Glycol chiller with cooler on top

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ForReal

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Hi,
i have seen many DIY project where the cooler is next to a window A/C unit ( i.e. At the sane height level) and I wonder the following: would the compressor suffer from having the cooler on top of the A/C unit?

this configuration would allow a more compact design and less footprint being used in the brewhouse.

Anyone with experience, please share. I’m about to begin my build would appreciate any input.

thanks.
 
Length wise, the unit looks to have enough tubing although it might be a challenge to unbend.
 
It has to get all the way up and over the cooler wall and then back down to let the whole coil stay submerged. On most units I've taken apart, you'd be lucky to get it to happen right on the side. The only way is to make friends with an HVAC tech to extend the copper and recharge the refrigerant.
 
I was wondering why no one has done this yet. Was thinking a bulkhead of some kind thru the glycol reservoir would make things cleaner.

Sure, that's how all the commercial glycol units are made. It's even more simple using a bare copper coil in the tank but that's only practical when the system loop is being created. It's not something most people can DIY because you're supposed to collect the refrigerant for recycling, make the mods, vac pump out the air, then charge it back up with the exact amount of coolant the system needs (which takes some HVAC knowledge with the new system volume you've just created.
 
Sure, that's how all the commercial glycol units are made. It's even more simple using a bare copper coil in the tank but that's only practical when the system loop is being created. It's not something most people can DIY because you're supposed to collect the refrigerant for recycling, make the mods, vac pump out the air, then charge it back up with the exact amount of coolant the system needs (which takes some HVAC knowledge with the new system volume you've just created.

I would say that the most common build with the cooler next to the A/C is very simple.
I did the build and satisfied with the results appart from the footprint it take. If I ever do another with the cooler on top, I will report how it went.
 
It's even more simple using a bare copper coil in the tank but that's only practical when the system loop is being created.

Forgive my ignorance, but, are you saying that a bare copper coil, something similar to a wort cooling coil inside the glycol reservoir is all that is necessary? Rather than say the little radiator/condenser looking thing?

I saw a build somewhere recently, maybe here? That was built completely from scratch, looked ingesting.
 
I would say that the most common build with the cooler next to the A/C is very simple.
I did the build and satisfied with the results appart from the footprint it take. If I ever do another with the cooler on top, I will report how it went.

Can you post more info about your build? Photos perhaps?
 
Forgive my ignorance, but, are you saying that a bare copper coil, something similar to a wort cooling coil inside the glycol reservoir is all that is necessary? Rather than say the little radiator/condenser looking thing?

I saw a build somewhere recently, maybe here? That was built completely from scratch, looked ingesting.
Yeah exactly. The only reason air conditioners have fins is because it increases surface area to pull heat out of the air more efficiently. It's much easier to transfer from water so all commercial glycol just has a bare coil in the glycol bath.
 
so all commercial glycol just has a bare coil in the glycol bath.
No, definitely not true. the typical rinky dink homebrew chillers likely have copper sitting in the glycol bath as it’s cheap and easy.

Commercial glycol units in breweries/wineries / food production use heat exchangers, typically brazed plate type. Refrigerant on one side, glycol on the other. Way more efficient.
 
No, definitely not true. the typical rinky dink homebrew chillers likely have copper sitting in the glycol bath as it’s cheap and easy.

Commercial glycol units in breweries/wineries / food production use heat exchangers, typically brazed plate type. Refrigerant on one side, glycol on the other. Way more efficient.

Do you mean like a plate chiller submerged in glycol? Instead of our in place of a copper coil?

I would like to see the guts of a commercial brewery/winery/food production glycol chiller as well as a typical (commercially available) rinky drink homebrew chiller.

I figure if a DIY home brew guy was going to build a chiller and had access to some / most / all the same components on a smaller scale as the big commercial brewery ads winery units, why not build one that way, only smaller (maybe smaller). I do have an A/C guy buddy that can service, vacuum and fill ac and refrigeration stuff available. I am almost to the point I am ready to buy a cheapish glycol chiller but would rather build one possibly of better construction or quality. I am down with doing things twice! It is how I learn.

All this discussion is good info, I wonder if this should be moved to a new thread, it feels like we have hijacked ForReal's thread.
 
Yeah exactly. The only reason air conditioners have fins is because it increases surface area to pull heat out of the air more efficiently. It's much easier to transfer from water so all commercial glycol just has a bare coil in the glycol bath.

When I built my glycol chiller I found the fins on the evaporator coil impeded the flow too much. So I used a diagonal cutter and needle nose pliers to remove the fins from the copper tubing underneath. Turns out the fins are not physically attached to the coil, so it was fairly easy to remove them, albeit time consuming. Below is a picture when I was mostly through the removal. Removing the fins improved performance significantly.

evaporator_coil.JPG
 
No, definitely not true. the typical rinky dink homebrew chillers likely have copper sitting in the glycol bath as it’s cheap and easy.

Commercial glycol units in breweries/wineries / food production use heat exchangers, typically brazed plate type. Refrigerant on one side, glycol on the other. Way more efficient.

I didn't mean commercial glycol units as units made for commercial use. I mean commercially produced homebrew market glycol chillers (AKA, not DIY). Home chillers have a miniscule heat load on them compared to industrial uses so efficiency is not all that important. A copper coil in the glycol is plenty good enough. Even dropping the finned coils of window shakers into the bath is good enough.
 
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Do you mean like a plate chiller submerged in glycol? Instead of our in place of a copper coil?

I would like to see the guts of a commercial brewery/winery/food production glycol chiller as well as a typical (commercially available) rinky drink homebrew chiller.

I figure if a DIY home brew guy was going to build a chiller and had access to some / most / all the same components on a smaller scale as the big commercial brewery ads winery units, why not build one that way, only smaller (maybe smaller). I do have an A/C guy buddy that can service, vacuum and fill ac and refrigeration stuff available. I am almost to the point I am ready to buy a cheapish glycol chiller but would rather build one possibly of better construction or quality. I am down with doing things twice! It is how I learn.

All this discussion is good info, I wonder if this should be moved to a new thread, it feels like we have hijacked ForReal's thread.
yes, bit of a hijack. to be brief- the plate chiller is not submerged, thats not how its designed. plate chillers operate on the counter-flow design, so you have alternating flows of hot/cold on each side of a plate, and there's multiple plates so it goes hot-cold-hot-cold. the reason nobody really does that on the homebrew scale is because unlike copper sitting in a glycol bath, a plate exchanger requires both sides to flow. while your AC unit moves the refrigerant around the copper coil, the glycol sits still. the plate chiller requires both sides to move, which means the glycol must be moving and that requires a pump. on a commercial unit this is an always-on pump. usually a good size too, smallest i've ever seen was probably 3/4hp. so quite a bit more power-hungry because your glycol is moving 24/7, even when its not being chilled. overkill for a homebrew type setup.
 
When I need a chiller I put a 7 gallon bucket of water in a freezer with an aquarium pump which is plumbed to a Blichman cooling coil in my fermentation vessel. Works good. The bonus is when after packaging I have a freezer to use for other purposes; a fermentation chamber, someplace to store equipment, store my packaged beer......

If you look at it, a freezer costs about the same as a window AC unit.
 
When I need a chiller I put a 7 gallon bucket of water in a freezer with an aquarium pump which is plumbed to a Blichman cooling coil in my fermentation vessel. Works good. The bonus is when after packaging I have a freezer to use for other purposes; a fermentation chamber, someplace to store equipment, store my packaged beer......

If you look at it, a freezer costs about the same as a window AC unit.

A freezer and an aquarium pump is all fine a dandy for a single FV. Or even a bucket of iced water would work in some circumstances. But this thread/topic is about a dedicated glycol chiller.

I brew in a commercial space that is 20+ miles from home. I for one am interested in a glycol chiller for the sake of simplicity. I need to chill (One at the moment) FV without the need to babysit a ice bucket or to dedicate a freezer to the task. There are days/weeks when i am unable to get to my shop to check things. I will doing my best to make everything monitored by remote. IF i build my own glycol chiller i will likely use something similar to the inkbird 308 wifi temp controller. I am already using this same controller for my freezer and i like it. I am also using Tilt hydrometers for remote monitoring.

In my case a freezer would not do the trick.
 
Here are some pics of my glycol chiller build. I bent the tubing and vanes down, and did a cut-out of the top of the cooler to allow them to hang as low as possible into the glycol mixture. I resealed the lid with insulation foam. I am using a 2:1, H2O:Glycol. Total liquid is approximately 7.5 gallons. I didn't know about the cutting off the vanes thing; when I swap out the glycol, I may do that mod in order to get better efficiency. It's a 5K BTU unit, and I bypassed the A/C temp control for an Inkbird. It is mounted on a platform for stability, the drawers under the platform hold brewing stuff. As you can see from the pumps and hoses, I am keeping 3 5G fermenters at fermentation/cold-crashing temps, down to 40F max. I think that is more of a factor of the Anvil cooling coils I am using in my fermenters than how cold the chiller gets. I normally keep it at 45F for fermentation, unless I am cold crashing, and then I drop it to 25F.
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