter flow chillers are intended to be once through devices. If it was really long, it could be but for a practical sized chiller the wart should be recirculated continuously until it discharges enough heat to bring the temp down to where you want it.

I've got a counter flow chiller which brings the temp of the wort down to almost the same as the input water in one pass. The key is to have the wort flowing in the opposite direction as the cooling water. The end of the chiller where the wort discharges is where the cooling water enters the chiller. The cooling water exits the chiller at the same end as the entry point for the wort.

I use a counter flow chiller, fed by an immersion chiller which sits in an ice bath. I cool from ~165degrees to 68degs in around 10-15mins. I just slowly drain from the kettle into my carboy, and it works awesome. The water coming out of the tap is only in the sixties, so I have to use the immersion chiller to cool the water further. My CFC is copper and not convoluted, and just a "standard" size. No need to recirculate or anything like that.

Even if your source water isn't super cold, as long as it is flowing in the opposite direction as your hot wort, it should cool it quite rapidly - at least into the 70's.

Drain your kettle slowly, and make sure the cooling water is flowing in the opposite direction (hence the name "counter flow"), and it should work. There's no reason it shouldn't be cooling the wort more. You don't need to recirculate if you are draining the kettle fairly slowly.

srice said:

I've got a counter flow chiller which brings the temp of the wort down to almost the same as the input water in one pass. The key is to have the wort flowing in the opposite direction as the cooling water. The end of the chiller where the wort discharges is where the cooling water enters the chiller. The cooling water exits the chiller at the same end as the entry point for the wort.

Click to expand...

+1

I have the copper convolutus chillius maximus and with 68F water and a fairly slow wort flow rate it will drop the wort down to 70F one time through. If I had 48F chilling water I could go a lot lower, or a lot faster.

That makes me remember though, that when I bought the thing, it came with no instructions about how to attach the fittings and when I looked on the web site (morebeer, I think) they pictured the hookup wrong (in other words, they had the hot wort going in the same side as the cold water, not opposite as it should be, as srice points out). I actually did call them and point this out. Don't know if they've fixed the product photos yet.

Thanks for all the replies. Yes I did check that the cooling water was opposite direction. At least 20 times just to make sure. If the copper one from more beer chillzilis can do it in one pass why can't mine? I didn't think I needed to recirculate but I can if I need to. I might just buy a "standard" counter flow like with the garden hose setup. I just wanted a one pass unit. Right into the carboy. Again thanks.

That's a counterflow chiller and the water direction goes in on the end where the wort comes out. So that the coldest part of the water is hitting the coldest portion of wort.

I have a hand-built CFC and it works fine for gravity, one-pass chilling, but now that I have a pump I recirculate it back into the kettle. If the water is connected properly you should be able to gravity feed it but you will have to throttle the wort flow in order for it to maintain contact long enough to cool the wort down to pitching temp.

The water in tube is a male hose thread fitting on one end

Click to expand...

Having a malt hose thread at the IN end would lend me to believe that you're running the flow in the incorrect direction. I have no idea why they'd put a MALE fitting there as the garden hose end is male, so you'd need a gender changer or some kind of quick connect.

MC

I did have to do a sex change but I got it done. I just put a garden hose adapter with a nipple to fit the hose on.

I Just tried to recirculate and the "wort" went from 210 to 137 in about 5 mins. I don't know if this is good but not to me. I think Ill just have to return this product and find something else. Bummer because I wanted to brew this weekend.

Has anybody tried or heard of this chiller?

http://www.nybrewsupply.com/beer-ho...illers/deluxe-counterflow-wort-chiller-1.html

http://www.nybrewsupply.com/beer-ho...chillers/deluxe-counterflow-wort-chiller.html

It sounds as though you are just not properly regulating the flow of the wort in. The cold water should be running full but when your water source is say 70F then you need to throttle back the wort flow to give it more time to cool in the chiller lines before exiting.

Example, in the summer my tap is about 68. It takes a full 20 minutes or so to drain my kettle by gravity and get a nice 68-70 degree wort in primary with one pass.

In the winter my tap is 52, it only takes less than 10 minute to drain the kettle and the wort goes to primary at 56 degrees unless I then throttle the cold water back to get a higher temp of wort.

You can't just let the two flows run the same unless you are recirculating and expect to get one pass, one flow needs to be regulated. The fact you are going from boiling to 137 tells me it works, now get the flows adjusted properly

Things were slow at work today and I decided to take my old brain out for a test drive. The question is, Is there a difference between a Copper Heat Exchanger and a Stainless Steel Heat Exchanger. (Disclaimer: It has been decades since I took a Thermodynamics Class and if I remember I got a “C&#8221 This is purely a mathematical exercise, reality WILL be different.

Wrong Answer.
Thermal conductivity (K, W/(m C) (Watts / meter thickness / delta degree C)
k(cu) = 400 W/mC
k(ss) = 16 W/mC
therefore a Cu HE is 25 times better than SS. WRONG
this ignores the inefficient of moving heat out of the hot side water and into the cold side water of the HE.


Short Answer.
This information is taken from Engineering Tool Box on the web at
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/overall-heat-transfer-coefficients-d_284.html

Overall Heat Transfer Coefficients for some common Fluids and Heat Exchanger Surfaces
For practically still fluids - average values for the overall heat transmission coefficient through different combinations of fluids on both sides of the wall and type of wall - can be found in the table below:
Fluid Transmission Surface Fluid Overall Heat Transmission Coefficient
(Btu/ft2 hr F) (W/m2 K)
Water Mild Steel Water 60 – 70 340 - 400
Water Copper Water 60 – 80 340 - 455

Stainless Steel is not quite as good as Mild Steel but you can see there is not a lot of difference due to the Transmission Surface. Therefore the Total efficiency of the HE should not be significantly affected by the difference between Cu and SS.

Further down I estimate a 13% increase in cooling time for the SS Chiller versus the Cu Chiller.

==================
The much Longer Answer.

Facts and assumptions
Tube in a Tube Counterflow Heat Exchanger
Cooling Water (Volume as required)
Entry Temp = 60 F = 15.6 C Exit Temp = 150 F = 65.6 C (adjust cooling flow as required)
Wort to be chilled (Volume = 5.5 gallons, 20.8 liters, 20,820 ml)
Entry Temp = 212 F = 100 C Exit Temp = 70 F = 21 C
Energy to remove from the wort
1 calorie = 1gm of water 1 degree C. (we will use calories not Calories [kcal] )
dT = 65.6C – 15.6C = 50C
Mass = 20820 gm
E = 50 * 20820 = 1,041,100 calories
The Heat Exchanger is a tube in a tube counterflow
assume 12 ft long 1/2 diameter inner tube with a 0.035” wall thickness (0.000889 m)
The media is water and the Exchanger wall is either copper or stainless steel
Heat transfer has units of Power per transfer Surface Area per delta Degree
Such as Watts / (m^2 x deg C) or (W/m2C)
The heat exchanger consists of Cooling Water | Exchanger Wall | Hot Wort.
The overall Heat Transfer Coefficient is an inverse sum of the Heat Transfer of each part, similar to summing resistances in series.
1 / UA = [ 1 / h1A1 ] + [ tw / kw A ] + [ 1 / h2A2 ]
Coolant Wall Wort
A = exchanger surface area, assume 12 ft of 1/2" tube.
= 12ft x 12in/ft x .50 x pi = 226 in2 = 0.146 m2
k = thermal conductivity k(ss) = 16 W/mC k(cu) = 400 W/mC
h = convective heat transfer for each fluid (W / m2 C)
h(w) = 500 W/m2C to 10,000 W/m2C
500 would be static no flow no stir.
10,000 would be best case turbulent flow.
[We will run the final case with 5,000 W/m2C as a real world case]

We are concern with the effect of SS versus Cu so we will use the most efficient water transfer to see the greatest effect of the two exchanger materials.
Since the surface area is the same for each part of the equation the area is removed.
1/U (cu) = [ 1 / 10,000 ] + [ 0.000889 / 400 ] + [ 1 / 10,000 ]
= [ 1 / 10,000 ] + [ 1 / 449,900 ] + [ 1 / 10,000 ]
U(cu) = 4945 W/m2C
with 0.146 m2 surface the power exchange is 722 W / C

1/U (ss) = = [ 1 / 10,000 ] + [ 0.000889 / 16 ] + [ 1 / 10,000 ]
= [ 1 / 10,000 ] + [ 1 / 18,000 ] + [ 1 / 10,000 ]
U(ss) = 3913 W/m2C
with 0.146 m2 surface the power exchange is 571 W / C

With the Entry / Exit temperatures assumed above the average
dT = [ (100 - 60) + (21 – 15.6) ] /2 = 22 C

Heat Transfer (cu) = 722 W/C x 22C = 15,884 W = 3797 calorie / second
Heat Transfer (ss) = 571 W/C x 22C = 12,562 W = 3000 calorie / second

Previously we calculated the total energy to be removed from the boiling
Total Calories to exchange = 1,041,100 calories
Therefore
With Copper HE Time to chill = 1041100 cal / 3797 cal/s = 274 sec (4.57 min)
With Stainless HE Time to chill = 1041100 cal / 3000 cal/s = 347 sec (5.78 min)
Therefore SS is 26% longer than Cu.

As the efficiency of the water to water heat transfer becomes less efficient the effect of SS versus Cu becomes less significant, the time to chill will increase but the difference between SS and Cu will decrease.

Sensitivity Study
Use a Water Heat Transfer Coefficient of 5000 W/m2C
With Copper HE Time to chill = 1041100 cal / 1909 cal/s = 545 sec (9.1 min)
With Stainless HE Time to chill =1041100 cal / 1686 cal/s = 617 sec (10.3 min)

SS is 13% longer than Cu this is should be closest to the real world answer.

I am not an expert ! I assume there are some errors in my calculations.
Please be gentle with the replies...

I don't own one of these yet, but I will. When I do I will try to run some test to see now close I got with the model calculations.

David

The length of the CFC will play a major role in the chilling capacity as well. I have (built) two - one is 10 feet, the second is 20 - because the 10 footer didn't cut the mustard. Both are the homemade small diameter that takes 20 minutes or so for the kettle to empty. If the bore of your store bought CFC is too large (so that it drains quickly), you won't get good contact with the exterior cold water sleeve.

My 20 footer chills in a single pass from boiling to about 85 fahrenheit. The 10 footer wouldn't bring it below 100.

I use a cheap ($30?) submersible pump from harbor freight and put it in a 5 galling bucket with ice to really chill it well. When the water heats up, I can either add more ice or simply change the water out.

Yes it should most definitely be a single pass.

You should have hand valves to control wort flow and water flow. Make sure that the water side is staying packed... this is the most important because you need 100% water contact to cool the wort. It's best to have the hand valves on the outlet side to insure the lines are staying packed with back pressure. Also, with valves, you can slow wort flow down to give more contact time with the water which will result in more heat exchange and cooler wort.

OK. I went looking for the chiller in post #1 of this thread and couldn't find it. Did Williams stop making them? Did I miss a thread?

I was interested in having the curtains match the drapes (if you get my gander) but couldn't find it.

Anyone know what happened?

I own this one:

http://www.nybrewsupply.com/beer-ho...chillers/deluxe-counterflow-wort-chiller.html

Used it last weekend, worked great (I was getting it to pitching temp in 1 pass) though I had some problems with doing a gravity feed and had to use my pump instead. I'm using 1/2" ID tubing so I had to buy some 3/8" in compression fittings for the wort lines. The water inputs are 3/4" garden hose male/female fittings.

Just make sure you hook up the water in to the opposite side of the hot wort in.