Building an IC69 Heat Exchanger

[montroller]

I'm not sure what pump you are running but most are designed to recover vapor not liquid so it might be better to put the coil after the pump.

Also my 50' 3/8 pre chiller is barely enough to chill the solvent to desired temps so it might be better to go longer. A wider diameter there will prevent any residual water from clogging the lines if frozen.

 

[A6 Grower]

Your heat exchanger isnt doing anything before your pump, its used to dissipate the heat produced FROM the pump and the action of recompressing the butane vapor into a liquid. 25' is also not enough to cool your liquid from two pumps. Heres my setup....

125# storage tank, 3/8 hose going to 50' of 3/8 SS coil sitting in glycol thats inside of my freezer. then a 3/8" hose going to the machine. Thats the pre injection cooling that's able to bring my room temp butane down to -10F.

For recovery i have my two G5's feeding OUT threw 1/4"(only 1/4" on my whole system, the recovery lines are 3/8") hoses into a 3/8" Tee connected to my 50' of 3/8 SS coil then a 3/8 hose back to the 125# tank. This is the post recovery cooling thats able to take the hot butane coming out of the pumps and cool it down to around 0 to 10F as it goes back into the 125# tank.

1/4" coils are pointless and just slow things down.

 

[Hydrosun]

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.

#125lb tanks check!

I have assembled with friends both 1/2" and 3/8" IC69's. I've used 25' and 50'. Also pretty sure I have post #1 updated with the best places to but the crap, but feel free to PM me.

I LOVE room temp tank with heat exchanger in front of the injection point. I am learning temp control and finding that very low temps breaks a lot of SS ball valves. I have linked to the high pressure ones etc...

I also LOVE heat exchange after the recover pump and before the recovery tank (doesn't have to be same as room temp tank, but can be).

 

[Sunfire]

Your heat exchanger isnt doing anything before your pump, its used to dissipate the heat produced FROM the pump and the action of recompressing the butane vapor into a liquid. 25' is also not enough to cool your liquid from two pumps. Heres my setup....

125# storage tank, 3/8 hose going to 50' of 3/8 SS coil sitting in glycol thats inside of my freezer. then a 3/8" hose going to the machine. Thats the pre injection cooling that's able to bring my room temp butane down to -10F.

For recovery i have my two G5's feeding OUT threw 1/4"(only 1/4" on my whole system, the recovery lines are 3/8") hoses into a 3/8" Tee connected to my 50' of 3/8 SS coil then a 3/8 hose back to the 125# tank. This is the post recovery cooling thats able to take the hot butane coming out of the pumps and cool it down to around 0 to 10F as it goes back into the 125# tank.

1/4" coils are pointless and just slow things down.

Just a small suggestion...it will probably work better to have seperate coils after the pumps and T the lines post coils. The coils reduce heat and pressure, they are essentially condensors. I feel it makes more sense to reduce the pressure BEFORE you T the lines together. This should give you more flow because if you T the lines at higher pressures that's obviously going to reduce flow because now you have half the volume of hose to move the vapor through as you did with 2 hoses.

Also, you don't need to get the 125# heavy k tank style cylinder if you want bigger fittings. Century tools sells a manchester 100# recovery cylinder with 3/4 npt fittings on it.

 

[Chonkski]

You guys are awesome.


ICmag to me, is like facebook to highschool kids.


....jus sayin

 

[A6 Grower]

Just a small suggestion...it will probably work better to have seperate coils after the pumps and T the lines post coils. The coils reduce heat and pressure, they are essentially condensors. I feel it makes more sense to reduce the pressure BEFORE you T the lines together. This should give you more flow because if you T the lines at higher pressures that's obviously going to reduce flow because now you have half the volume of hose to move the vapor through as you did with 2 hoses.

Also, you don't need to get the 125# heavy k tank style cylinder if you want bigger fittings. Century tools sells a manchester 100# recovery cylinder with 3/4 npt fittings on it.

Ya i agree 2 coils would work better but im not seeing any added pressure before the coil compared to whats in the tank, speaking of which thats what i have is the 100# manchester with 3/4 valves, dont know why i was thinking it was 125#. Back to the coils. The 3/8 tee seems to work just fine for now, i dont think the g5's push enough to create a backup/pressure. Usually my out line is around 40psi and gets higher at the end of the day when my glycol starts to warm up. Also i cant fit that many coils in my freezer lol, I have 2 for the big machine and two for my little machine, its basically full and i cant fit a bigger freezer in my currently machine/running room. But like i said, the one coil is working great and takes hot butane all the way down to almost 0F which is kinda pointless as it goes into a room temp tank lol.

What i do need to change is make every coil in its own glycol bath, right now they all just share one. I atleast need to make 2 baths, one for post recovery and one for preinjection. Dont know why i didnt do that to begin with. I was to excited to use the coils lol

 

[Chonkski]

Ya i agree 2 coils would work better but im not seeing any added pressure before the coil compared to whats in the tank, speaking of which thats what i have is the 100# manchester with 3/4 valves, dont know why i was thinking it was 125#. Back to the coils. The 3/8 tee seems to work just fine for now, i dont think the g5's push enough to create a backup/pressure. Usually my out line is around 40psi and gets higher at the end of the day when my glycol starts to warm up. Also i cant fit that many coils in my freezer lol, I have 2 for the big machine and two for my little machine, its basically full and i cant fit a bigger freezer in my currently machine/running room. But like i said, the one coil is working great and takes hot butane all the way down to almost 0F which is kinda pointless as it goes into a room temp tank lol.

What i do need to change is make every coil in its own glycol bath, right now they all just share one. I atleast need to make 2 baths, one for post recovery and one for preinjection. Dont know why i didnt do that to begin with. I was to excited to use the coils lol

Nice, this is kind of what I've been wanting to do as well. Have you completely eliminated the need for ice yet?

I think I remember you saying if the glycol gets too warm (hours into processing) for your liking you'd throw a chunk of D/I in there to bring it back down?

I could be mistaken for someone else mentioning that too....

 

[Hydrosun]

For added pressure HEAT the solvent tank to desired temp. GW and Montroller posted the pressure at temp and blend chart. IF you have some R290 in your blend you have a lot higher pressure....

 

[Sunfire]

Clearly a g5 puts out less heat so yeah that may not be as big as a concern. A tr21 puts out like 150F. As things are hotter they expand, as they cool they contract. You can see that in your machine with a water bath at 60F versus 120F for instance. The higher temp will give you much higher pressure. If you are using tr21 pumps I'm almost positive doing your T or Y after the coils will give you more flow. You may not see lower pressures at the gauges at your pumps (the appion built in ones are crap) but I theorize that you should.

I had the idea for not using ice and do the coil in the freezer setup but I was lazy, maybe next year. I would want to elevate the bottom of the freezer above the tank valves to use a gravity assisted self draining system. I also decided not to do it because as you guys have pointed out, the freezer compressor can't keep up with the heat. I know someone that has that setup and he said the same thing, freezer is at like 40F from -30F by end of the day.

 

[Sunfire]

You guys are awesome.


ICmag to me, is like facebook to highschool kids.


....jus sayin

RIGHT!?!?!

I feel bad cause sometimes in threads I'm like every other post for 5 pages, hehehe oops! I get bored easily!

 

[HashoftheTitans]

I set my heat exchanger up to be used as a prechiller and post chiller. I overload it with dry ice pellets and with a few gallons of iso it does the trick. I don't use it for recovery until I am done injecting. It burns through dry ice too fast. Instead, I have a separate immersion coil that is in my recovery pot bath. While I am extracting, I use that coil to barely heat the water bath and chill the butane stream before it hits the room temperature 100lb tank.

 

[montroller]

Can you go into a little more detail on how you sealed the bottom fitting? I have seen a few ways to do it but I am not confident any of them will hold when the temps get way down there.

Also I was just wondering what other liquids people are using besides ISO, preferably something less flammable. Would anti-freeze or glycol work?

 

[HashoftheTitans]

It wasn't easy. All the bulkhead fittings I found were short. I actually thread locked one and had cut it off. I just took my compression fitting and put a large washer on it and gooped it with silicone sealant. I pushed it through the hole in the pot, put on the o ring and cranked the bulkhead nut down. This exposed barely enough threads to get a good seal to my tees. They passed the 300 psi test once I got them cranked down with plenty of ptfe tape.

 

[montroller]

God damn how are you testing to 300 PSI? That is pushing the limits of the PTFE tape lol, actually HD yellow tape which is the strongest I know of is only rated to 300 PSI.

 

[HashoftheTitans]

I choose iso just because I had it lying around and hadn't good ventilation. I am actually more interested in making a pressurized vessel similar to a ln2 dewar with coils inside so. I can do ln2 and iso. Then it could be chilled quickly to around -100C and vented outside by a pressure relief valve.

 

[HashoftheTitans]

God damn how are you testing to 300 PSI? That is pushing the limits of the PTFE tape lol, actually HD yellow tape which is the strongest I know of is only rated to 300 PSI.

I just tested the heat exchanger that high, nothing else. Tr21 had no problem getting atmosphere that high.

 

[Gray Wolf]

I set my heat exchanger up to be used as a prechiller and post chiller. I overload it with dry ice pellets and with a few gallons of iso it does the trick. I don't use it for recovery until I am done injecting. It burns through dry ice too fast. Instead, I have a separate immersion coil that is in my recovery pot bath. While I am extracting, I use that coil to barely heat the water bath and chill the butane stream before it hits the room temperature 100lb tank.

We have a 1/2" X 20' coil in Joe's recovery pot bath to salvage pump heat before going to the chilled heat exchanger. We just went in and out the top.

On heat exchangers with high thermal cycling, we weld in couplings to go through the tank side wall.

The coil is a tight fit with the recovery pots clamped bottom, but would be no issues with welded bottoms.

 

[cerkilr]

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adept is that a 50' 1/2" coil?

 

[gholladay]

I'm looking at a set up like this:

100# manchester tank w/. 3/4" valves > 1/4" hose > 1/2" x 50' chiller > 3/8" hose to injection.

After the collection pot it will go 1/2" hose > 1/2" x 25' evap coil in warm bath > 1/2" hose > haskel > 1/2" hose > 1/2" x 50' post chiller coil > 1/2" hose > tank

I'm planning to put paramount ball valves at the inlet and exit of each coil. I'm looking at the options on the custom coil site. They show a photo of a coil in a pot with bulkhead compression fittings on their site, so I'm hoping they will just sell it to me like that.

I'm planning to use either ice and water or DI and alcohol depending on the temps I'm trying to reach on that run. I'm going to insulate the pot with neoprene. Can anyone see any reasons to modify this idea? If so, what and why?

Thanks,

GH

 

[Hydrosun]

I use 50' 1/2" everywhere. Why would you use less coil lenght or width?

Also after recovery pot to filter dryer, to recover pump, to ic69 cooling coil.

I don't understand an ic69 in a warm bath unless you are creating head pressure and don't want to warm a full tank.

I hope you buy a bad ass custom piece from stainlessbrewing.com I really need to get them on the phone and discuss custom options.