DIY External Chiller in Closed Loop

[lessthanlights]

Has anyone ever created a DIY chiller that could wrap around a closed loop return. It could be something similar to a reptile heating pad or electric blanket, but chills instead of heats. Is this possible?

[BeanAnimal]

Very inefficient to say the least. Next time your at the pub drinking draft beer.... look at the draft towers on the bar. They have a freon (or glycol) line running from the walk-in all the way up through the insulated bundle of beer lines, then into the draft tower. It helps to keep the beer chilly in the lines.

In any case it is not at all an efficient way to cool your tank.

Bean

[Karl K]

You could, however, build a chiller barrel large enough to hande the flow of your closed loop while keeping the velocity in the barrel down. You then would place a coil in the barrel that will chill the water.

Refrigerant would run through th.... blah, blah, blah.....

You get the idea. It's just the same as the other thread I did. The difference, I would assume is the flow rate. I'm thinking that you will have a lot more water running through the barrel.

An alternative would be to run the chiller barrel as a side-stream device. This would allow maintenance of the barrel without shutting down your closed loop and you could control the flow independant of your closed loop flow. This would give you an almost ideal setup for tuning the chiller to work perfectly.

Thanks for the brainstorming session. I just got a whole pile more ideas now.

Karl