Plate Chiller to Heat Water

[Thorpe429]

This is more DIY in the sense of repurposing a plate chiller, but I thought this made sense in the case the group has any ideas about further modifications.

I don’t have ready access to hot water where I brew and clean, so I’ve been thinking about ways to heat up water quickly, especially water I can use with a hose/tube rather than just a pot or bucket.

I have an electric burner for camping that had no problem heating 2-3 gallons of water, but I’m wondering if I could use it to create a sort of mini tankless hot water heater. The idea would be to put a Blichmann plate chiller in a pot of heated water in it and then use silicone tubing as my hose for the input and output with cold filtered water going in and then (hopefully) hot water coming out.

Does anyone see why this wouldn’t work if the pot of water is 170+ degrees if I only want the output water to be 100-120 degrees? Any addition ideas?

Cheers!

 

[beermanpete]

The plate type heat exchanger won't work well for this. An immersion chiller coil would be a much better choice.

 

[wyowolf]

It would work better if you could pump the hot water through the PC from your pot, then use the heated water, but it will cool off 3 gal pretty quick, but it WILL come out pretty dang hot. More than once i made the mistake of not thinking the cooling water coming out would be hot.. IT IS! But if you can regulate the flow it may last longer... whatever the input temp is the outlet will be just a few degrees behind that...

 

[Thorpe429]

The plate type heat exchanger won't work well for this. An immersion chiller coil would be a much better choice.

Thanks! I think I have an old immersion chiller I could test this with and if it works I can upgrade as necessary.

Would copper be an issue for this purpose if I were to pre-heat some of the strike water and should I be using a stainless immersion instead? Either way, can test it with the copper soon!

 

[beermanpete]

Copper is only a problem for brewing water if you are concerned about the dissolved oxygen content (i.e., LODO). LODO aside, corrosion might be a problem if you use an aluminum kettle with the copper coil. A stainless or enameled steel kettle would be better.

Are you planning to use a pressurized cold water source (garden hose) to push water through the coil and only use the kettle water to heat the coil? If so, it will work but the temperature in the coil will rise to the kettle temp when you are not drawing water. When you draw the water it will come out hot initially and get cooler after the volume in the coil is used up. The temperature of the water after this will depend on the flow rate, water temperature in the kettle, heating power of the burner, etc.

 

[Thorpe429]

Thanks! I have a stainless kettle so good there. Noted on temperature fluctuations and will definitely take some time messing with the input flow rate plus temperature of the water in the pot that’s heating the chiller.