Co2 line diameters and bulk tanks

[J.Utah#9]

Startup brewery (20 bbl brewhouse, 40bbl FVs and BBTs) 160 bbls FV capacity
-What diameter Co2 lines are people using for head pressure, purging, carbonating etc.? Seems 1/4" is fairly standard, wondering if using reducers and what not and going to 1/2" would be more beneficial.
-What size bulks tanks are people using? Are you having trouble with freezing by putting too much draw on the system?

Thanks

[TGTimm]

We use 1/2" copper line from our bulk Dewars to distribute our CO2 throughout the brewery. A primary regulator reduces the pressure from the ~300 psi at the Dewars to ~100 psi for the main trunk. From secondary regulators located near areas of use, we use 1/4" ID PE flexible line. This gives us plenty of volume for anything we do in the ferms and bright tanks. The keg push for the pub and drop line to the bottling line are also 1/4" ID.

[Mike Elliott]

Co2 hx

We have a similar setup to TG in above post. We were having icing problems on regulators during heavy draw (purging tanks, etc) and our CO2 rep installed an eight foot finned heat exchanger to warm the gas as it left the bulk tank that completely fixed the freezing issue.

[TGTimm]

We had a similar problem, but decided to make the CO2 do a little work for us. We used two parallel 50' coils of 1/2" soft copper tubing in one of our glycol backs so the CO2 would warm while chilling the glycol. I don't have anyway to measure the effectiveness of this set up, but it looked good to me and didn't cost much.

[tylerjonz]

Finned Heat exhanger

We have a similar setup to TG in above post. We were having icing problems on regulators during heavy draw (purging tanks, etc) and our CO2 rep installed an eight foot finned heat exchanger to warm the gas as it left the bulk tank that completely fixed the freezing issue.[ATTACH]18457[/ATTACH]

Hi Mike,

Saw that you have this finned heat exchanger installed. What brand it that? Did you buy it or rent it. If you could shoot me an email with the manufacture of that it would be much appreciated.

Tyler@blackhogbrewing.com

Cheers,
Tyler

[rdcpro]

Hi Mike,

Saw that you have this finned heat exchanger installed. What brand it that? Did you buy it or rent it. If you could shoot me an email with the manufacture of that it would be much appreciated.

Tyler@blackhogbrewing.com

Cheers,
Tyler

If you google "ambient air vaporizer" (without the quotes) you'll find more hits on this (they're not called heat exchangers, even though that's what they do). Your gas supplier should be able to add it. You rent your bulk tank from them, right? Lots of companies make vaporizers, and they're all pretty much the same.

In case someone is thinking of DIY on this, check with your CO2 supplier, because the vaporizers I've worked with are plumbed to the liquid line, not the gas out. In a portable dewar, the gas out line actually draws liquid, and goes through a coil that is brazed to the outside wall of the dewar, so that the liquid vaporizes. There is a second coil called the pressure building circuit that maintains pressure in the dewar through a separate regulator. Either of these may be overwhelmed by excess demand--you'll see the wall of the dewar ice up and freeze. I don't think *all* portable bulk dewars utilize this, however. Some provide only a liquid out, and you use external equipment to maintain pressure in the dewar.

A winery client of mine used to run water on the small integrated pressure building regulator and down the side of the VGL to help out with demand on a bottling line. But this was liquid nitrogen and argon, so much colder than CO2, and the water they used was irrigation water, so not as expensive to waste as city water.

Most of my experience has been with bulk nitrogen, argon and oxygen, though, so CO2 might be handled differently, but if you're going to retrofit a VGL (or other portable dewar) with an external vaporizer, check with your gas supplier to be sure how it's done on that vessel!

Regards,
Mike Sharp

[beerguy1]

We use 1/2" copper line from our bulk Dewars to distribute our CO2 throughout the brewery. A primary regulator reduces the pressure from the ~300 psi at the Dewars to ~100 psi for the main trunk. From secondary regulators located near areas of use, we use 1/4" ID PE flexible line. This gives us plenty of volume for anything we do in the ferms and bright tanks. The keg push for the pub and drop line to the bottling line are also 1/4" ID.

We should be getting our new IDD keg washer next week plus we are getting another CO2 (750) tank and a vaporizer about the same time. We are going with 1/2 pex line to run to the surge tanks then 1/4 beyond that

[TGTimm]

Mike--congrats on the IDD keg washer--we love ours and it's been trouble-free for the several months we've been using it. The manual sucks, but it's basically put the keg on the coupler and push the button. Long cycle (2) for really dirty kegs and acid wash, short cycle (1) for regular cleaning.

Make that line from the surge tank to the keg washer at least 3/4", and keep it short! These machines use big bursts of air/gas very briefly, and if you can't move that much air/gas, you'll be slowing the cycles down considerably. With our surge tanks at 125 psi, high-flow 1" port low-pressure regulators (Rego Cryogenic 1788AE), and less than 3' of 3/4" line to the machine, we get cycle times of less than 2' 30" and 3' 30"--about as fast as the machine can run.

The big regulators can be pretty spendy, but call Mark at US Cryogenics in Washougal, WA--he set us up with a couple of rebuilt regs for very cheap, and they look and work like new: http://www.uscryogenicsinc.com/contact/default.html