homemade glycol cooler from red bull cooler

here's my homemade glycol cooler made from an old red bull cooler that a friend of mine had standing in his new coffee shop, the old owner left it and he didn't have a use for it and wanted to get rid off it. who could say no to such an offer right?



and at work i found a brand new 80L stainless steel tank in the scrap bin so i asked my boss if i could have it.




so the glycol cooler was born in my head.

after stripping it down to its guts this is what i was left with
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a...9UefYYm4yoYVAx7tVWyuXiviCAhC5Tnq=w578-h770-no

so i cut a slot in the top of the tank so i was able to fit the radiator inside of the tank and welded the tank to the cooler chassis with some left over stainless tubing i had laying around.





so fast forward a couple off months i decided to make the thing run on a brewpi and gathered all the parts and started making it like the tread here on homebrew talk and this is what i ended up with



here's the whole thing wrapped in insulation and all the pumps are connected. with te option ta attach one more cooling spiral if a want to at a later time





i'm still test running for leaks for a day or 2 and then test it in a fermenter with water before for a week or 2 before i use it with beer.




i ran in to a problem with the new brewpi screw in temp sensors so i removed them and wil use the old sensors for the time being.

 

it seems to me that the temp swings a bit but i'm not quite shore what to do about it, are my settings off ?or what do i look for?

 

None of your pictures are working.

That being said, if it's one of those can-looking coolers you might have some difficulty.

Glycol chillers are not about how cold you can get, it's how fast you can get there. BTU movement.

The cooling system needs to move more BTUs out of the thing you are cooling than the amount it's absorbing and/or generating.

 

hope the images are fixed

 

On the firtst test it got 40l down from 18°c down to 13 in about 10 mins so not to bad i would say. The cooler is 1hp acording to the stickers on the motor

 

There's a thread for it on the BrewPi community forums, and will see if I can dig up the link. But the solution was to just use one sensor and run it in fridge constant mode, and to also not have the glycol so cold (most chillers get it to -6 to -10 degrees, think it was recommended to set it at 0-3 degrees C)

EDIT: Here's the link: https://community.brewpi.com/t/brewpi-and-ftss/951

Looking at your graph it's about what Elco is getti g on his.

 

well my idea was to let the pump run the whole time pumping the glycol around an heating and cooling the glycol and relying on the thermal mass of the beer to stay at the right temp. i have a jacket for my cct's in the making