How to Save Money When Buying Glycol Water Chiller

CHOOSING A CHILLER: 5 FACTORS TO CONSIDER

When it comes to chillers, figuring out where to start is the tricky part. Air-cooled or water-cooled? Used or new? What size do you need? The experts at Cold Shot Chillers cover all of these questions and more in today's article.       

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What Are Industrial Chillers?

An industrial chiller is a refrigeration system that keeps equipment and materials cool, allowing operations to run smoothly. Air Conditioners dehumidify air while water chiller systems cool down fluids that can be used to condition spaces or cool processes, simply by removing heat. However, these units are not 'cooling' or 'chilling' anything; they simply remove heat.

Factors to Consider for Your Chiller Choice

There are a few general rules of thumb to keep in mind when selecting a new cooling system. Keep reading to gain a better understanding of the different chiller types available on the market.

1. Size

Size is one of the biggest factors to consider when buying a chiller. Selecting a correctly sized chiller is paramount. A chiller that is too small won't properly cool your equipment or materials. On the other hand, a chiller that is too large will work just fine, but providing excess capacity will over time fail prematurely due to short cycling. In addition, you've spent more money than you needed to. So how do you know what size chiller you need?

Industrial chillers come in a variety of sizes, ranging from ¼ ton to thousands of tons in capacity. We recommend you use a chiller size calculator to determine what size chiller you need for your application. Below are some examples of chiller sizes based on industry standards.

• Medical Chillers ' 7 ½ ton and 5-ton chillers; or 12 ½ and 15-ton chillers for cooling multiple medical devices simultaneously
• Welding Chillers ' it's advised to have at least 1-ton of chilling capacity for 100KVA of welder capacity
• Winery Chillers ' typically, a 2-ton air cooled chiller is sufficient for most winery applications
• Waterjet Cutting Chillers ' common sizes are 2 and 3 ton
• Hydroponic Chillers ' sizes generally range from 1.5 to 100 tons
• Flower Chiller ' sizes range typically from 2-100 tons

Keep in mind that these sizes are only based on industry standards. Manufacturers like Cold Shot Chillers can design and build custom units of virtually any size. We highly recommend using a chiller sizing tool with exact measurements for the most accurate estimation. You can also reach out to our experienced team for additional help with sizing requirements or general questions.

2. Application

Chillers have various applications for all types of industries. For example, they are used for medical applications such as radiotherapy, PET scans, laboratory operations, and even blood bank refrigeration. In addition, MRI chillers and CT chillers are used frequently in the healthcare sector.

Food processing chillers serve a variety of applications in the food and beverage industry. Depending on your specific setting, you can choose from bakery chillers, winery glycol chillers, brewery glycol chillers, dairy milk chillers, and even commercial yogurt machine chillers.

Metal finishing chillers can be beneficial for paint and powder coating, anodizing, die casting cooling, furnace cooling, quench cooling, and more.

Explosion-proof chillers are commonly used in chemical processing plants, coal plants, oil and gas refineries, and other work environments that interact with flammable gases and vapors.

Cold Shot Chillers offers additional industry-specific chiller types, including laser chillers, plastic processing chillers, government and municipal chillers, welding chillers, and more. 

3. Type

Industrial chillers can be categorized in a few different ways. Let's take a look at five types of chiller classifications.

• Air Cooled Chillers ' Air-cooled systems are generally cheaper than water-cooled chillers. However, they tend to release significant amounts of heat, so these chillers are best-suited for facilities where heat is not an issue.
• Water Cooled Chillers ' Water chillers are typically quieter and more efficient than air-cooled chillers. Therefore, they are suitable for commercial-scale and small-scale facilities.
• Portable Chillers ' In this case, the term 'portable' does not refer to the mobility of the chiller. Instead, it means that a chiller contains all the system's basic components in a single footprint.
• Stationary Chillers ' Chillers that are 'stationary' do not include a tank or pump. Instead, they are stand-alone units that must be connected to a reservoir and pump to function.
• Central Chillers ' These chillers are used to cool several processes. They can have a portable or stationary configuration, and they can be air-cooled or water-cooled.

4. Pricing

Industrial chillers can range in price anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. As mentioned before, water chillers are typically more expensive than air-cooled chillers. In addition, different chiller manufacturers all design and price their systems uniquely, so make sure to carefully compare prices and weigh your options before making a purchase.

5. Manufacturer

Always familiarize yourself with the manufacturer and their policies ahead of time. Ask the following questions and more before choosing a chiller:

• Do they offer a chiller warranty?
• What's the turnaround time?
• How are new chillers tested?
• Do they offer chiller accessories and tools?
• How is the chiller prepped for shipment? 
• Has the company been around for a while? The longer a company has been in business chances are good the company is reputable and trustworthy.
• Does the chiller design use any proprietary components? That replacement part might carry a high price tag since these types of parts are generally used to control the chiller. Over time these items become obsolete and no longer supported.
• How easy is it to reach a live person? Can you get technical and commercial issues resolved over the quickly?
• Has the chiller manufacturer built a chiller handling the same type of application or something similar?
• Does the chiller company make it easy to do business with? Can you discuss your application with a knowledgeable technical representative? Can you get a quote issued for your project quickly? Does the submittal information include everything you need about the chiller you are considering?
• Deal directly with the manufacturer to cut out the middleman. This will alleviate any confusion on how your chiller should be configured and possibly save some time and money.

Looking to buy a new or used chiller? Look no further! Cold Shot Chillers is a Houston-based industrial chiller manufacturer with decades of industry experience.

Finding the Right Chiller for Your Company

We hope that you've learned some valuable information here that will help you make the best purchase. We're confident that we can find a solution for you, no matter what you're looking for!

Want more information on Glycol Water Chiller? Feel free to contact us.

How big of glycol volume will you be able to have?  How big of batches do you brew?

I tried to use a mini fridge to keep my chill water cold for 10 gallon batches and in my experience it just didn't work.  Air to liquid temperature transfer is very slow.  I ended up going the DIY chiller route with a window AC unit after the refrigerator crapped out shortly after I tired it.  The DIY chiller works really well.

It could work if you have a big enough volume of liquid so you have enough thermal mass to compensate for the low temp transfer between liquid and air.  Someone much smarter than me with formal education in thermal dynamics could calculate the volume you would need for your batch size.  If you can get the glycol in direct contact with the cooling element in the freezer you would have much better luck. 
I would maybe try looping some copper tubing around the freezer element to get some direct contact with the element and improve the efficiency of the freezer to chill the liquid.

Summary, in my experience it didn't work but if you do some things differently maybe you can succeed where I failed.

I've thought about this a bit, I have a minifridge that I straightened out the freezer portion and have thought of putting a reservoir around that.

For what you're talking about, increasing the reservoir size will help. I'd also think about running the return through a radiator to try and draw as much heat out before it returns to the reservoir. I'd also try and separate the supply and return as much as possible so you don't start pulling warm return fluid out with your pump. Physical distance or a baffle in between the supply and return ports could help.

I can see where a mini fridge would not provide a large enough negative thermal mass.  A full size freezer MIGHT hold enough cold liquid for a 5 gal batch, again, I have no idea how to approach the numbers to justify even trying this.  Here's some dumb math.  If you are chilling 5 gallons of wort and you have 5 gallons of 30F water in the freezer, and your target wort temp is 60F, then if your beginning wort temp is 90F, you should make it.  The only way you can increase the cooling capacity would be increase the size of the (negative) thermal mass, and/or ditch the convective cooling of the glycol and work out a way to immerse the cooling coils from the fridge unit into the glycol itself.  I went the way of the converted window air conditioner and it works great.

You could make your own extremely efficient glycol chiller out of a mini fridge, freezer, or a wall unit.  All you need is some refrigeration knowledge, an EPA Section 608 license, and know how to braze.

Purchase a cheap refrigerator or freezer.

Purchase a heat exchanger.

Then the fun part:
Evacuate the refrigerant.
Destroy the fridge/freezer cabinet.  You don't need the cabinet part of the unit, because you will have refrigerant cooling the glycol or other liquid coolant directly.
Remove the evaporator coil.
Braze the cap tube from the fridge/freezer into the heater exchanger.
Braze the suction line for the fridge/freezer to the other side of the heat exchanger.
Consider adding a suction line accumulator (optional).
Connect your hoses to the heat exchanger for the liquid coolant.
Pull a vacuum to 5 microns.
Recharge the system with refrigerant.
Insulate the heat exchanger very well.
Connect your temp control, inkbird or otherwise to turn on both the compressor and water/glycol pump when cooling is called for.  Alternatively you can have the inkbird or other control turn the compressor on for cooling and leave the water/glycol pump to run continuously.
You will not need the original thermostat built into the fridge/freezer, because your using a seperate control with a temp probe in the fermentation vessel.  Hopefully you'll be using a thermowell.

Overall the package will take up much less space than the original fridge/freezer, because your only using the refrigeration system from the mini fridge/freezer and not the cabinet.  A 4 cuft or 5 cuft fridge or freezer unit should work nicely.

Benefits:

• Very low footprint.
• Refrigerant directly cools the fluid.  Much more efficient and fast.  Much better than coiling a tube inside a fridge/freezer cabinet for water/air heat transfer or coiling a tube against an evaporator coil.
• Save money instead of buying a pre-made glycol chiller system for thousands of dollars.

Source:
That would be me.  EPA Section 608 Licensed.  Many years of experience in refrigeration working for a medical devices manufacturer of scientific fridges, freezers, ultra-low temp freezers (cascade systems), and cryogenic tanks.

EDIT:  Just remembered.  If the mini fridge/freezer has the condensing coils embedded in the side walls you won't be able to destroy the cabinet.  There are units out there, typically referred to as 'built in' units, that have the condensing coil and fan located at the bottom rear instead of being foamed in the side walls.  One of those would be ideal.  They usually have a vent under the door.  Here is an example:

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