Conical Jacket water cooling pump?

[thebigpeeler]

Hi Guys,

Got a 100L jacketed conical fermenter from Willis European and I'm looking for a pump that's capable of pumping water from the floor, into a flash cooler and into the jacket.

I've got 2 pumps at the moment, one is a wort pump which does the job, but its not powerful enough to fill the jackets up, it just kinda fills it up partially (you can hear the water trickling into the jacket) and isn't doing a great job of cooling it.

I have another Parker pump which is 1" inlet and outlet, which im reducing down to fit into ~12mm braided hose. This pump works alot better, it nearly fills the jacket up but its loud and i can hear it whirring like crazy, theres no air leaks i just think its down to the fact its designed to pump into a 1" diameter hose and its being reduced far too much.

I just need a quiet one, that will do the job! the wort pump is a flojet and is uber quiet, i think because its a magnetic drive but i dont know anything about pumps to be honest! also its hooked up to an STC-1000 and ive only got about 6A left to play with

Cheers guys!

Oli

[thebigpeeler]

the fla`sh cooler is a calypso 9 with a recirc for a python i think? could this be of any use? i have no idea what a recirc is or a python!

[thebigpeeler]

here she is, if it was coils it would be fine using the one i have but its just not filling those jackets up!

[Fil]

Hi Oli, the recirc or python is a pump that should do what u want it to do, its designed for pumping the waterbath contents along the beerline within an insulated jacket( i think a python is the insulated water/beerline bundle) to the fonts which have the connections so they can also be chilled to promote the condensation effect.

if u dont loop the recic output back to its input, when u turn on the chiller it will just pump out the waterbath contents over u n your feet

yup been there

Also imho sit the chiller above the FV, then should the pump fail the chiller shouldnt just empty the fv jacket contents out of the chiller overflow. u will want to run the waterbath full + the volume of the jacket and pipework,, as long as the pipework is tight and u return to the chiller with a tube that extends above the overflow then feeds below the water surface a pump failure or natural off wont end up in an evacuation of the cooling water, or air in the line.

And insulate the feed lines.. good luck.. and dont be shy with the pics..

FYI

My work in progress, got all the kinks ironed out finally.. u can see i initially planned on having the chiller low and when the pump stopped, all the cooling water in the pipework drained back into the chiller and out the overflow, WHOOPS!

My chiller was fitted with an agitator (lil propeller) to move the waterbath contents instead of a recirculation pump, so i had to pull that and drop in a mini pond pump to substitute

The heat pipe for heating upto 40C is a 10mm 250w or 400w cartridge heater from ebay china fitted with a 40c thermal switch and into the waterflow using a 10mm compression fitting and odd plumbing bits, controlled via the stc1000, if u fit similar remember to detune the stc to react to a temp drop/rise of a few degrees above/below target as cycling while heating/chilling the volume of the waterbath is not desirable... Belt n braces as the thermal mass of the FV should remain pretty stable and resist over/undershooting, but better safe..

hope thats helpful

[thebigpeeler]

thats unbeievably helpful! ill sit the chiller ontop of the fridge right beside it then!

ill have a go tomorrow and see how it goes, thanks alot for the speedy reply!

Oli

[barneey]

Have willis improved the gasket lid design on this version or is it still the gasket with a bump on it?

Cheers

[darkonnis]

The recirculation on the python line should be enough. Just make sure you place the cooler above the fermenter, otherwise the syphon effect will kick in and flood your cooler. I'm presuming of course that you're using a maxi (or equivalent), if you have one of the giant polar ice (or equivalent) coolers you'll probably be alright though.

For my part, I actually recommend using soil heating cable to control the heating part of the system, fitting an element to the cooler lines is extremely counter productive because you're heating cold water, only to cool it down again. It also means more plumbing and complexity, where as a cable literally a length of cable with a plug on the end, doesn't get much simpler