I have a few questions regarding our chiller system that I was hoping someone could help me with.
first a little background--
We bought a used 7.5 ton chiller (a bit oversized i think) that was originally set up to cool a laser at high pressure. Like everything else in our brewery, we did the piping and insulation ourselves with a 3/4 inch main line with pressure reducers to about 12 PSI (pump is running at about 70 PSI) and 3/4 inch drops for the tanks. We have 3 7bbl fermentors running off it with additional room to expand. I just got our first electric bill and it looks like it cost $600 to run the chiller for a month (ouch!). Something seems to be wrong.. The piping has the first in last out principle and there is no connection between the supply and the return lines (glycol would have to run through a tank to return to the unit)
The pump seems to cycle on and off a lot and the compressor seems to be running much more than I would think it should. Did we set up the piping wrong? Should the glycol be constantly circulating? I've had the local AC guys out here a couple times but they seem to mostly just stand around in awe because they haven't working on/designed a chiller system before. They know how to adjust the compressor and fans, but don't know how the overall system should be working.
Does anyone know a chiller expert in the orange county area of CA? I called PRO Refrig, but they said just to call a local company since it isn't a PRO system.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Aaron
first a little background--
We bought a used 7.5 ton chiller (a bit oversized i think) that was originally set up to cool a laser at high pressure. Like everything else in our brewery, we did the piping and insulation ourselves with a 3/4 inch main line with pressure reducers to about 12 PSI (pump is running at about 70 PSI) and 3/4 inch drops for the tanks. We have 3 7bbl fermentors running off it with additional room to expand. I just got our first electric bill and it looks like it cost $600 to run the chiller for a month (ouch!). Something seems to be wrong.. The piping has the first in last out principle and there is no connection between the supply and the return lines (glycol would have to run through a tank to return to the unit)
The pump seems to cycle on and off a lot and the compressor seems to be running much more than I would think it should. Did we set up the piping wrong? Should the glycol be constantly circulating? I've had the local AC guys out here a couple times but they seem to mostly just stand around in awe because they haven't working on/designed a chiller system before. They know how to adjust the compressor and fans, but don't know how the overall system should be working.
Does anyone know a chiller expert in the orange county area of CA? I called PRO Refrig, but they said just to call a local company since it isn't a PRO system.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Aaron
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