Glycol distribution

[dick murton]

I know in the ProChiller bumf, they talk about using copper pipe, but I have seen small breweries using stainless and plastic of some sort.

What is the best material to use - for a brewery with a 25 hl chilled liquor tank and initially just a couple of 20 hl FVs and CTs - but with room for perhaps 3 additional FVs and CTs ?

Is there a balance between cost and working life for each of these materials?

What is a sensible size header diameter

And finally, I know Prochiller talk about first in, last out, but is there a real problem, with FiFo as this would save perhaps 15 metres of header pipe.

Thanks

[dick murton]

Thanks for the comments

And there was me thinking 1 or 1.5 inch header would do.

I must hope to persuade the brewer to go for the extra expense of FiLo then.

Cheers

Any other comments welcomed though

[jimvgjr]

First of, thanks for teaching me a new word!

bumf
bəmf/Submit
nounBRITISHinformal
useless or tedious printed information or documents

Not to be more tedious but to clarify- we at Pro Chillers actually recommend (and distribute) GF CoolFit ABS Piping, other materials I'd look at and recommend are Copper and or Stainless Steel. To reduce installation costs, we also see customers use multiple materials- for example the CF ABS+ for the main headers, and run the drops to the tanks in copper or a pex material.

We have letters from Spears, a leading manufacturer of PVC, stating that their product is not approved for use on glycol systems with an operating temperature below 40 F. So we are not able to recommend PVC, but understand it is commonly installed- sometimes with many years of reliable service.

FILO is ideal for the obvious reasons, it will best balance the flow- this is especially critical in brewery systems because we are generally operating at low glycol supply pressures (to protect tank jackets) and flow is so critical to accomplish heat exchange in the jackets. On smaller systems with perhaps 4-6 vessels its much less of an issue than when you grow to 15-20 vessels.

I'd be happy to review the brewer's layout Dick and provide a suggestion on header sizing as well as different ways to route the piping.

I truly hope that this is found to be helpful, good luck to you!

Jim

[Johnson_Thermal]

Aquatherm PP Pipe is another option. But you would need to rent the special fusion tools to join it. www.aquatherm.com, Ferguson is probably the largest distributor.

PEX piping is also suitable. There are a lot of different manufacturers, I would recommend Viega as they have the most technical data and expertise. Viega Pex also requires specials tools for install, which can be rented from a plumbing wholesaler. www.viega.us.

If you did go with metal but are concerned about the cost/labor/effort required to install, the Viega Pro-Press system is pretty freakin' amazing. You can use both copper and stainless. Of course, not cheap, but with these system you break down the barrier of the labor cost required. We use copper pro-press (stainless is an option) in our higher end series of chillers. We used it in our chillers that were shake table tested, have run it in chillers with -15F glycol, used it for boiler gas piping, and not had a single leak in the field. The only field failures were two check valves (different jobs) that blew apart. Viega paid to have them fixed, so they stand behind their stupidly long warranty. I don't sell Viega just use the heck out of it and love it.

A system can be balanced by putting some kind of adjustment valve or each tank to balance the pressure drops across each tank without having to do FILO. If the tanks are the same you don't have to "know" the flow vs DP of the tank as long as you can set them to be the same. You could use a actual "circuit setter" which is a calibrated ball valve with wrench flats instead of a handle, with a % opening readout, and they usually have test ports built into them so you can measure pressure drop and convert it t flow. Or you can just put in a ball valve partially close it and call it good! If you only have a couple of FVs and it saves you from having to put in 15 meters of pipe I would look at FILO alternatives.

But admittedly FILO is a pretty reliable way to do it.

[dick murton]

Thanks for the help guys.

Bearing in mind this brewery is in the UK, it will not be sensible to use you as suppliers, but your guidance is much appreciated. As always with this site - a mine of information, some occasionally useless, most of it definitely useful.

Cheers

[kererubrewing]

Glycol distribution

We used 2.5" copper for our header with a distributed FIFO and it works great and was relatively straightforward to upscale from 9 tanks (mix of 15bbl and 30bbl and a 30bbl CLT) to double that with room to triple and we converted our walk-in chillers to glycol as well.

If you use smaller pipe your flow rate/pressures are going to go higher and you may find there are some jacket pressure ratings which will require bigger diameter pipe runs.

The downside is the expense of bigger pumps to circulate glycol with (we fitted a pressure transducer to govern pump speed through a VFD and maintain flow rates).

The bonus of larger chillers is fitting a HX before the condenser coil to capture the waste heat and turn it into free hot feed water for your HLT.

[dick murton]

Thanks

The pipe sizes fit in with other comments.

Cheers

[kererubrewing]

We also used ball valves on the tank returns to balance the legs on the header runs with an adjustable inlet just downstream of the inlet solenoid to moderate cooling for gentle cooling during fermentation or crash cooling.