Understanding Distillery Chilling Systems

The Design Challenge

Distillery’s face a unique problem when designing a cooling system because, in general, they have relatively large instantaneous cooling loads with defined time spans of operation.  Because of this we can often take advantage of the downtime inherent in a small distillery’s production schedule to be able to spread the instantaneous loads over longer periods of time, resulting in a smaller chiller.  The primary way to do this is by using a “large” water buffer tank and a cold-water skid. 

The Solution

In this design water is pumped out of the tank and through a heat exchanger, both the pump and heat exchanger are located inside the cold-water skid, and then out to your process.  The heat exchanger inside the cold-water skid chills the water with glycol from the chiller unit.  The buffer tank starts out the day full of pre chilled water.  As the production day proceeds hot water is returned to the tank.  Since the selected chiller has a smaller cooling capacity than the amount of heat being put into the water by the distillery, the temperature of the water in the tank rises throughout the day.  We can size the tank and chiller in such a way that the temperature of the water doesn’t get too high, thus preventing an adequate amount of cooling being done later in the day.  After the production day has concluded the chiller will continue chipping away at the heat stored in the water tank until it gets back down to the initial set temperature for the water in the tank, leaving it ready for the next day’s production. 

Key Benefits to this Method

This method adds a small amount of operational complexity but provides a major savings both on the capital expense and operational expense side by utilizing a smaller chiller.

An Alternative Chilling Option

Direct chilling of the process with the chiller is also an option.  Often this makes the most sense on a very small distillery as the cost between units in this range is relatively low and the price of adding a water tank and cold-water skid quickly outpaces the savings from a smaller chiller.  The other time that this makes sense is in a continuously operating facility.  In a continuous operation there is no “down time” for the chiller to cool the water buffer tank back down, and as such the chiller needs to be able to handle the instantaneous load from the distillery.  In these situations, we will often pair a chiller with a cooling tower to help lower the capital cost and operating costs by utilizing a relatively cheap form of cooling.  There are many different methods of pairing these units that have tradeoffs based around cost and operational complexity, which we can weigh out with you when we begin working on sizing your system.

Complimentary Piping & Design

Upon purchasing a chilling system from G&D we can also help you design your piping layout.  Our piping project managers have hundreds of piping installs under their belts and can help figure out all those sticky piping questions that can plague a distillery installation.

Whether you are running a small pot still at a start-up distillery or a big continuous still pushing out gallons of product a day, we have a chilling solution for you.