Recirculating waterchiller for temp controlled fermentation

[Koffie]

It all started with the idea to build a fermentation chamber by heating and cooling with peltier elements.
Someone pointed out to me that it would be much more efficient to directly control the wort instead of the air that is surrounding the fermentation bucket.

I got the plan to usea little 5 liter partykeg as a waterrervoir, put some peltiers on it and control it with a simple thermosstat.

Not much later I was offered a recirculating water chiller for free
He used it for temp controlled fermenation, but the sound/noise was to loud.
Well, he wass right on that point, man what a hell of a noise.

I hope I can use this weekend to look inside the chiller. I believe the biggest noise is created by the pump. If I could replace that with a silent version :rockin:
I made 2 simple videos for a test setup, approx. 20 - 25 liter tapwater at 8 degrees. Start the chiller and set for 20.
Next movie is 22 minutes later. The water is allready at 13 degrees



http://youtu.be/k-D1OQ605G0

[ame]http://youtu.be/4DRg2U1x23E[/ame]

If somone has any experience with this device (Oasis 150 chiller) and could provide me some more info, I would appreciate it.

Some pics of the insede:

 

[Koffie]

Doing a testrun right now, and it works like a charm.
Dropped the temp of 30+ liters water from 25 to the desired 20 degrees in about 2 hours, and is setting at 20 since then (room temp is 15 degrees).
I will let it run for the night and take a look tommorow morning.

 

[Koffie]

Next morning: stable at 20 degrees
I turned off the chiller for 45 minutes, and the water allready droppen 1 degree (the room temp is 14, the water was 20).
So I gues the chiller is doing allright
I ordered a 12 volt pump, should be a lot more quite than the pump in this system. It also gives me the ability to make a bigger reservoir.

 

[bnmorgan]

Holy smoke that is loud, like, "is something wrong" loud.

 

[pelipen]

It all started with the idea to build a fermentation chamber by heating and cooling with peltier elements.
Someone pointed out to me that it would be much more efficient to directly control the wort instead of the air that is surrounding the fermentation bucket.

Personally, I would put the bucket into a water bath, then use your chiller to control the water bath temperature. You will want some way of keeping the water bath well mixed. A small aquarium pump works well. It's less to sanitize and you can get away with a reasonably large temperature variation without impacting the beer temp. Large quantities of water don't change temperature very quickly. That should allow the pump to run less frequently.

I used to use temperature controlled water baths, but have since moved to a cylindrical beverage cooler.