Today I scored 50’ of 3/8 copper for 20$. (it’s good to be in HVAC) I’m tossing around the idea of a different chiller design. Most all of us have or have used a typical chiller, stacked. I got to thinking, where does heat travel? Up. So, why not make a chiller more in the design of a spiral, like a stove element. It would lay just below the top few inches of hot wort. As the is cooled, the heat from the lower part of the kettle will rise, while the cooled wort on top falls. Am I onto something? Anyone else try this?
Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic… Chiller design.
Isn’t that what happens anyway? I’m thinking it would actually be less efficient than the conventional design (assuming you’re smart and have the water flow through the top coils first) because you’d be relying solely on convection, as opposed to using the temperature gradient to cool as much volume as possible. Now, if you used some other mechanism to force wort past the coil, that would probably work… but then you’ve built a plate chiller, more or less.
And there are no poor Pauly Shore references, only poor Pauly Shore movies.
As long as you do not restrict flow around and past the cooler too much with your design it should work. Many systems utilize natural flow, ie hot to cold, certain nuclear power plants do it. The key is free flowing product, in this case wort. If you establish the flow up on the sides and down in the center it could work very well.
I have never been invited to M.I.T to lecture on the intricacies of thermodynamics, but…
It seems like the flat design you are suggesting would only cool a 3/8" thick portion of the entire column of wort and rely on convection currents to equalize to cool the rest where as a stacked design will be cooling the entire column at the same time.
We have all felt the bottom of the kettle during cooling and found to much cooler than the top so I see your concern. I use a long handle ss spoon to give a swirl every 5 minutes or so and get the temps down in about 20 minutes with a 50’ stacked design of 3/8". I think your suggestion may take much longer.
I have a really wide and short kettle.
I was thinking about having one inter coil and one outer coil to accommodate more tubing in the kettle.
The cold liquid would go to outer coil then inter coil and then out.
Yeah, I guess you all make good valid points. And, I suppose if it worked that well, there would be commercial ones available. Guess I will stick to the old tried and true. Thanks for the input.
Ok, now it’s somewhat interesting. I’m envisioning some mechanical thingy moving the “Weezecoil” up and down to chill. Like an eccentric gear or a very slow sawzall contraption. I bet you’d get some efficient cooling that way.
Weazletoe, I have seen one like what you describe but it was in conjunction with
a whirlpooling system and IC. So basically it was a TON of surface area and the
chilled wort was pumped right at the level of the spiral near the surface…
Zymurgy gadget issue or BYO gadget article. Not sure which one.
