When the plate heat exchanger is used for wort cooling, there are mainly two ways, namely two-stage cooling mode and one-stage cooling mode.
In the past, the two-stage cooling method was most commonly used, and now one-stage cooling method is increasingly used.
1.Two-stage Wort Cooling Method
The two-stage plate heat exchanger consists of two sections, the middle plate and the middle plate.
The first stage of cooling is using city water as a cooling medium. The wort is cooled from about 95℃(degrees Celsius) to about 40-50℃. The cooling water is heated from about 20℃ to about 55℃.
The second stage of cooling is using a deep-cooled refrigerant (ethanol or ethylene glycol solution) as the cooling medium. The wort is further cooled to a fermentation temperature of about 7℃, and the refrigerant temperature is raised from -4 to -3℃to about 0℃,return to the re-cooling station.
The heat exchanged water in the first stage can be used as feed water.
2.Singe-stage Wort Cooling Method
This method uses a cooling medium to cool the hot wort (about 95℃) to the temperature of the inoculated yeast (about 7℃).
The cooling medium is brewing water, which is first cooled by ammonia direct cooling to 2-4℃ (commonly known as ice water), heated to 75-80℃ after heat exchange with hot wort, and the water can be directly used as washing water.
3. Compared to two-stage cooling, single-stage cooling method has the following advantages:
1.) Simple equipment, no intermediate board;
2.)The two-stage cooling chiller should keep the refrigerant at -4~-3℃, and the burden of wort should be reduced from 40-50℃ to about 7℃; the cooling chiller should bear the cooling load from normal temperature to 2-4℃ heat load. So compared with the two-stage, Single-stage cooling method can save the enegery of around 20%-30%.
3.) The cooling water outlet temperature of the first stage of the two-stage cooling is about 55℃. If it is used for sparging, it needs to be heated. The cooling brewing water outlet temperature is suitable for scrubbing without heating, which reduces the coal consumption and reduces the water consumption.
Request A Quote