I’m the jerk who started the Who sells huge cryo chillers that aren’t huge disappointments? thread, and for $70k you would have been far better off buying something from Fluid Chillers for cryo temps or Chillking for near 0C temps. I’m sure it won’t make you feel any better but we spent a lot more money to learn the same lessons. AFAIK Huber still hasn’t gotten their shit figured out with data collection on the Pilot One interface, and IMO our industry needs powerful, dumb chillers not ones with touchscreens and other unnecessary, expensive crap.
We’ve sent data packages to Huber a couple times to check our working parameters and some early errors and they are able to read back to us and make suggestions. They are also able to troubleshoot over the phone before sending techs.
I’m about ready to say Hubers are fucking garbage and nobody should buy them, ever. I guess I don’t have experience with the ones bigger than the Unistat 815’s we have but the problems I’ve seen I’m not exactly eager to give them a chance. The Pilot One interface is neat, but so far on 3x Unistat 815’s we’ve seen:
- One has worse cooling performance than the others right out of the crate. Suspect a pump issue. In communication with Huber about it.
I read that you and George spoke about this and that they were looking at it along with the broken interface, what happened? I don’t see Huber leaving you high and dry, I know George and them and they go above and beyond for customer satisfaction.
- Can’t reset an alarm from the HMI, have to power off and reboot.
Once you restart the machine the error should be gone, if it i’snt you can do a factory restore in the deep backend of the settings, you need a code for this and I think its like 0000 for the pin or if all else fails you can switch the breaker.
- If there’s a way to make the chiller attempt to restart after an alarm, I haven’t found it in either interface or manual. Can’t imagine I’m the only one using these with expensive products.
Is this bullet an extension of the previous one?
- Documentation is painfully bad
The documentation indicates a lot of technical specifications but some of the wording is mistranslated, I will give you that. However, they are worth their weight in gold due to the shear abundance of information found within, these books are priceless to me.
- Data logging software doesn’t want to read log files from chillers. Has a “patch” I can download from Huber’s website, but doesn’t think the original program has been installed when I try and install the patch software.
I’d be willing to help you through this process by installing the newer updates.
- Been a month for price & availability on process thermocouple. Nothing. God forbid they just stock or sell me the fuckin connector so I could wire my own.
Whats wrong with the ones it comes with internally? How badly do you need to specify a new thermo reading location?
- One has touchscreen errors, frequently, for no apparent reason.
If you spill HTF anywhere around the interface, it must be wiped up immediately. Otherwise, if it does break, Huber will go good on replacements.
- Air burping process is dumb and takes forever
You’re just suppose to run this once for 5 minutes after filling, just once, not every time. Even at that, this step is optional for brand new installs, but speaks more to moving the hoses around or attaching to different applications after the unit has been installed in a different application or area from its previous location.
- Published specs for cooling performance must have been tested inside a walk-in freezer
This is subjective and is your opinion, for fact the systems are tested thoroughly in Germany.
- Not enough expansion tank volume & level gauge is slow to register actual level. Spillage is almost guaranteed when trying to fill.
There is a special valve fitting that screws onto of the Huber jugs and prevents spills, you’re also suppose to remove the large thumb screw filling port on the top and fill from there. Not the top of the fluid indicating gauge
- Not enough fan area/power (can get considerably better performance by putting a box fan by the exhaust, pulling hot air away from the unit
Cubic footage is expensive, I get it, most rooms are small, and if thats the case, you dont want additional heat rejection in those areas or you WILL have problems, the solution is water-cooled.
I want to get a descent amount of ethanol from our storage freezer at ~-25C to -45 for our process. Above 80F/26C ambient temps the Unistats can barely maintain temps on 60 gallons in an insulated reactor, much less actually cool that far in a reasonable amount of time. These weren’t going to be our “forever” solution for that but they were supposed to be a good stopgap.
Long term to hit the rate I need I want to get 105 gallons an hour cooled down from -25C to -45C. I realize this is going to take a massively large and expensive system to do so. Needless to say this is going to cost cubic dollars, and I’d like to only do so once. Curious if anyone has experience with systems that large that aren’t going to be huge, poorly designed disappointments like these smaller lab chillers have been.
Im confused as to what options and specifications you were citing or looking at due to the following statements you made in the other thread…
Long term to hit the rate I need I want to get 105 gallons an hour cooled down from -25C to -45C
Then you stated;
I’m well aware that the Unistat 815’s are nowhere near large enough in capacity to do 105 gallons of ethanol in an hour. The 105 gal/hr figure is what I’d like to be doing short term, and would like to double that in the longer term. I know that means spending more money and buying more equipment. The lack of capacity is only a portion of my complaints about these units.
If you “knew” the units were undersized, why was procurement authorized? Then you blame the manufacturer and the sales reps? Bill (William) is a smart guy and has lots of experience in Pharmaceutical industries… he has to have ALL the info, and if you are specing an 815 for your reactors but you aren’t describing things like how much square footage is in the space they will be occupying, or how long/short the runs are suppose to be, you are leaving crucial details out and shooting yourself in the foot.
Its likely several degrees of miscommunication occurred between the several parties involved.
That being said, looks like the plan was to double down and get three more 815’s in the future, and from where I’m standing, of course you would look at that with disgust considering the specified equipment couldn’t handle the current work load you have. These should have been 915’s, or bigger reactors maybe? I wouldn’t mind taking a look and crunching some numbers.
Overall, Huber is an upstanding company and they go over and beyond for customer satisfaction, I also read your thread and could see George doing his best to defend the company and make good for you; how did that process play out? Didn’t he try to help you? I guess if he tried to help you by dosing you with a reality check that you’ll need to break out your check book and spend more on the right sized gear is Huber’s fault based off your demeanor and your recent post in this thread.