follow up to buying a bulk tank

refco

Ijm in the refrigeration trade and after reading the thread on buying a bulk tank i saw comments about the use of R22 refrigerant gas in bulk tank systems this gas will soon be non existant on the market but does not mean that your compressor is instantly no more once your equipment is leak free/gas tight you dont have to do anything and might not have to do anything until equipment failure which could be years down the road as long as equipment is kept in good order
Things to be taken into consideration are by changing the equipment depending on existing run times you could be saving on esb in some case's you might get a return inside 2 years also if doing any changes things like adding a plate heat exchanger for water heating,and/or a plate cooler should be considered to help reduce running costs
Of course all these things carry aprice but anywhere ive done it no one came to me after receiving their esb bill complaining in some cases it has cut running costs for milk cooling and water heating by more than half
anyone looking for any advice on something they are going doing can pm me and i wold be happy to help or give ideas to
should also be noted that a lot of people are upgrading there tanks so anyone looking to upgrade a tank to something under 1500 gallon could find agood selection to choose from

John_F

as your in the refrigeration business i might try to tinkner your brain, for a new job,with a plate cooler, should a person go direct expansion, ice bank or flooded evaporator. Also have you any opinion on the mueller flooded evaporator versus the fabdec / dari kool flooded evaporator?

refco

John_F wrote: »

as your in the refrigeration business i might try to tinkner your brain, for a new job,with a plate cooler, should a person go direct expansion, ice bank or flooded evaporator. Also have you any opinion on the mueller flooded evaporator versus the fabdec / dari kool flooded evaporator?

John different circumstances bring different results not trying to be smart but it depends on a good few factors as to which application is most suited
a lot of the sales men will sell a tank and flooded evap reason for this is tank size aside flooded is a bigger condenser/compressor unit more margin in that sale in some cases to acheive flooded it is two compresor units

for fastet cooling a plate cooler with water supplied from an ice builder and been fed into floded tank but might not be most efficent it is ideal for the farmer milking to almost full capacity all year round but very wasteful for a farmer milking till november december and starting back with only a few cows and very little milk at start of year
Direct expansion is probably the way to go for someone who is at max capacity for only a few months
ice bank and a plate cooler fed from the tanks ice bank will cool the milk as fast as the plate cooler and flooded tank but will cut out the cost of a larger compressor and ice builder it will lead to longer compressor run times but the compressor been smaller a lot than the flooded system will cost less to run over all
consider the ice bank as needing two and a half horsepower condenser

same size direct expansion tank a three and a half horse power

same size tank again for flooded you go up one and a half to two horsepower on the compressor as it needs to move more refrigerant

more horse power bigger esb bill

in an ice bank you freeze a coil, water moved across ice chills and is sprayed against the wall of tank to cool milk moving across the inner surface the milk is cooled

in direct expansion the refrigerant is in contact with the body of the tank starting at the base as the refrigerant gathers heat it changes from liquid to gas as it cools the milk on the base the refrigerant rises futher up the tank as a liquid basicly as the milk rises and cools the liquid rises along side it

in a flooded tank the whole surface of the tank is in contact with liquid refrigerant meaning that it cools faster as a larger surface area is covered at all times
dont know if this helps but with more detail of your set up and existing equipment and future plans i would try and give you better detail as to what i think would suit you best

as regards best tank i find it hard to pin point one as been better over the other as im not tied to any make i would go with best service promise and price and maybe location of suplier in relation to you