G&D does? So they are just recirculating chillers then ya? Good price point?
Yes they’re recirculating. They are cheaper than the mydax ones (and air cooled), but don’t go down as cold.
Only need like -40. Prettty cold and cheap is better then room temp and cheap
if starting from warm or hot I would suggest multiple stages as common in the brewery industry
one usually a lower cost hydro pre cooler, and a more expensive secondary glycol main chilling system.
penguin coolers makes a badass 2 ton industrial glycol, it requires ancillary pumps tho…
they also have the industrial water chillers as well…
believe their standard system cools 1 GPM from -10 to -60C for reference.
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I’m not an expert, but I would bet that pumping the ethanol through a heat exchanger (counterflow or tube-in-shell) to lower its temp will be much more efficient and faster than cooling a jacketed 400 gallon vessel with a circulating chiller.
With larger vessels you will have surface area to volume ratio issues due to the Square-cube law. I think stirring won’t be very effective. Also, even with insulation on the outside you will still lose precious btu’s to the environment from a large exposed surface area like a jacketed vessel. If you have the actual cooling happening at the heat exchanger, you only need to insulate the holding vessel instead of needing jacket/insulation or a double jacket which can save on fabrication costs.
Also, using an indirect refrigeration system with a large fluid circulating chiller like you are suggesting is very inefficient if it isn’t absolutely necessary. You would be paying Cryodax for what is essentially a packaged vapor-compression refrigeration system, like what is in your car, coupled with a fluid pumping and temp control system. The refrigeration system cools its internal evaporator to -40C which in turn cools the thermal fluid which is then pumped out to your heat exchanger/vessel which has the ethanol circulating inside.
Do you see how the thermal fluid and pumping system are “extra” and not really needed? You could just use your heat exchanger for the ethanol as the evaporator in the refrigeration cycle and cool it directly with the refrigerant. IMO the “extra layer” of the thermal fluid/pump system is for precise process temp control that we don’t need and is a big source of problems/cost.
Another big disadvantage of an indirect cooling method using a circulating fluid chiller like a crydax, is that since the chiller is sold as a packaged unit with the refrigeration system totally enclosed, it will need to exhaust all the heat it removes into your workplace or you will need to setup a water cooling system for it, both can be a pain. If you don’t need a totally packaged system, the refrigerant condenser can be placed outside like a home or other large chilling system.
My point is, all you really need is a vapor-compression refrigeration system that uses your heat exhanger as the evaporator. That is essentially what a system like icedtech or bhogart have been using. I am not really a big fan of either of those companies, but I have to give credit to them here.
A big cryodax is going to be well into the six figure range and will require expensive thermal fluid. You’re really paying extra for the compactness/engineering that went into it as well as the pump/temp control system which you don’t really need. I bet a good HVAC company could set this up for much, much cheaper if you know what cooling capacity you need. Probably low five figures. Hell, I think the Bhogart system with the plate exchangers is about $20k including the liquid pump and heat exchangers. They say it will get 30 gallons of ethanol to -40C in 30 minutes using only a 6HP compressor. I’m sure a trained HVAC tech that’s not trying to cash in on the green rush could do a higher capacity system for around the same price.
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Just to clarify, the CryoDax systems are all water cooled.
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This is how I designed my cryo chilling storage system before I worked out my room temperature process. Jacketed vessel is for storage, but it had a recirculating pumping system and an exchanger setup for the actual ethanol chilling.
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Ding ding!
in the jacketed vessel, yes.
in your fuge? nope!
I was quoted 60K. With an 8 week lead time.
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Hey buddy! Guess even us guys need the spoon occasionally! 
Nothing but love brotha!
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Just wanna toss a number on this situation.
400gal*3.785 L/gal = 1200L
1200L*0.789kg/L = 950kg
Q = 950kg2.6kJ/kgK*60K
Q = 150,000 kJ — Power = P = 15,000 kJ/hr = 4.17kW
Get a cooler with 5+ kW of cooling power
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I’m pretty sure something isn’t quite right with your math there, I’ve done the math before and remember it being alot higher than 5kw. It’s possible I’m the one who made a mistake as well, but I believe you forgot to factor in the time variable to the equation. I’ll run it on paper tomorrow if you want @Rowan
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I need to re-read this thread/
Since I posted this, I have found much much better solutions to cryo.
Cold extraction is a dead end
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Will you explain what you are saying…dead end?
He means that it’s cheaper to upscale room temperature extraction and refinement, so that chilling large volumes of solvent is not required. Maybe this will make sense:
Upscaling a cold biomass extraction method by a factor of “x” costs a factor of “y,” and upscaling by a factor of “2x” costs a factor of “2y” (this isn’t true to hardware, but it absolutely is for heat transfer which translates to power consumption) … whereas upscaling a room temperature biomass extraction with (further processing prior to distillation) by a factor of “2x” may yield “(1.5)y.” And upscaling that room temperature extraction by a factor of “3x” may yield “(1.75)y” for example.
Dunno if that makes any sense to you, but the idea is that the relationship is not linear and directly proportional.
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Totally, thanks for explaining.
Niche?
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I can design a system to pre chill you solvent. And create a dual heat exchanger with a pre cool feature and a low temp storage. I just designed it for one of my customers. He’s using 250 gallon tanks
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