Midco EC300 Burner start up

[Jeremias]

Fired up our DME 7 BBL direct fired gas kettle yesterday for the first time. It has come equipped with the Midco EC300 burner, which is capable of being hooked up to either Nat gas or Propane. We are on propane. Our gas technician hooked up the burner, set the manifold pressure to required 2.1 water column downstream of the honeywell regulator (per Midco's spec) and we fired it up. We measured flue temp just below the barometric damper that is located just above the ekit from the combustion chamber on the kettle. Flue temp was steady at about 450F to 500F (recommended range is 350F to 550F). We managed to lower this flue temp slightly by partially closing the damper than came supplied by DME on the outlet from the kettle's combustion chamber. In short, our readings said everything looked good, and had been hooked up successfully.

There was 400 liters of water in the kettle. Starting temp was 88F. We ran the kettle for two hours, only moving the temperature up to 128F. This seems brutally slow. As it's a weekend, I can't trouble shoot with DME much, so thought I'd throw it out to the forum to see if anyone has any thoughts. Anyone out there using this burner? Maybe on a DME system?

Jeremy White
Owner
Big Spruce Brewing
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

[Baldrick]

If your gas pressure is measured in inches, then it's way too low, I think.

http://www.midcointernational.com/products/economite_ec/index.htm

And

http://www.midcointernational.com/pdf/8471-38.pdf

The midco site says between 6 and 14 inches W.C. To get the required burn.

With a proper air fuel mixture your flue temp should be in range even with a higher gas pressure.

Best of luck!

[Jeremias]

If your gas pressure is measured in inches, then it's way too low, I think.

http://www.midcointernational.com/products/economite_ec/index.htm

And

http://www.midcointernational.com/pdf/8471-38.pdf

The midco site says between 6 and 14 inches W.C. To get the required burn.

With a proper air fuel mixture your flue temp should be in range even with a higher gas pressure.

Best of luck!

Thanks! - on page 7, table 3, the manifold pressure required for the EC300 operating with propane at 300k BTU is 2.1:

http://www.midcointernational.com/pdf/8471-38.pdf

Am I missing something?

[Baldrick]

You need 220,000 BTU of INPUT into the wort to lift the wort from 88 to 212. You're lucky if 60% of the flame heat makes it into the wort. Probably a lot less.
Therefore you'd need well over 333,000 BTU/H to get 7 bbl of wort to the boiling point in an hour.
Water has a latent heat of vapourization of 2260 KJ/Kg or 972 BTU/lb-h. So for 7 bbl you need another 210,000 BTU of INPUT to move the wort from 212 liquid to 212 vapour.

If all you are OUTPUTTING 200,000 BTU/h at 2" WC on your burner and you can only lift the wort 40 degrees in 2 hours then either your burner is putting all the heat up the flue or your burner is outputting significantly less than 200KBTU/h. But even so, 200KBTU/h is not enough heat.

Crank up your burner. You need more than 300KBTU/h to boil the wort in a reasonable amount of time.
Try the factory setting of 4"WC and if you're still not satisfied then move it up to 5". Be sure to check the mixture.

Direct fired kettles are slow. I've seen several breweries that start the burner halfway through the sparge, once the minimum kettle fluid level is reached to get a "head start". Even then, it would take another hour after the sparge was over to get to the boil.

[gitchegumee]

You should be turning on the heat to your kettle as soon as possible. Heat your wort as you sparge. Some may disagree, but this is my SOP. As far as your burner goes, I believe that this model of Midco has a pressure regulator built in to the Honeywell gas valve that is mounted on the burner. This valve is set up for Natural gas default, I believe. You must change out the spring/cap/cover with a spring for Propane. This kit comes with a sticker that you're supposed to put on the unit that says something along the lines of "This valve modified to run on LPG". Spring is different colors for LPG vs. natural gas. Maybe this is your problem? Good luck!

[Jeremias]

Solved!

We managed to solve it! With support from DME and Midco, and a more precise manometer on the manifold pressure, we figured it out! Our pressure was too low, so we were not getting the BTU required.

[DME Brewing]

Great to See..

Great to see that vigorous boil last week when I was over for your 1st Brew.
Brewery was looking, and smelling great.

[westerndf]

So what in coming WC do you have or did you all end up using? I have 8 incoming but these EC300 burners claim to require 6-14 WC. I am investigating not getting the increased pressure or if 8WC incoming is enough.

Thanks,