Anyone ever built a chiller + reservoir in a freezer?

Hash and Stuff Solvent Recovery
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Yo!

I was thinking about cutting a couple holes in the lid of a small chest freezer and either putting a keg of glycol in there, or maybe just filling the whole thing with glycol, then running a copper coil or two through the whole thing. Figured a big reservoir like that would provide a ton of cooling, especially if I let it sit overnight.

Would run cooling fluid through the coils? Or even just pump the liquid directly and not even both with the coils at all?

My only worries would be the freezer running too much? (Blow the pump on my $100 used freezer) or hitting a coil or something in the lid?

Any thoughts on the topic? Seems like it’s a good potential combination of cheap & effective.

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Thinking of doing the same myself

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I have a freezer full of glycol/water and it has lived for a while now. No coil in the glycol but the freezer was cheap and still works. it does radiate a noticable amount of heat. It doesn’t run as often as I thought it would.

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freezer/fridge isnt meant for a constant heat load and the compressor is small. a window AC unit is far superior to make a diy chiller from.

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I bet it doesn’t, the freezer must hold an enormous amount of thermal mass.

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What if you use the freezer to get as cold as it can as in res. And put the ac coils inside for extra power?

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The freezer will get the coolant to low temp but as soon as a load is put on it it will start heating up

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Hence why I’m thinking multiple ac units to pick up the slack

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Did you ever try it?

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I did this with a Kenmore freezer. filled it with glycol and put a recirculating pump in it. I found it worked relatively good. the freezer did not kick on as much as I thought. cheap chiller the thing that went out first was the pump. freezer kept going.

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I use to eo this when i was running crude. Filled a 17cf freezer full of water and had i plumbed to all my heat exchangers. Worked great never used any dry ice and i was getting over a lb a min with cmepols.

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I have done this before and it worked pretty well. You just need a lot of PG to keep it rocking effectively.

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A freezer has hardly any chilling capacity you need to use a window AC

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I ran 2 cmepol’s off it and got over a lb min running ober 100f collection pot wayer it would work for 5 days then take off the weekend and by then it was frozen solid again. Never used a single lb of dry ice, and using 100+psi vapor pushes. Just how i had it set up im sure theres better ways but no chiller no dry ice just a freezer from sears I couldn’t complain

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I found when i got s sure flow pump so the sump pump wasnt in the water heating it up it worked even better and i didnt have any pg in the water that was next if that set up wasn’t effective enough

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How much solvent do you recover using this?
How much warmer was it at the end of the run?

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Theough out the day 200# give or take. The water wojldnt melt all the ice that would take 4-5 days and then do other stuff on the weekends while the freezer completely refeoze. But like i said once i stopped using a sump pump which was adding alot of heat to rhe wayer and got a sure flow pump that sat on top of the freezer it helped immensely

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Link to pump? What size freezer? Think im going to do this

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17 cf kenmore from sears. I don’t remember the pump model bur sureflow was the manufacturer and they have tons of options if your only using water (which is what there usually for) you dont need any special seals in the pump. I was nust using a sump pump which generated alot of heat

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Would you freeze your coils in the ice or did you put water and let it freeze amd add more water?