Makeshift glycol system

[wlw33]

Hi all,
We have a couple plastic conicals that we cool using internal stainless steel immersion coils.
We devised an incredibly makeshift cooling system, using a reservoir of glycol in a standup freezer. We use a refrigerant pump, connected to a Johnson controller, that pumps glycol from the reservoir, through the coil, back into the reservoir. It works fine for our nano application. The only problem is that the pumps are insanely loud. Does anyone know of a small, quiet pump that can be used for an application like this? Thanks

[Johnson_Thermal]

If by refrigerant pump you mean comoressor, and you are using it to pump glycol. That noise is the sound of it dying. Compressors are positive displacement, meaning they are designed to generate a lot of pressure. And they are designed for pumping vapor not liquid.

I would just go to harbor freight or northern industrial and buy some small liquid transfer pump for cheap.

Hydronic circulators for domestic hot water are going to be more expensive, but easy to get and super quiet. There are Grundfos models that are three speed so you have a little bit of adjustment. Bell and Gossettbis another common circulator brand. Available at a pump supplier or plumbing wholesaler, or Grainger/McMaster/misc interwebs, etc.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

[beerme]

get a draught line cooling unit. it will work better.

the air to glycol heat exchange in the freezer won't work well.

[RipRap]

Im having a hard time picturing exactly what you system looks like. Is the freezer filled with glycol or do you have another vessel in the freezer holding it? If so you will probably get very slow heat transfer through the other vessel. We also run a very DIY glycol system. We use an igloo cooler with a hacked up window air conditioner cooling it. The cold coil for the AC is immersed in the glycol. Then we have Submersible aquarium pumps that pump glycol to our coils in the fermenters. Hops this helps and good luck!

[wlw33]

get a draught line cooling unit. it will work better.

the air to glycol heat exchange in the freezer won't work well.

It doen't work stupendously, that's for sure, but it allows us to lager effectively in our 1.5bbl and maintain decent ale temp in our 3bbl.
The big trouble is the noise level of the pump. We are building out for a larger system and will have a more proper cooling system in place for that, so trying to solve this problem without dumping too much money for the time being.

[wlw33]

Im having a hard time picturing exactly what you system looks like. Is the freezer filled with glycol or do you have another vessel in the freezer holding it? If so you will probably get very slow heat transfer through the other vessel. We also run a very DIY glycol system. We use an igloo cooler with a hacked up window air conditioner cooling it. The cold coil for the AC is immersed in the glycol. Then we have Submersible aquarium pumps that pump glycol to our coils in the fermenters. Hops this helps and good luck!

There's a vessel in the freezer from which the pump draws the liquid.
Could you post pictures of your system?

[rdcpro]

...The big trouble is the noise level of the pump.

Is this a rotary vane pump? Those can be pretty noisy. I'm not sure what you mean by refrigeration pump, but unless there is a crazy amount of head required to move the glycol (like if the run from the tank to the fermenter is long, or the coil diameter very small), just about any small pump like the March AC-5B-MD should work. Then after you upgrade, you have a decent backup pump, if you ever need one. MoreBeer has them (#H325) for $369, but I bought one off ebay for a song. It's quite a lot of pump, actually, and a fairly open/sanitary impeller, though obviously not a sanitary pump.

If your pump is centrifugal, and it's making a lot of noise, it could be cavitating...In bigger pumps that almost sounds like you're pumping marbles. If that's the case, you need more suction head, which means a bigger suction hose, or elevate the glycol reservoir. That March pump has a 1" inlet, and you should use at least 1" hose on it.

Regards,
Mike Sharp