Plate chiller problem

[BrewinLou]

Hey Rich it just occurred to me after reading this...


""We have our pump set at a trickle. So slow that it will probably take longer than an hour to transfer 5bl. Our pump valve is open about 10%."""


So I am picturing that you are regulating the output speed of your pump at the pump with a valve before it goes into the HE, correct? If so I may see a problem. You are sending hot wort into the top of the HE and out the bottom, (which is opposite my Alpha Laval HE) If you just send a trickle through it, seems to me you would not get full surface contact. Have you tried restricting the flow after the HE? This should ensure you have no air pockets, which means you get full surface contact. Just my 2 cents.

[froptus]

I'm assuming that you do have your flow rate thru the heat ex regulated after the heat ex as disscussed earlier in this thread. As far as I know you should be able to run a heat ex exactly the opposite of the way you should and still have it work fine (Hot wort into the cold water input and cold water into the hot wort input). All that matters is that the flows are running thru the heat ex in opposite directions.

It sounds like all of the plates are being utilized. Maybe you don't have enough cold water flow thru the heat ex. How is your water pressure? We use regular city water in our unit. You should have a strong flow going thru the unit. During the course of our 1/2 hour, 7 bbl wort transfer we'll send a good 9-10 bbls of water thru the heat ex. If I want to I can throttle back the flow of water during the transfer but that will result in a increase in the wort temperature. If you don't think you have good city water pressure, maybe try pumping it thru (using a pump with decent hp) and see what happens.

I can hook up my city water hose to any of the heat ex ports and have it come out the opposite port with a flow almost as strong as it goes in.

Also have you tried calling the manufacturer and talking to one of their tech support people?

Good luck.

[Luch15]

I have a Mueller 12 plate, it is a tiny stack, about 4 inches wide, 18 inches high packed 1.5 inches. All stainless. We are in North Florida, in the winter our ground water is 65-70f. I get wort from 212 to 86 in the first pass at 3+ gallons a min with 70f city water as cooling, outlet city water is 116f. In order to cool 4 bbl to 72f it would take 3 hours at 0.6 gallons per min on a single pass. If I recirc back into the kettle and continue recirc for 30-40 mins at 3 gallons a min flow rate the wort ends up at 72. I suggest you try recirculating with a boiling water test and see if it helps. Maybe this could solve your problem until you can get a bigger chiller.

[bward84]

I have the same chiller.

I have the same chiller, with 20 plates added. I had the same issue, and found my problem was throttling before the chiller. I now throttle a valve after the chiller but before the O2 stone with no problems.

And FYI: the specs in the manual are different than the info plate, which is very annoying.