Aluminum tube for HERMS?

[eponymousdavid]

I'm am working on designing my electric brewing rig and was wondering if there would be any problem with using 50' 1/2 aluminum seamless tube instead of SS?

 

[mabrungard]

As long as the fluids in contact with the aluminum have a pH falling within the range of 4.5 to 8.5, it should be OK. The aluminum does provide a better heat transfer coefficient than SST.

 

[eponymousdavid]

So I won't be able to cip with an alkaline cleaner like PBW?

 

[mabrungard]

Well, you sort of can. But the contact time with PBW has to be short or it will corrode that soft metal.

Since this is a hot side component, why would you need to clean this tubing so thoroughly with something like PBW? A hot water rinse should be good enough most of the time. Every few years, you might need to hit it with a hot PBW recirculation, but that should be rare.

 

[eponymousdavid]

Good point, I can't really think of any other situations where the pH will go out of that range. I'm not going to use star san on it and my mash shouldn't be going below 5

 

[augiedoggy]

Also depending on whether its mounted or not the dissimilar metals will likely cause corrosion ..I just listened to a podcast on this with john palmer whos a metalurgist who stated aluminum is fine except for this weakness. unless you found some aluminum compression fittings or you just plan on using an immersion chiller design as the herms coil.

 

[augiedoggy]

This might be of interest to you... someone else linked it and I found some good info from it.
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/post441/

 

[RoadKing]

Check out THIS thread.
The stuff works great.

 

[eponymousdavid]

This might be of interest to you... someone else linked it and I found some good info from it.
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/post441/

Thank you for the link! There was a lot of useful information in that podcast!

Check out THIS thread.
The stuff works great.

I will have to look into csst as an option!