I hate to state the obvious but investing in a colder freezer would take a lot of stress off your chillers. I’m not sure it’s the solution but it’s something to consider.
We have actually invested in a larger walk in to store bulk quantities of ethanol at well below ambient temps. Unfortunately the readily available walk ins tend to max out around -20F and the ones that get down to -45F or more appear to be anywhere from $60-100k depending on size and cooling power.
I’m not going out of my way to throw Huber under the bus here but I feel like an update is probably in order and it doesn’t entirely paint Huber in a positive light. One of our 815’s that was working started throwing codes for a temperature sensor and a tech from Blackhawk Industrial came out and did some work to it. Less than a week later it refused to cool a single reactor to below -10C with no load. Needs to be sent back to Huber in NC.
Huber has a sales guy working with us to see if something else would work better for our application that we can trade our 815’s for/towards. Having retooled our production line and no longer using the Hubers to cool down larger quantities of alcohol, we’re just using the 2 functional 815’s to keep reactors cold and deferring the bulk cooling to a large walk in freezer. To maximize our production using existing equipment we need a single chiller to keep 2 reactors cold and I think that’s asking too much of a single 815 (we have 6 reactors we’d like to have running at all times to get the maximum production rate).
Still haven’t heard a peep about fixing our problems with the Spycontrol software and the Huber website still shows the exact same files as when I downloaded the buggy software months ago. For the forseeable future I will be doing production temperature logging with a different piece of hardware.
I think if Huber wants to get more units sold to our industry Huber really ought to sell something like the Unistats with more cooling power between -20C and -50C and no heating. And fix the datalogging problems.
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I think looking at different chillers by comparing their heat transfer capacity in the needed range with their price is apples-to-apples. I’m willing to concede that there may be some variance in standards used by different companies to make the ratings and certain aspects of reliability come into play.
I understand that, in a nutshell and simplified, the Unistat technology principle means using a mostly standard fluid chiller without a reservoir combined with your particular electronics and pumps. Eliminating the fluid reservoir minimizes heat transfer fluid volume in order to increase the system’s speed of response, which is first and foremost on the list of advantages to the system in your company literature.
Given that info, it’s not surprising to see you using words like “wasted” and “bad” when critiquing your competitors’ fluid reservoir size and citing the watts per liter of thermal fluid stats.
I need to condense light hydrocarbon mixes at a high rate, so I need a cooling system that has high energy transfer capability at -42C. I don’t really care how long it takes to get there or if it’s super precise, within reason, as long as it can hold that temp under operating conditions.
Given that starting criteria, I don’t see how the fact that the 915 has a fast response rate, or “better performance” as you put it, makes up for the fact that it has half the energy transfer capacity at -40C but costs $20k more than the Dax30. It might be the right choice for other processes that require precision temp control over raw cooling power, but not this one (passive recovery), IMO.
What is your definition of better performance? Unless better performance somehow translates into more cooling power (which would be reflected in the cooling data), I’m not sure the cost:benefit ratio of it makes sense for passive reocovery.
I have looked at the Huber literature and the closest unit to the CryoDax30 in terms of cooling capacity seems to be the Unistat 635w with 18kW @ -40C and 25kW @ -20C. I found a listed price of $220k, almost 3x the cost of the Dax30. I couldn’t find the amperage info, but I’m sure it will require close to the same 60A input as the Dax30, if not more.
Being that you are the owner of the company, I understand that you believe you can offer more value to us through quality of construction and other things (your warranty is great), but from a strict cost per cooling capacity @ -40C standpoint, your costs are pretty high. Even if the reliability is through the roof, if I can buy two and a half Dax30’s for the same cost as one of your comparable units, I’m going to give Dax a shot, but that’s just me, others have way more money to spend.
I’m really not trying to be negative here. I think your chillers are precision instruments and the Unistat technology enables them to ramp up and down in temp quickly. This along with your advanced controllers allows complex temperature programs to be ran and accurately repeated. The cost of the units reflects the R&D you’ve put into that. IMO, you make precision scalpels and we need a blunt machete.
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Also, I have looked through several of the case studies on your website and they seem to be displaying the performance curves of your chillers hooked up to different sized reactors, nothing showing you “beating” Julabo, Mydax or Lauda with less Kw.
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well you should go to Julabo’s website and check their case studies and compare that with ours on the same type of reactors. Lauda does not show case studies neither does Mydax, for whatever reason
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https://www.julabo.com/sites/default/files/downloads/casestudies/JULABO-Casestudy_2015-03-01.pdf
3 h 45 min …cooling
http://www.huber-usa.com/download/casestudies/CS_84.pdf
2h cooling
http://www.huber-usa.com/download/casestudies/CS_1242.pdf
1,5 h…20 to - 60 C
https://www.julabo.com/sites/default/files/downloads/casestudies/JULABO-Casestudy_2015-03-10.pdf
2h :50 min
20 to - 60 C
We have a single chiller to do that So Stupendous and we have even bigger ones
20 to -60 in 60 min
Mydax doesn’t show full performance curves on their literature, but they do show a bit of cooling time / performance info that’s specific to ethanol chilling:
If you can show me a Huber unit case study that can cool 250 gallons of ethanol from +25 to -70 in 80 minutes or less, and does it at a price even remotely comparable to the CryoDax 90 units, I’d be happy to consider it. The CryoDax 90 has 90 kW @ -20 for reference.
I don’t have a horse in this race other than that I am trying to get the best value for our investor’s dollars. Sometimes it makes sense to pay for the premium products, but sometimes it doesn’t.
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The Huber in that case study claims 20kW to -40, the Julabo claims 9.5kW to -20. So the Julabo has a bit less than 1/2 the power.
The Huber gets to -75 after 2 hours.
The Julabo gets to -80 after 3.75 hours. With less than half the power. If your increased efficiency claim was correct, the julabo would have taken more than 4 hours.
The Huber claims 1.5 kW to -20, the Julabo claims 1.1 kW to -20. So ~73% of the power.
The setpoint on the Huber was -90, the setpoint on the Julabo was -60, and was set to not overshoot the target. If you follow the response curve of the Julabo, if it was set to -80 it is likely it would have reached -60 some time around 2.25 hours if it didn’t back off so as to not overshoot.
Just for fun, what’s 73% of 2.25 hours? 1.6 hours. Pretty damn close to 1.5 hours.
If you’re going to start making claims, do it with real and applicable data. I think someone you know mentioned above that one should always make apples to apples comparisons.
These disingenuous claims aren’t helping your case.
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You need to look at nominal powers in the first place, The HUBER 930w has a max of 20 kw of nominal cooling powerat a wide range of temperature.
https://www.huber-online.com/download/pdf_datasheets/englisch/1017.0035.01.PDF
If you look at the data sheet of Julabo they have 30 KW of nominal cooling power to start with.
However they drop quite sharply very quickly , you need to ask them why this is the case not us.
So to your point : our System has 30 % less nominal cooling power , 20 % smaller built and way more efficient.
As for the second case study its not so much the set point we could have done set point -60 and be much faster. Ask Julabo why they did not set -90 and go all the way down to the lowest point.
Hey by the way , if you own a Julabo and that’s your favorite and you are happy , that’s fine with me. I am not trying to win every ones heart. If you are interested to to talk to us in person, we are going to be in Vegas in November at MJ biz and you can take a look at our systems.
Sorry forgot to copy the data sheet
930 W has nominal 20 KW of cooling power max
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair
I actually don’t currently own or care about Julabo, or Huber, or Mydax, or any other chiller company. I’m an engineer - I care about meeting the requirements of my processes with a healthy safety margin in the most cost-effective manner possible.
The data sheets speak for themselves for the most part. Thermodynamics doesn’t change based on opinion and marketing spin.
I invite any chiller manufacturer here to send me data sheets and pricing on any unit that they make that can cool 250 gallons of ethanol from +25 to -70 in 80 minutes or less. If you’ve got the best price/performance/features ratio we’ll likely order two to start.
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I suggest you visit MJ Biz in Las Vegas, talk to each one the chiller guys on the show floor. Take a look at the products, the warranty , the service etc. Then you find out the true value.
Any Chiller manufacturer can send you some data sheets and a price tag.
If this is your decision for a purchase, go with Mydax…you get a lot of KW’s for your dollars. But that’s most likely all you get.
I suggest you visit MJ Biz in Las Vegas, talk to each one the chiller guys on the show floor. Take a look at the products, the warranty , the service etc. Then you find out the true value.
Any Chiller manufacturer can send you some data sheets and a price tag.
If this is your decision for a purchase, go with Mydax…you get a lot of KW’s for your dollars. But that’s most likely all you get.
And her is something really simple to understand , clear settings , clear goals , and clear data sheets
Huber - 90 C / 4,7 KW unit on 100 Liter glass reactor down to minus 60 C in 140 min.
http://www.huber-usa.com/download/casestudies/CS_1107.pdf
Julabo - 90 C / 11 Kw unit on 100 Liter glass reactor down to minus 50 C in 150 min
https://www.julabo.com/sites/default/files/downloads/casestudies/JULABO-Casestudy-PrestoW91tt_2013-09_10.pdf
@huber_king_of_temp A good takeaway from this thread should be that while current Huber (as well as other RTC) systems are good at what they do, for this industry’s needs they may not be optimal. In order to better fit our needs, maybe Huber would consider engineering systems that would be the best at cooling large volumes of ethanol not with precision, but with speed and efficiency. And leave the heating out of it altogether. Also a system that could pump through cold ethanol from a room temp tank on demand would be pretty fucking rad too 
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You’re right, on that one, your system does appear to perform marginally better. Then of course it becomes a cost/features question.
But there’s no doubt that the Huber systems are great for some things, just not every possible use case.
Thanks , that is valuable information.
Please come to see us in Vegas, I am interesting to learn more about what kind of temp ranges and ramp rates your looking at
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no doubt you are absolutely right on that one as well
Hope to see you in Vegas