Different style cooler...

[Cubslover]

My father in law had a knee replaced a few years ago and thought this would me a good wort chiller.

He has a cooling setup for his knee that includes a pump, and 3gal cooler with coils inside it. He would fill the cooler with ice and water and charge the pump with water. He'd then hook up his knee brace and pump the cold water around his knee and back to the coils to cool.

If I were to use this pump to pump wort from the kettle through the coils on ice to the fermenter, do you think it'd cool quick enough or would it be better to recirc it back to the kettle until the temp is reached?

Would pumping a bleach solution through this setup for 1/2hr then chase with star san be enough to sanitize this setup before first use?

 

[Pappers_]

My son had a similar knee icing apparatus. My concern would be if the coils are food-grade, which I suspect they are not.

You could use the pump and cooler, though, just rig up some other tubing.

 

[audger]

a 3 gallon cooler, even if filled 100% with ice, will not nearly be enough thermal mass to sink the amount of energy that is in 5 or 10 gallons of near-boiling wort and get it down to pitch temperature.

 

[Cubslover]

I figured I would pile the ice in it as needed.

 

[kpr121]

I doubt the pump is food safe if you want to pump the wort.

 

[horseinmay]

This might work, but it depends on how much ice you plan to use. The heat of fusion of ice (energy required to melt it ) is 334 kJ/kg. The specific heat of water is 4.187 kJ/kg*K. This means that for every kilogram of water, you need 4.187 kJ of energy to raise/lower the temperature 1 degree Kelvin (Celcius). A 5 gallon batch of beer is about 20L (20kg) and to go from boiling(100C) to 70F (20C) is an 80 degree temperature swing. You would need to remove 80*20*4.187 = 6699kJ of energy from the hot wort. That is about 20# of ice (assuming you don't lose a lot of energy from the system).

All that being said, it depends on the materials this thing is made of. I would be wary of any contact between boiling wort and plastics of any kind. Stick with high-temp food-safe materials. If the chiller you are using is rated for ice, but not for hot stuff, I wouldn't use it, although you could make a similar device from copper.
Godspeed

 

[Tinga]

I have done this set up in a similar way. I had a tub full of 40 lbs of ice with 1/4 inch copper tubing in it and gravity fed my wort through it to my fermenter. I had 40 ft copper tubing and it got from boiling to 59*. my flow rate was super slow though, it took me an hour and a half to do a 5 gallon batch. Also sterilizing this would be a pain as well.

 

[bblack7489]

The heat of fusion of ice (energy required to melt it ) is 334 kJ/kg. The specific heat of water is 4.187 kJ/kg*K. This means that for every kilogram of water, you need 4.187 kJ of energy to raise/lower the temperature 1 degree Kelvin (Celcius). A 5 gallon batch of beer is about 20L (20kg) and to go from boiling(100C) to 70F (20C) is an 80 degree temperature swing. You would need to remove 80*20*4.187 = 6699kJ of energy from the hot wort. That is about 20# of ice (assuming you don't lose a lot of energy from the system).

I love it when engineers bust out the back-of-the-napkin math on the homebrew forums. Although to be fair, you left out the specific heat of the ice / melted ice.