I've been doing a little lurking, and the preferred method of wort chilling seems to be running cold water through length of copper pipe, taking about 15 minutes. While this certainly works, it seems to me that Co2 would be a much faster cooling medium.
The idea would be nearly identical to a standard wort chiller, except instead of connecting the chiller up to a faucet or fountain pump you hook up a bottle filled with liquid Co2, either a scuba or the 4 - 20oz varieties used with paintball guns. The phase change from a liquid to a gas requires a lot of energy, and as it runs through the copper pipe the conversion will reduce the pipe's temperature drastically and nearly instantly. It seems to me with a quick enough bleed you could get the wort to room temperature in MUCH less than 15 minutes.
anyone play paintball? those tanks can ice over in 90 degree heat from bleeding for a few seconds, expanding liquid co2 soaks up a lot of heat. Any volunteers want to try running liquid co2 through their wort chiller in a 3gal pot of boiling water to see if it soaks up enough heat to be a viable alternative?
Possible advantages could be a faster cold break, cleanliness (read: no superhot waste water or potential for spilling) and simplicity (self-contained bottle of self-propelled co2 vs. bucket of ice water/pump) and the negation of tap water temperature.
Apologies if it's a stupid question that's been discussed before, I didn't see anything when I searched.
The idea would be nearly identical to a standard wort chiller, except instead of connecting the chiller up to a faucet or fountain pump you hook up a bottle filled with liquid Co2, either a scuba or the 4 - 20oz varieties used with paintball guns. The phase change from a liquid to a gas requires a lot of energy, and as it runs through the copper pipe the conversion will reduce the pipe's temperature drastically and nearly instantly. It seems to me with a quick enough bleed you could get the wort to room temperature in MUCH less than 15 minutes.
anyone play paintball? those tanks can ice over in 90 degree heat from bleeding for a few seconds, expanding liquid co2 soaks up a lot of heat. Any volunteers want to try running liquid co2 through their wort chiller in a 3gal pot of boiling water to see if it soaks up enough heat to be a viable alternative?
Possible advantages could be a faster cold break, cleanliness (read: no superhot waste water or potential for spilling) and simplicity (self-contained bottle of self-propelled co2 vs. bucket of ice water/pump) and the negation of tap water temperature.
Apologies if it's a stupid question that's been discussed before, I didn't see anything when I searched.