Glycol flow speed

[AGB]

Hello Lads, I have unitanks and bright beer tanks in my brewery. Each one has its own pro con pump which I purchased from Fox equipment. I have never regulated the speed of the flow and I think it may just be moving too quickly through the jackets. Now that it has been really warm the last month or so, I can’t get my tanks below 37. The glycol reservoir maintains 26-28F and the return comes back at around 29. I'm wondering if flow speed has anything to do with it. Would slowing down the flow result in better heat exchange. If so, would it be better to place a ball valve at the exit point of the tanks or at the output of the Procon pumps.

[UnFermentable]

The Procon style pumps (rotary vane) are usually meant for beverage line chillers with higher pressure. Is there a reason your system was designed this way? You can generally adjust the pump flow rate By a screw on the pump, but they are usually much higher flow rates than you would need in an average FV/BBT jacket.

Most glycol setups make use of a large process pump to circulate a main loop. Then a solenoid/motorized ball valve is actuated to allow flow to any given tank/jacket. A bypass loop with a flow regulating valve is used to adjust the flow through the jackets.

Rotary vane pumps are positive displacement pumps and you may damage them by attempting to restrict the input/output.

[TGTimm]

If you attempt to restrict the flow of those positive-displacement pump at the outlet of the jacket, you'll likely blow the jackets right off the fermenters.

Centrifugal pumps--or a single centrifugal pump--would be much better suited to your purpose.

[AGB]

Thanks guys. I had a loop with solenoids in the beginning for all five tanks with just one pump. It was a PITA. I had a couple of pressure gauges on the loop and the pressure never got near 15psi. I decided to get rid of the loop and I replumbed everything. Using a controller and pump for each FV or BBT is just simpler for me and it makes tracking down problems easier. I basically now have 5 loops with one tank per loop. These are only 5bbl tanks. They all have dual zones and I run the jackets on each tank in series, not parallel. The glycol flows into the lowest port on the cone and then out the top port of the cone into the lowest port on the main body of the tank. It exits the highest port and I have a valve to bleed air if necessary.

I think I have solved my little cooling "problem" today. My tanks came with thermowells that were only 6" long. A while back, I noticed that my controller was reading colder than the beer coming out of the sample valve which was actually 5F warmer than indicated. So, I adjusted the offset by +5. Later, I bought some 12" and 18" thermowells. What I did not do was recalibrate the probe using the longer thermowell. Using an ice bath, my other probes were reading 32.5 and 33F in the ice bath. However, the controller in the BBT with the 18" well was reading higher by nearly 6F. So, I set the offset back to 0 and then it read about 32.4 or 32.5F. Now, I'm not having any issues.