Use for cooling what?

[Wightsparks]

I have a couple of pub drink coolers. Basically small-ish compressor blocks that you run drinks through to chill it en-route to the glass. Paid £50 each for them a long time ago and used them for a hydronic cooling system.
Now need an imaginative, alternative use that I can flog them locally for. I have seen water cooling for welding torches, also possibly for big computer rigs maybe ?
Ideas please!

 

[blackolive (Ste)]

home brew coolers ?

stick em on facebook marketplace ( no fees ) and they should sell

 

[WorkshopChris]

They cool water very well and fast but the built in circulating pumps will not pump a positive pressure just move water around a unrestricted coil. So are unsuitable for tig cooling.

 

[Wightsparks]

These dont have any pumps built in at all. I'll get a pic later.

Thanks for the idea but I don't do FB

Edit . Now I look at them one has a re-circ pump but 4 non pumped circuits as well.

 

[Wightsparks]

pics







If you think these might be any good as a torch cooler I'll post them on here. TBH I thought they would be too big but

 

[daleyd]

I don’t know much about tig cooling, but I reckon these would be way overkill for that application, @Richard. would probably be able to advise much better than me though.

 

[knighty]

people who make bio diesel use them


at the end of the process excess methanol is boiled/evaporated off - which they condense with a heat exchanger on the vent tube.. save it and it's perfect for the next batch

(the beer coolers are used to cool the heat exchanger)

 

[hotponyshoes]

I know a fair bit about them as I run mobile bars on the odd weekend.

To use them (for beer) you fill the tank with water and turn them on.

The compressor then fires up and cools the water until it starts freezing up.
They don't have a thermostat in them, they just have a ice sensor that turns the compressor off once about half of the water in the bath is ice.

The in/out pipes are just 2 ends of a coil that runs through the middle of the ice block.

The beer passes through a coil and gets cooled down to anywhere between 2-5degC.
If you leave the cooler sat around somewhere above freezing, or you pull a load of beer through the coil and chill it the ice will start to melt. When it does the Chiller compressor will fire back up again. Rinse & repeat.

There will be a few issues trying to use them as a tig cooler,
First one, these type of coolers (fairly old) normally sit on a shelf under the bar (the current versions are quite an upgrade on these). The beer kegs sit in a chilled cellar.
The specs on the coolers say the incoming beer should be no hotter than 12degC.

If you pump warm fluid through the coil the ice in direct contact with the tube will melt away too quickly. So you have a pipe, surrounded by melted ice ( water) surrounded by a thick block of ice.
If you keep running warm liquid through (or hot liquid for a shorter amount of time) the water around the coil will expand. Don't bother to ask how I know this ! But this will either crack the ice block with enough force to tear the other tubes apart or, it will crush the inner coil and the weld seam on it will split .
Or, if you pump through hot tap temp water, both of these things will happen at the same time.

Second, they take an hour or so to cool fully after being switched on. They are designed to be left turned on 24/7.

They are pretty heavy once full of water. And they do need to be filled completely. You can't just half fill them.

They can't be moved around as the water in the tank will splash onto the electrics and trip out.

The pumps in them are designed to be used on cold water only. They would normally pump out into a 10-15mm line with no restrictions. The older ones don't usually have any form of protection so they will burn out if you pump warm water or give them excessive back pressure.

Finally, if you worked your way around all those issues (ask me if you want to know how it can be done) you still have the issue that once you connect your tig torch up to it the water in the tig side of the coil will be sat in a bath of sub-zero ice. Normally there is alcohol in there which won't freeze. This would mean you have to use some sort of anti-freeze in the tig torch which a lot of welders don't like doing.

Long and short of it, I might be interested in buying the red one as spares for one of my old drink coolers!

 

[Richard.]

I don’t know much about tig cooling, but I reckon these would be way overkill for that application, @Richard. would probably be able to advise much better than me though.

I actually don’t know tbh dale.
The thing is they don’t have any pumps which is the main part to any tig cooler really.
Without a pump it’s just a box with a rad and like you say that is a big heavy box for a tig cooler. I’ve never used one for that but I’d have to agree probably overkill.

 

[Wightsparks]

Thanks @hotponyshoes - The blue one is full of antifreeze and I'll have to pry the lid off to drain, and also has some sort of adjustable thermostat in it. The Red one has no controls has you say but is easier to drain! It weighs 27kg with no water in it. I'll put up in a FS post otherwise it will be


Knightly - that's really helpful info thanks!