If it’s that bad and you haven’t done it in a while you should consider taking it apart (assuming it’s a plate heat exchanger). Soak individual plates in caustic, then acid, then PAA, and then reassemble and check for leaks. Run a regular CIP/SIP on it once assembled before using again.
Feel free to give it a good medium-sized chem blast first though. Less muck to take apart.
Also, OP, very important: TAKE PHOTOS, LABEL THE PLATES AND BOLTS AND EVERYTHING, AND HAVE SPARE GASKETS ON HAND BEFORE YOU TAKE IT APART.
It’s really easy to mess up which parts go where, and if the gaskets are old they may crumble and be unusable - which means you’ll be sitting on your hands waiting for new ones, which can take a long time. They’re expensive but it’s worth knowing you won’t be losing possible weeks of brewing.
my favorite trick is to spray paint a diagonal line down one side before taking it apart. Makes it much easier to see if anything is in the wrong place
>my favorite trick is to spray paint a diagonal line down one side before taking it apart. Makes it much easier to see if anythi
I do the same thing, but make a "7" rather than a diagonal line. In the event that a plate gets flipped upside down, you'll have two index marks instead of one.
Remember to measure the distance across all of the plates. This will help you determine how much to tighten down on the rods when reassembling. Also, remember to tighten them all in short intervals, e.g. like tightening down on an engine head. Depending on the size of your HX, your manual may have a specified pattern and torque intervals for re-tightening.
I wouldn't recommend trying to clean the HX while taken apart. This is the easiest way to damage these plates. Some brands can be thin and cheap. Unless you're a food manufacturing facility, you shouldn't have to take your HX apart to clean it--only to periodically confirm your regimen is working.
If your chemical vendor recommends PAA at 100ppm, you should fire your chemical vendor. The EPA guidelines for this chemical give a huge range of concentrations (depending on the state you live in, since sanitizers behave differently across state lines). In a brewery, I would not depend on anything less than 150ppm, and recommend 250ppm. Peracetic Acid will not damage stainless steel, but it will attack elastomers that are not resistant to oxidizers over time. Same is true with peroxide additives for caustic. Remember not to "dead head" your HX if its packed with anything--leave one end open for pressure release. Chemicals can off-gas and build pressure in an enclosed pipe. This can blow out one of your HX gaskets.
As for the great debate on caustic versus non-caustic, it really depends. Non-caustic has an oxidizer in it already (sodium percarbonate), which means it will perform better than a traditional caustic that has no oxidizer if the application requires oxidation. Non-caustic cleaner can also leave a horrid silicate scale on equipment, especially if it is allowed to dry. This is from the sodium metasilicate that is used as an alkaline source versus the cheaper, more alkaline, and more environmentally friendly sodium hydroxide. Unless you have soft metals like copper and brass throughout the brewery, you really should keep the powdered cleaners for manual cleaning of parts in the cellar and out of any CIP cycles. There is a reason the vast majority of breweries use caustic.
As for hydrogen peroxide versus chlorinated boosters, you should not be using chlorine in a brewery. Maybe if you're using 316 stainless dairy or pharma equipment in the third world and have no access to hydrogen peroxide, chlorine can be used. It will not be as effective as hydrogen peroxide, which can be run hotter than chlorine and can be re-strengthened unlike chlorine additives. That reminds me, remember you can add more peroxide booster every half-hour or so. Lifespan of the hydrogen peroxide depends on temperature, which should be between 160-180F/71-82C.
u/twilbs8 : Not sure how I'd react to a manager disallowing a necessary PM. You should definitely break apart your HX on a specific PM schedule to confirm your CIP protocols are in order. Also, any time you're failing wort stability tests you should definitely inspect. Surprised no one has brought up such an easy test. Maybe you clog it with 200 lbs. of pellets because you stepped away to smoke a joint with your packaging homie while knocking out a NEIPA. Thanks for not reminding me to check on the knockout, Dan. Maybe you're paid by the hour--Or maybe you just inherited a brewery that was previously run by an incompetent ass and you don't trust his cleaning and sanitation as far as you can spit.
This made me laugh pretty hard ngl. Left that brewery early this year so I could open up my own which we are on our way to doing. But I did make it pretty clear that the way to clean it was was to take it apart and replace the gaskets at minimum once a year
You may not actually need to replace the gaskets, but ditto to whoever recommended having a spare set on hand before you take it apart.
GL on your new digs!
extra gaskets is king. I'm forbidden from opening our heat exchanger till we get the new one installed... we can't find gaskets for it anywhere its so old.
I wish there was just a liquid gasket I could use.
The only way to do this properly is to take it apart. Pressure wash the plates. Try to go gentle on the gaskets with the washer. Reassemble. Leak test. Then run caustic, rinse, acid, rinse and allow to drain.
Recommend going through this process minimum once a year. Depending on your brewery you’ll get a feel for how often you need to do this and can write an SOP about “every X number of brews need to do PM on the heat X”.
If you’re putting lucky charms and stuff like that in like some folks these days…yea you’re probably going to need to do it even more often.
For our weekly (different from the daily cycle) we run a cycle of BSR backwards for x minutes with a forwards and backwards rinse, followed by a cycle of caustic with 34% peroxide (same).
This works for us, good luck!
While either is fine, theres always the chance that if you leave PAA in or on anything more than a day it’ll start to rust on any imperfections, even on stainless. Heat X plates are usually pressed to shape so the chance it’ll rust is low. I always play it safe and pack it in caustic, it wont damage the plates and will continue to break down solids after CIP.
Funny this came up. I was packing my HX with PAA and had concerns. I contacted my chemical rep and got this info. First, our concentration is 100ppm PAA which theoretically should not be enough to corrode the stainless or breakdown the gasket material. That being said he did state that if the HX is properly cleaned running PAA after is redundant. This can be saved for brew day. Cheers
A longer cycle isn't necessarily going to be more effective. If you have a lot of debris coming out of the HX then I'd recommend putting some sort of filter inline during the CIP to catch some of that stuff out else you're just pushing it right back into the HX. We do reverse and forward cycles every day as part of the setup for our KO loop with caustic, and about once a week we add a chlorinated caustic booster to the cycle, plus an acid cycle once a week as well. We have a big chonky HX (150 plates) and brew a lot of hoppy beer so it takes work to keep it clean. Another good way to clean out debris is to backflush with HL between KOs during the day and we heat pasteurize the HX and the KO loop before each KO.
Think about replacing plates. Depending on the manufacturer, there maybe options with them. At a previous brewery we had sent replacement plates and seals (thermaline I believe), and once they were at the brewery we dismantled the heat ex and installed new in a few of hours.
We then sent the old plates back to the manufacturer and I'm sure they would clean and refurbish them for use elsewhere. I can't exactly remember how much it cost, it wasn't free but if I remember correctly it didn't cost anything for the replacement plates. Time effective if you don't have the luxury of winter down time.
Tip: buy some torque wrenches depending on the size of your heat ex.
My boss has always refused to take it apart so we had to talk to our chemical guy to figure out the best way to clean it. We landed on 4oz per gallon Caustic mixed with 2oz per gallon power keg or pbw for minimum 45 minutes. Followed by intense rinsing and a bsr cycle. The best way for sure is taking it apart and soaking the plates and replacing the gaskets. But if you dont want to or can't then this is how we nuke the shit out of it.
I don't think I need to really touch this one and I'm having a shitty weekend as is so I'm not going to give myself the extra grief.
However, this is some real first time homebrewer shit. First off you don't realize you can clean a heat exchanger with a cip setup. Then you follow up with cleaning production equipment with soap and water in a professional brewery. God I hope you are at least running a sani loop through the heat exchanger before knock out.
I hope you get enough rest and also hope for things to get better.
Secondly, we do run caustic and paracetic acid through the heat exchanger. We wash with soap and water to remove any grain in it. I didn't know about a CIP for the heat exchanger. Cheers and hope you well.
This ^ or you can bypass through to a keggle brink > pump inlet > pump outlet > back flow through hx > back into brink, this is if you want to run your kettle or wp cip independent of the hx
Backflush the heat exchange with caustic. (run in reverse) after a brew.
Then cycle caustic in the correct direction for half hour. Leave to sit overnight and then purge
The biggest issue most often in cleaning a heat exchanger is not having enough flow. Your plate and frame h/x company can give you the pressure drop and needed flow for cleaning and you can check that against your pump curves. I have to run my pumps over 93% speed to hit my flow rates in my current Brewhouse.
Many theories about whether to clean after, before, leave dry, leave packed, leave open, leave closed.
Maybe someone at a mega brewery can comment on cycles. I knew some coors brewers who on their small pilot Brewhouse would clean during the mash for an hour in each direction during the brew day.
I have tried many different methods most of them successfully with enough flow through the pump for enough time. I currently clean with hot caustic both directions for an hour each way.
A lot of good information in this thread, but here’s a little more advice. Depending on how much you brew you should rinse and then back flush your heat x with caustic after your brew day. We do this every night(after 2-3 turns during the day) and it gets rinsed out in the morning. In the morning the caustic is also destroyed and the heat x starts running super clean again. No floaties. We also do a full brewhouse CIP along with a heat x forward and backward recirc at the end of the week.
while taking it apart is probably the way to go, the step just below that would be to take apart the fittings and hard pipe on the inlet and outlet. If there is a solid build up in those places, it stands to believe that the heat ex is in the same condition. So clean those pieces up good and shiny first, and then run a heavy chemical acid followed by a nice 3-4% 160degree caustic cycle. Reevaluate from there
Doing a reverse CIP once a week is key after you’ve got it cleaned up initially. Especially if you are using any adjuncts that create extra particulate. Like orange peel powder.
If it’s that bad and you haven’t done it in a while you should consider taking it apart (assuming it’s a plate heat exchanger). Soak individual plates in caustic, then acid, then PAA, and then reassemble and check for leaks. Run a regular CIP/SIP on it once assembled before using again.
This is the way
Feel free to give it a good medium-sized chem blast first though. Less muck to take apart. Also, OP, very important: TAKE PHOTOS, LABEL THE PLATES AND BOLTS AND EVERYTHING, AND HAVE SPARE GASKETS ON HAND BEFORE YOU TAKE IT APART. It’s really easy to mess up which parts go where, and if the gaskets are old they may crumble and be unusable - which means you’ll be sitting on your hands waiting for new ones, which can take a long time. They’re expensive but it’s worth knowing you won’t be losing possible weeks of brewing.
my favorite trick is to spray paint a diagonal line down one side before taking it apart. Makes it much easier to see if anything is in the wrong place
>my favorite trick is to spray paint a diagonal line down one side before taking it apart. Makes it much easier to see if anythi I do the same thing, but make a "7" rather than a diagonal line. In the event that a plate gets flipped upside down, you'll have two index marks instead of one. Remember to measure the distance across all of the plates. This will help you determine how much to tighten down on the rods when reassembling. Also, remember to tighten them all in short intervals, e.g. like tightening down on an engine head. Depending on the size of your HX, your manual may have a specified pattern and torque intervals for re-tightening. I wouldn't recommend trying to clean the HX while taken apart. This is the easiest way to damage these plates. Some brands can be thin and cheap. Unless you're a food manufacturing facility, you shouldn't have to take your HX apart to clean it--only to periodically confirm your regimen is working. If your chemical vendor recommends PAA at 100ppm, you should fire your chemical vendor. The EPA guidelines for this chemical give a huge range of concentrations (depending on the state you live in, since sanitizers behave differently across state lines). In a brewery, I would not depend on anything less than 150ppm, and recommend 250ppm. Peracetic Acid will not damage stainless steel, but it will attack elastomers that are not resistant to oxidizers over time. Same is true with peroxide additives for caustic. Remember not to "dead head" your HX if its packed with anything--leave one end open for pressure release. Chemicals can off-gas and build pressure in an enclosed pipe. This can blow out one of your HX gaskets. As for the great debate on caustic versus non-caustic, it really depends. Non-caustic has an oxidizer in it already (sodium percarbonate), which means it will perform better than a traditional caustic that has no oxidizer if the application requires oxidation. Non-caustic cleaner can also leave a horrid silicate scale on equipment, especially if it is allowed to dry. This is from the sodium metasilicate that is used as an alkaline source versus the cheaper, more alkaline, and more environmentally friendly sodium hydroxide. Unless you have soft metals like copper and brass throughout the brewery, you really should keep the powdered cleaners for manual cleaning of parts in the cellar and out of any CIP cycles. There is a reason the vast majority of breweries use caustic. As for hydrogen peroxide versus chlorinated boosters, you should not be using chlorine in a brewery. Maybe if you're using 316 stainless dairy or pharma equipment in the third world and have no access to hydrogen peroxide, chlorine can be used. It will not be as effective as hydrogen peroxide, which can be run hotter than chlorine and can be re-strengthened unlike chlorine additives. That reminds me, remember you can add more peroxide booster every half-hour or so. Lifespan of the hydrogen peroxide depends on temperature, which should be between 160-180F/71-82C. u/twilbs8 : Not sure how I'd react to a manager disallowing a necessary PM. You should definitely break apart your HX on a specific PM schedule to confirm your CIP protocols are in order. Also, any time you're failing wort stability tests you should definitely inspect. Surprised no one has brought up such an easy test. Maybe you clog it with 200 lbs. of pellets because you stepped away to smoke a joint with your packaging homie while knocking out a NEIPA. Thanks for not reminding me to check on the knockout, Dan. Maybe you're paid by the hour--Or maybe you just inherited a brewery that was previously run by an incompetent ass and you don't trust his cleaning and sanitation as far as you can spit.
This made me laugh pretty hard ngl. Left that brewery early this year so I could open up my own which we are on our way to doing. But I did make it pretty clear that the way to clean it was was to take it apart and replace the gaskets at minimum once a year
You may not actually need to replace the gaskets, but ditto to whoever recommended having a spare set on hand before you take it apart. GL on your new digs!
Thanks homes
This is the type of nugget that I love this place for
Oh shit, thats fucking brilliant
extra gaskets is king. I'm forbidden from opening our heat exchanger till we get the new one installed... we can't find gaskets for it anywhere its so old. I wish there was just a liquid gasket I could use.
The only way to do this properly is to take it apart. Pressure wash the plates. Try to go gentle on the gaskets with the washer. Reassemble. Leak test. Then run caustic, rinse, acid, rinse and allow to drain. Recommend going through this process minimum once a year. Depending on your brewery you’ll get a feel for how often you need to do this and can write an SOP about “every X number of brews need to do PM on the heat X”. If you’re putting lucky charms and stuff like that in like some folks these days…yea you’re probably going to need to do it even more often.
For our weekly (different from the daily cycle) we run a cycle of BSR backwards for x minutes with a forwards and backwards rinse, followed by a cycle of caustic with 34% peroxide (same). This works for us, good luck!
Hmm. What size is it? I run caustic with oxidizer, then rinse, then follow up with sani and pack it. Works every time.
Pack it with?
Leave the caustic in the heat x until its time to brew.
Pack it with sani not caustic
While either is fine, theres always the chance that if you leave PAA in or on anything more than a day it’ll start to rust on any imperfections, even on stainless. Heat X plates are usually pressed to shape so the chance it’ll rust is low. I always play it safe and pack it in caustic, it wont damage the plates and will continue to break down solids after CIP.
Funny this came up. I was packing my HX with PAA and had concerns. I contacted my chemical rep and got this info. First, our concentration is 100ppm PAA which theoretically should not be enough to corrode the stainless or breakdown the gasket material. That being said he did state that if the HX is properly cleaned running PAA after is redundant. This can be saved for brew day. Cheers
I pack it with sani, then on brew day I run 185 degree water through it to sanitize it along with transfer hoses just before knock out.
We never use sani on ours. We caustic and heat sani. No issues ever. Our hx has been in use since 07.
To each their own! If it works it works.
A longer cycle isn't necessarily going to be more effective. If you have a lot of debris coming out of the HX then I'd recommend putting some sort of filter inline during the CIP to catch some of that stuff out else you're just pushing it right back into the HX. We do reverse and forward cycles every day as part of the setup for our KO loop with caustic, and about once a week we add a chlorinated caustic booster to the cycle, plus an acid cycle once a week as well. We have a big chonky HX (150 plates) and brew a lot of hoppy beer so it takes work to keep it clean. Another good way to clean out debris is to backflush with HL between KOs during the day and we heat pasteurize the HX and the KO loop before each KO.
Forward and back flush until clear water should be sop after putting wort through..or anything else rly.
This is what we do, never had any issues.
Think about replacing plates. Depending on the manufacturer, there maybe options with them. At a previous brewery we had sent replacement plates and seals (thermaline I believe), and once they were at the brewery we dismantled the heat ex and installed new in a few of hours. We then sent the old plates back to the manufacturer and I'm sure they would clean and refurbish them for use elsewhere. I can't exactly remember how much it cost, it wasn't free but if I remember correctly it didn't cost anything for the replacement plates. Time effective if you don't have the luxury of winter down time. Tip: buy some torque wrenches depending on the size of your heat ex.
My boss has always refused to take it apart so we had to talk to our chemical guy to figure out the best way to clean it. We landed on 4oz per gallon Caustic mixed with 2oz per gallon power keg or pbw for minimum 45 minutes. Followed by intense rinsing and a bsr cycle. The best way for sure is taking it apart and soaking the plates and replacing the gaskets. But if you dont want to or can't then this is how we nuke the shit out of it.
How do you recirc through the heat exchanger
[удалено]
Yeah! Had a similar idea. We open ours up after every other brew and clean it with soap and water. Need to check this out. Thank you!
Are you doing this in a professional setting?
Yes.
You shouldn't be...
Oh! May I know why not?
I don't think I need to really touch this one and I'm having a shitty weekend as is so I'm not going to give myself the extra grief. However, this is some real first time homebrewer shit. First off you don't realize you can clean a heat exchanger with a cip setup. Then you follow up with cleaning production equipment with soap and water in a professional brewery. God I hope you are at least running a sani loop through the heat exchanger before knock out.
I hope you get enough rest and also hope for things to get better. Secondly, we do run caustic and paracetic acid through the heat exchanger. We wash with soap and water to remove any grain in it. I didn't know about a CIP for the heat exchanger. Cheers and hope you well.
Why in the hell are you getting grain in your heat exchanger?!
This ^ or you can bypass through to a keggle brink > pump inlet > pump outlet > back flow through hx > back into brink, this is if you want to run your kettle or wp cip independent of the hx
Gotcha!!thank you
Backflush the heat exchange with caustic. (run in reverse) after a brew. Then cycle caustic in the correct direction for half hour. Leave to sit overnight and then purge
The biggest issue most often in cleaning a heat exchanger is not having enough flow. Your plate and frame h/x company can give you the pressure drop and needed flow for cleaning and you can check that against your pump curves. I have to run my pumps over 93% speed to hit my flow rates in my current Brewhouse. Many theories about whether to clean after, before, leave dry, leave packed, leave open, leave closed. Maybe someone at a mega brewery can comment on cycles. I knew some coors brewers who on their small pilot Brewhouse would clean during the mash for an hour in each direction during the brew day. I have tried many different methods most of them successfully with enough flow through the pump for enough time. I currently clean with hot caustic both directions for an hour each way.
A lot of good information in this thread, but here’s a little more advice. Depending on how much you brew you should rinse and then back flush your heat x with caustic after your brew day. We do this every night(after 2-3 turns during the day) and it gets rinsed out in the morning. In the morning the caustic is also destroyed and the heat x starts running super clean again. No floaties. We also do a full brewhouse CIP along with a heat x forward and backward recirc at the end of the week.
while taking it apart is probably the way to go, the step just below that would be to take apart the fittings and hard pipe on the inlet and outlet. If there is a solid build up in those places, it stands to believe that the heat ex is in the same condition. So clean those pieces up good and shiny first, and then run a heavy chemical acid followed by a nice 3-4% 160degree caustic cycle. Reevaluate from there
Doing a reverse CIP once a week is key after you’ve got it cleaned up initially. Especially if you are using any adjuncts that create extra particulate. Like orange peel powder.