Short, squat HLT--will this work?

[TGTimm]

Hey, brewery engineers--I'm spec'ing out a new HLT for the brewery, and due to space constraints and some possibly off-the-wall ideas of my own, I'd like it to be 6' X 6', cylindrical, 46 bbl. This is so it will fit in the space I have, and fit through the door, and because I feel this gives us a minimum surface-to-volume, hence better heat retention.

The elements (200 kW) would be 1' off the shallow-coned bottom to allow for sedimentation without too-frequent clean-outs. My question is whether this set-up will heat efficiently, with good circulation, or will it simply stagnate and stratify?

[dick murton]

Anything will work to some degree, but I would be very tempted to put in a recirculation pump, or rather, have a branch off the delivery pump, back into the tank, and run it at least periodically during use - both heating and maintenance of heat. I have no idea of flow rates required, but would suggest putting the loop back in to the tank on the opposite side of the tank to the heating elements and at say 20 degrees, rather like the input to a whirlpool, to improve the mixing. Low level take of course and about the height of the lowest heating coil / element.

Happy for anyone else to differ.

[TGTimm]

That sounds like a very good idea. I wonder if our bypass pressure regulator would provide sufficient flow?

[Bainbridge]

We rigged up a little grundfoss pump a little while ago to recirc our tank. You can program them to run for a couple minutes every 15, or all the time, or whatever. We just run ours all the time, it draws very little power and turns like 2 gallons a minute on our 20bbl HLT. Our big problem was stratification below the heating element, so that 60 gallons gets pumped around every half hour or so. We also have a pressure bypass loop, so whenever we run the HLT pump it also mixes.