Building an IC69 Heat Exchanger

[Gray Wolf]

I like it! I bet haskel makes a liquid pump. We use gas pressure driven pumps in the natural gas industry all the time, both piston and diaphragm style. They pump some pretty thick oil with some of those diaphragm pumps.

Something else I've been pondering...

What if you could harvest the heat of vaporization and compression of the process gases and use that to heat your collection pot?

This could potentially be accomplished by simply dunking sweaty Betty's condenser in water as well and circulating that warm water around, say, your jacketed shatter platter, or your heated stock pot...

It wouldn't likely be 100% efficient but you're already creating the heat, why not use it?

Good idea and something we'ns are experimenting with.

WW recently supplied SPR Joe with a 3/8" X 20' heat exchanger for his Mk IVB hot pot, and a counter flow N2 heat exchanger for butane/propane injection.

He is running dual TRS-21's, so is producing a lot of heat. He's had it long enough to have in installed, so I'll check and see how much drop he is realizing.

More as data is available. WW will use the data gained to fine tune the Mk VIII designs.

The Mk VIII design harvests the heat with either a coil, or a counter flow heat exchanger (TBD), and runs the cooling steam through an inline electric heater to make up any temperature difference.

It also uses a counter flow heat exchanger for the injection, but also has a triple core heat exchanger to finish cooling the pump discharge before a water trap and drying filter.

To my discredit, I am on too many forums, blogs, and e-mails to keep track of where I saw it, but a brother is experimenting with water cooled aluminum blocks clamped to the TR-21 pump heads, to dissipate heat and increase pump life.

I will share the information and credit the author next time I run across it, but the principle is ostensibly sound and application should be simple to implement. If it works well, maybe CPS might consider implementing it.

 

[Breakover]

Man GW, you never stop raising the bar. Thanks for inspiring others to do the same! Much respect brother!

Not bad for a buncha lazy stoners....

 

[Gray Wolf]

Man GW, you never stop raising the bar. Thanks for inspiring others to do the same! Much respect brother!

Not bad for a buncha lazy stoners....

E Pluribus Unum; this is a fast crowd!

Plumb skeery really, given how many of us there is getting to be!

Never under estimate the intense obsessive/compulsive focus of the organized medicated mind, or the value of the added time we spend frolicking in our imaginations!

 

[Breakover]

E Pluribus Unum; this is a fast crowd!

Plumb skeery really, given how many of us there is getting to be!

Never under estimate the intense obsessive/compulsive focus of the organized medicated mind, or the value of the added time we spend frolicking in our imaginations!

For sure. Many innovators have had that uniquely addictive eureka moment under the influence of one substance or another. Best feeling in the world...

So I've been thinking about water to water geothermal units already fitted with counterflow coils like this one:

http://ingramswaterandair.com/geocool-geothermal-water-water-heat-pump-p-19615.html

They're cupronickel hx's. Have to do a little more digging to determine compatibility, but I don't expect there to be any issues...

 

[Gray Wolf]

For sure. Many innovators have had that uniquely addictive eureka moment under the influence of one substance or another. Best feeling in the world...

So I've been thinking about water to water geothermal units already fitted with counterflow coils like this one:

http://ingramswaterandair.com/geocool-geothermal-water-water-heat-pump-p-19615.html

They're cupronickel hx's. Have to do a little more digging to determine compatibility, but I don't expect there to be any issues...

http://www.alfalaval.com/solution-finder/products/alfa-rex/Documents/AlfaRex - TM20.pdf

 

[Breakover]

So, looks like the flat plate setup was about 10 min faster. We are back to our d/I times, got that 10 minutes back.

No frost on the sweaty Betty evap after installing the drizzle manifold on the fluid return line.

Fluid flow rates were faster than the gravity drain setup we had on our ic69 pot, so I think that may have made the majority of the difference we saw between it and the flat plate.

I think if we can get our ic69 coil in a vessel that can hold just a tad of water pressure - like 3psi - so we can move fluid through it faster, then it will likely perform as well if not better than the flat plate, and won't have any copper in it. I'd love to try a counterflow coil with it as well.

I should note that we are using an unknown mix of gas, but it is mostly n-. Our discharge pressures generally stay about 20psi during recovery.

We plan on pushing the temps down a bit more but we didn't want to work Betty too hard right off the bat. Overall, this is a superior alternative to dry ice for our cooling needs, but it may not serve everyone's. Thank You everyone who offered input.

 

[Sunfire]

Lol mostly a mix of n-??? Propane or butane?

20 psi on the out side is nice and low wow! What pumps are you using? What's your water bath temp?

 

[Breakover]

Lol mostly a mix of n-??? Propane or butane?

20 psi on the out side is nice and low wow! What pumps are you using? What's your water bath temp?

n- butane. We vac purged a few old tanks that had various mixes of canned and bulk gas in them.

Just an appion on a single column Mk V. We set our collection pot temp at 90 once the washes are done. Recovery tank is a 50lb Manchester, and is kept in an ice bath. We kept sweaty Betty between 0 and +10F.

 

[Sunfire]

Well I can see that with an appion and your heat exchanging plate. Using tr21 ' s though I doubt I'll ever see as low as 20.

I'm sure you already know the gauges on appions are worthless? It's pretty easy to plumb in a gauge inline after the pump...just in case you didn't know, cheers!

 

[Breakover]

Well I can see that with an appion and your heat exchanging plate. Using tr21 ' s though I doubt I'll ever see as low as 20.

I'm sure you already know the gauges on appions are worthless? It's pretty easy to plumb in a gauge inline after the pump...just in case you didn't know, cheers!

Agreed. Upsizing your cooler may help with pressures, but I don't have much experience with those pumps so I can't say for sure.

Yes, I have a special kind of hate for appions. We have multiple gauges in multiple locations. 5 total on the whole system not counting the junk ones on the pump.

 

[crazy Steve]

Can you get away with using an ice bath to cool an ic69 and recovery tank or do you need something colder?

 

[Sunfire]

Ice is better than nothing and you'll see a big difference with tr21's as far as pressure and recovery time is concerned. With an appion or a pump with its own air cooled heat exchanger won't make as dramatic as a difference but will still help enough to make it worth doing.

Judging by the number of posts and that question, I'm just going to maybe ask if you read this whole thread? If not then you should go over the part about coil design where it can self drain with gravity. I have personally experienced the clogged snorkel effect damn near doubling pressure and time.

 

[crazy Steve]

Judging by the number of posts and that question, I'm just going to maybe ask if you read this whole thread? If not then you should go over the part about coil design where it can self drain with gravity. I have personally experienced the clogged snorkel effect damn near doubling pressure and time.

Was this directed at me? Hard to tell without quotes. If so, this thread discussed nothing but subzero temps, nothing about using regular ice.

 

[Sunfire]

Ummm yeah, the bit about the drainage I was just throwing in to try to help you just in case you didn't already know, which I think was discussed at one point in this thread, I'm not sure but I know it's also in the recovery pump thread.

I'm pretty sure at points people said they have their tanks in ice baths as northern labs just stated, maybe not coils though. I think you missed my point, ice bath and coils are better than no coils at all. Colder would obviously be better. Depending on your pumps and recovery amount, along with ambient temperature, you might burn through up to 100lbs of ice a day. "Might." 10x12 base with 3x36 spool and 50# tank I saw burn 60 lbs of ice a day last summer, all in coolers too.

For a pre chiller though I'm not sure just an ice bath would help too much though but that's just my opinion.

 

[crazy Steve]

Sunfire, in all honesty, I misunderstood the concept, and after re-reading this thread, your comments, and few things from skunkpharm, I realized my mistake. Too many dabs for me today. It's hard for me to visualize things I read about (I still run passive) without actually seeing them in action. I hope my last comment didn't come off as rude, and I greatly appreciate the info.

 

[Sunfire]

No not at all, was my pleasure sir!

 

[GratefulOne]

So, looks like the flat plate setup was about 10 min faster. We are back to our d/I times, got that 10 minutes back.

No frost on the sweaty Betty evap after installing the drizzle manifold on the fluid return line.

Fluid flow rates were faster than the gravity drain setup we had on our ic69 pot, so I think that may have made the majority of the difference we saw between it and the flat plate.

I think if we can get our ic69 coil in a vessel that can hold just a tad of water pressure - like 3psi - so we can move fluid through it faster, then it will likely perform as well if not better than the flat plate, and won't have any copper in it. I'd love to try a counterflow coil with it as well.

There are compact plate chillers made that are 100% stainless,no gaskets, all welded with no brazing.

I link one a couple of times somewhere on IC back in December.

They can be found for a few hundred dollars.

 

[Breakover]

There are compact plate chillers made that are 100% stainless,no gaskets, all welded with no brazing.

I link one a couple of times somewhere on IC back in December.

They can be found for a few hundred dollars.

Thank you. GW linked one from Alfa Laval up thread a bit, I'll check your posts for those links.

 

[Sunfire]

So I did some distillation today with just the regular coil from nybrew that has both ends rise up. I just put that and the tank in an ice bath. Holy cow it worked great just like that! The tank was staying about 10 degrees cooler than the out line of the coil. The inline of the coil was much hotter. It didn't show any signs of the clogged snorkel effect at all. I only had 10 psi going too! Just with one pump though. Once my ice ran out it went up to 25 psi. I think I'm just going to rock these coils how they are and just ice baths. So much easier to set up! I definitely feel if you have your coils sub zero though and your tank in ice or room temp, the gravity assisted self draining would be crucial. But just with ice and the coil being warmer that the tank, it worked surprisingly well!

 

[Lebniis]

Would anyone care to critique my plan? Just finished studying this thread. I see a lot of people making awesome progress! Congrats! You are all awesome!

I'm looking to keep my 125# storage tank at room temp, using a 1/4" -25' heat exchanger to cool the liquid line prior to flooding (likely with just ice/water). I then plan on running two 3/8" - 50' heat exchangers before each recovery pump (one heat exchanger before each pump, both in a large trashcan with ice/water). I thought I read somewhere in this thread about putting them after the pump, but in the couple years I've been running these things I've never put my heat exchanger after the recovery pump. I suppose you could do both?

I'm running into problems where my flooding temps are around 50 degrees and my recovery temps are around 65 degrees (currently running two recovery pumps through one 1/4" - 25' stainless heat exchanger - obviously not ideal). Things are slow, and the product is too dark. Apprx. 3 hour cycles on a 10lb column.

Thank you in advance.