A port of my post from Homebrewtalk.com found at http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/closed-loop-evaporative-wort-chiller-217094/
Reading the forums, I noticed that a lot of people were feeling somewhat guilty about all the water that they go through chilling their beer. As a good engineer interested in thermodynamics, I decided that I would take a shot at tackling this problem. Since many of the people with the water issues were in warm climates with fairly warm water temperatures tended to be in the southwest, I decided that an evaporative chiller would be the easiest and most effective way to go.
My cooling system consists of the following parts connected in this order
1: High head pump (115' head, 650GPH))
2: Wort chiller (I used an immersion chiller but a counterflow or other isolated chiller would work as well)
3: Spray head (constructed out of PVC, 1/8" hole with flat surface to disperse water, I used a 14 Ga. copper wire)
4: Spray Column (used some circular duct from an old furnace install)
5: Reservoir (An old trash can in my case, I cleaned it, but it doesn't really matter)
The idea is to pump the water through the chiller and disperse it into a fine mist while moving massive amounts of air to evaporate as much water as possible. Each pound of water evaporated removes about 960 BTU from the environment in the form of a temperature drop. With evaporative cooling, it is possible to cool the working fluid down to the dew point so that means you can cool below the outside temperature which can be very significant in dry climates.
I have some more pics and details of the rig following
My cooling system consists of the following parts connected in this order
1: High head pump (115' head, 650GPH))
2: Wort chiller (I used an immersion chiller but a counterflow or other isolated chiller would work as well)
3: Spray head (constructed out of PVC, 1/8" hole with flat surface to disperse water, I used a 14 Ga. copper wire)
4: Spray Column (used some circular duct from an old furnace install)
5: Reservoir (An old trash can in my case, I cleaned it, but it doesn't really matter)
The idea is to pump the water through the chiller and disperse it into a fine mist while moving massive amounts of air to evaporate as much water as possible. Each pound of water evaporated removes about 960 BTU from the environment in the form of a temperature drop. With evaporative cooling, it is possible to cool the working fluid down to the dew point so that means you can cool below the outside temperature which can be very significant in dry climates.
I have some more pics and details of the rig following
The rig worked very well, however it should be noted that we were working in 20 degree weather. We were able to cool 5 gallons of beer from 180 to 80 in about 6 minutes which is on par with what I was able to achieve with straight well water. We did have a failure in the system as one of the hoses obtained from the trash essentially burst in use but lasted long enough for some results.
Some other relevant info:
With the mist nozzle on, flow rates of 4GPM were obtained. this was using a 1/8" orifice.
Estimated airflow would be between 400 and 600CFM without any fans etc...
A pic of the spray head
A pic of the system in action during the first test run. notice the ice. During the first test, it brought 4 gallons of water from 60F to a tub of slush in 7 minutes
Some other relevant info:
With the mist nozzle on, flow rates of 4GPM were obtained. this was using a 1/8" orifice.
Estimated airflow would be between 400 and 600CFM without any fans etc...
A couple videos of it in action
Looks amazing!!!! /I look forward to your feedback /thanks for this man it was very helpful.
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Does look cool wish I thought of it. Did you try this during the summer? How many HP is your pump?
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