“How to size a glycol chiller?” is a common and important question among brewery owners and homebrewers. The size of your glycol chiller is crucial for beer brewing because it directly affects the quality of the final product and the efficiency of the entire system.
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With this UBC glycol chiller manual, you can calculate the optimal size for your glycol chiller.
So, what is a glycol chiller? A glycol beer chiller is a compact refrigeration unit that uses a mixture of water and a food-grade propylene glycol as a coolant and is designed to cool down beer and ensure that it is continuously refrigerated on its way from a walk-in cooler to the dispensing tower.
What is glycol? Pure propylene glycol is a perfect cooling agent. A 100% pure glycol has a freezing point of -59C (-74.2F). By mixing glycol with water, this temperature can be changed. The most common glycol-to-water ratio would be 35%-40%.
Glycol and water mixture is used as a cooling agent inside a trunk line to maintain the perfect temperature of the product and protect it from getting warm as it moves along the product lines from the keg in the walk-in cooler to the draft beer tower.
The perfect temperature that gives beer the optimum flavor profile is 35-38F. A glycol chiller is a part of a glycol system that helps maintain an optimal temperature inside a beer trunk line and a glycol cooled tower.
But how does a glycol chiller system work exactly? The following pieces of equipment are required for the proper functioning of a glycol beer system:
A glycol chiller working principle is to cool glycol/water mixture down in a specific reservoir and circulate it through the draft system using pump and motor. There are two types of glycol chillers: Air-cooled and Water-cooled.
How the air cooled chiller works? As the name suggests, this type of chillers use the surrounding air to cool themselves. They are the most popular chillers used in a commercial draft systems. Water-cooled chillers require a water source.
Water circulates through the unit and extracts the heat. They are great for closed and confined places with higher humidity. Most commonly they are used in a bigger systems installed in casinos, or stadiums.
The second part of a remote dispensing system is the trunk line. It comes in a variety of sizes and carries product from the cooler to a dispensing tower. Each product line is touching at least one of the glycol lines to keep the product properly refrigerated. It consists of product and glycol lines which are wrapped with moisture barrier tape, foil tape, foam insulation, and extruded exterior jacket to protect the product from worming up and also to prevent condensation forming on the product and glycol lines because of the difference between the ambient temperature and the temperature of the product lines.
Glycol cooled dispensing towers are the last part of the long draw systems. They have glycol lines inside that touch or wrap around the beer shanks inside the tower to keep the perfect temperature for beer dispensing.
If you need more information on how glycol chiller works or would like some assistance in designing your system, please, don’t hesitate to contact UBC Group representatives. They will gladly answer all your questions and help you with the choice of perfect equipment for your needs.
For a better understanding of glycol chiller work here is a glycol chiller system diagram describing the main sets of components:
As you can see from the glycol system diagram, glycol is kept inside the cooling bath and is circulated through the glycol lines inside the trunk line to maintain the temperature of the product lines.
Simply put, the trunk lines act as conduits through which sealed refrigeration lines that run from the power pack to the tower and the product lines from the walk-in cooler are connected to each faucet in the dispensing tower.
Would you like to know how to size a glycol chiller? There are 2 main factors to consider when it comes to sizing a glycol chiller for your long draw system:
Once you have that information, you are ready to calculate the size of the chiller you need.
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Most people know that you can use either Propylene or Ethylene glycol to freeze-protect a hot or chilled loop in their building. But there are other key differences to consider as well:
Should you use pure glycol or one that includes a corrosion inhibitor package?
What are the advantages of a concentrate vs. a product pre-mixed with water?
What kind of corrosion inhibitor should your product use?
Pure Glycol doesn’t have any additives. Some facilities will purchase pure glycol because they happen to find a cheap source, but then they need to supplement with inhibitors and buffers if they want to avoid corrosion and other issues.
All-in-One Products contain glycol plus corrosion inhibitors and pH buffers. If you choose the right blend for your system, you won’t need to purchase any extra additives to protect metal components or minimize the effects of glycol breakdown.
Pre-mixed Glycol Solutions come already diluted with deionized water. This provides a potential shortcut to achieving the right percentage of glycol to water, but it has some practical downsides. You need to buy higher volume – up to 5 times as much – which means higher shipping charges and greater difficulty in transporting and storing.
Concentrate Products are undiluted and pumped directly into your loop. It’s important to know your system water volume so you can use the right amount of concentrate. Assuming this prerequisite is met, concentrate product have some real advantages:
Easier and less expensive to transport
Easier to inject into your system
Allows you to dilute with hard water, providing both anodic and cathodic corrosion protection
Phosphate-based inhibitors are widely used in glycol antifreeze. Phosphate is effective in preventing corrosion and providing a pH buffer, but it has its share of issues. The biggest is that it requires you to use soft or deionized water in your system. If you introduce hard water into your loop, the orthophosphate will interact with the calcium hardness to produce calcium phosphate scale.
Nitrite or Molybdenum-based inhibitors bring a greater level of versatility to glycol solutions. They provide corrosion protection and buffering levels comparable to phosphate, but can also be used with hard water, so a city water source is not an issue.
Whatever product you choose, it’s a good idea to have someone knowledgeable assess the current condition of your closed loop system and your water/glycol solution before you spend additional money on freeze-protection. Glycol is rarely a set-it-and-forget-it kind of purchase – a trained eye to prescribe the right mix for the right variables, and then to help monitor solution stability and corrosion protection over time is always essential.
That being said, most facilities will find that an all-in-one glycol concentrate product with Nitrite/Molybdenum-based corrosion inhibitors provides the best combination of convenience, cost-efficiency, and long-term protection. HOH has designed their Pro-Kool and Gly-Kool product lines based on these specifications, making them an ideal product for a majority of closed loop needs.
If you would like more information on HOH freeze-protection products, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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