best way to reheat syrup?

[mrnorthshore]

I am looking for a better way to reheat my syrup before bottling. Right now I have a 22 gallon pan on a bayou classic KAB6(210,000 btu) heater, It heats up the syrup pretty quick but cooks me out, my bottling room gets over 100F. How do you other producers reheat your syrup before it goes into the filter press and then to the water jacketed canner? Could I use a heating element like what is in the water jacket canner to heat the syrup or would it burn on the heating element? Thanks for the help.

[Rhino]

I have a raised stand with a 30 gallon round heating tank with a valve, Under this tank, i use just a simple weed burner torch about 4 inches from the bottom that i can regulate with the valve of a 20 pound lp cylinder. The output valve on the heating tank is just a tad higher then my bottle unit. Tis set up works good but, My next idea to try is..... I have a outdoor wood furnace that heats my house and also my bottling room with a modine. so i would like to try a stainless steel cylinder vessel that stands upright in the middle of the 30 gal. heating tank, with diverter valves from my hot water hoses from my modine to the stainless vessel. That way in the evening i could fill up the heating tank with 30 gallons of syrup, and divert the hot water through the vessel to heat the syrup, and by morning, (hopefully with good heat transfer) i could wake up to syrup that was already 170 degrees or so, This would save alot of time and lp gas to bring it up the last 30 degrees. I would have the input and the output of the hot water hoses all hooked up outside of the heating tank to make sure no contamination of outdoor furnace water could ever leak into the heating tank. I would have a stainless 1" pipe tig welded into the bottom of the vessel, and a 90 degree elbow with a stainless extension pipe that brings it up past the top of the heating tank, then another 90 degree elbow with a extension pipe to bring it past the top and off to the side, to a pex nipple that the hoses can attach to. (this would be the input of the hot water), The output end is simply a 90 degree elbow tig welded, out the top of the vessel , with a extension pipe, to a pex hose nipple away from the tank also. Should work pretty good. I think for the vessel i will use a 3" diameter stainless pipe.

[GeneralStark]

The slickest way I have seen to date for reheating syrup is using a stainless steel flat plate heat exchanger. The heating fluid (water I believe) is heated in a small propane boiler and circulated through the flat plate and syrup is gravity fed through the flat plate and flash heated to 180F then bottled. Super efficient as you are only heating a small quantity of syrup as it passes through the flat plate.

Timeeh, who is a member here, uses this technique.

[Tmeeeh]

Yes GeneralStark visited here and checked out my syrup heater. We keep our barrels of syrup at 45 degrees during the summer and around 32 degrees in the winter. We use a munchkin gas fired boiler that has an variable BTU output burner it matches the firepower to the demand to keep the water in the boiler at a preset temperature. It's max output i think is 140k BTU. We pump syrup into a 5 gallon reservoir that gravity feeds a flat plate heat exchanger. That drains into a foot operated jug filling valve that overflows into a bucket when the jug is full. We can heat and fill syrup at 1.5 gallons per minute. The heat exchanger holds 3 pints of syrup and the boiler holds 3 gallons of water. It comes up to temperature (188 degrees) in two or three minutes. It makes it easy to can two gallons or 200 gallons with the same start up time. If we want to take a break, just put the boiler in standby and come back later to finish canning. There is no water lost to evaporation and no niter created from heating the syrup. If the syrup coming out of the barrels is clear enough to put into glass containers we go right to filling them without refiltering. (we do take pains to be sure the syrup is crystal clear when it goes into the barrels for storage). The gentle heat from the hot water compared to a flame under a pan or tank prevents niter formation. When it's time to shut down we turn off the boiler, put a cover on the syrup reservoir and remove the syrup filling valve so the heat exchanger can drain. The hot syurp inside the heat exchanger steams up the inside of the reservoir, condenses and runs back down through the heat exchanger and rinses the remaining syrup out. A quick rinse with water and it is ready to use again. We add food grade anti freeze to the boiler water and leave the canning room unheated when we aren't using it. If we have barrels that need to be refiltered we pump the syrup through the heater set to 195 degrees and through a filter press into a clean barrel. Two things you can do with tank or a finishing unit that is harder for us to do is to blend different grades of syrup as you can and adjust density by additional boiling or adding water. We just make sure the syrup is as it should be when we fill the barrels at the sugar house.

[maple flats]

Tell me more about the flat plate heat exchanger and the boiler please. Any pictures. I don't see it in you web site pics.
That sounds like a super way to bottle syrup.

[wiam]

I don't know if he still uses it but Glenn Goodrich had a pipe in a pipe exchanger using his wood boiler. I think it was 1" inside 1.5". About 30' long overall. One 20 and a 10 coming back. No connections on inside pipe to assure no contamination issues.

[Tmeeeh]

I'll make a short video that shows what how it all works together and name the brands of the parts and pieces. I'll post it here as soon as I can.

[maple flats]

That would be great. Thanks.
Dave

[Tmeeeh]

Here's a link to the video I promised.. Hope it helps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfOROngOfQ0

Also here is the description of the system that I posted before.

Yes GeneralStark visited here and checked out my syrup heater. We keep our barrels of syrup at 45 degrees during the summer and around 32 degrees in the winter. We use a munchkin gas fired boiler that has an variable BTU output burner it matches the firepower to the demand to keep the water in the boiler at a preset temperature. It's max output i think is 140k BTU. We pump syrup into a 5 gallon reservoir that gravity feeds a flat plate heat exchanger. That drains into a foot operated jug filling valve that overflows into a bucket when the jug is full. We can heat and fill syrup at 1.5 gallons per minute. The heat exchanger holds 3 pints of syrup and the boiler holds 3 gallons of water. It comes up to temperature (188 degrees) in two or three minutes. It makes it easy to can two gallons or 200 gallons with the same start up time. If we want to take a break, just put the boiler in standby and come back later to finish canning. There is no water lost to evaporation and no niter created from heating the syrup. If the syrup coming out of the barrels is clear enough to put into glass containers we go right to filling them without refiltering. (we do take pains to be sure the syrup is crystal clear when it goes into the barrels for storage). The gentle heat from the hot water compared to a flame under a pan or tank prevents niter formation. When it's time to shut down we turn off the boiler, put a cover on the syrup reservoir and remove the syrup filling valve so the heat exchanger can drain. The hot syurp inside the heat exchanger steams up the inside of the reservoir, condenses and runs back down through the heat exchanger and rinses the remaining syrup out. A quick rinse with water and it is ready to use again. We add food grade anti freeze to the boiler water and leave the canning room unheated when we aren't using it. If we have barrels that need to be refiltered we pump the syrup through the heater set to 195 degrees and through a filter press into a clean barrel. Two things you can do with tank or a finishing unit that is harder for us to do is to blend different grades of syrup as you can and adjust density by additional boiling or adding water. We just make sure the syrup is as it should be when we fill the barrels at the sugar house.

[500592]

That is a great video thanks a bunch do you think this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/FPHE-Flat-Plate-Heat-Exchanger-20-Plate-WVO-SVO-/281058565755?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4170655e7b would work. Thanks

[500592]

Oops never mind I thought you said 7 not 70 I see is the 2 or 300 bucks a good deal for one or can you get them cheaper.

[Tmeeeh]

you want to match the size of the boiler with the heat exchanger and with the filler nozzle. A slight mismatch would be OK you don't want for example a filler nozzle that flows a lot faster than the boiler or the heat exchanger can keep up with. The system will process syrup only as fast as the component with the least capacity. If you can afford it, oversize the boiler and heat exchanger.

[maple flats]

What is your syrup flow rate as you are set up? What make and model is your flat plate heat exchanger? That looks like a great set up. Thanks for the video.

[Tmeeeh]

The heat exchanger is a Sentry SEC4-70 dimensions are 13" tall 6.5" deep and 5" wide. It looks like Sentry no longer sells them. I paid $800.00 for it 10 years ago. They are much less expensive now. They are made of stainless steel and brazed together with copper. I checked with the State of NH food safety to see copper was OK for this sort of food use. They said it was. A quick search and I found this.. it has 70 plates and almost the same dimensions as mine. http://www.pexuniverse.com/store/product/70-plate-heat-exchanger-1-14-mnpt-ports-5-x-12-mounting-studs In my case, the boiler is the limiting factor. In other words if we are trying to run syrup through faster than around 2 gallons per minute, the boiler can't make enough heat and we have to slow down the syrup flow some. Maybe we could have used a larger boiler.

[maple flats]

Wow, I think I can see one in my future. I just have to decide how fast I need to heat syrup. At my currant size 2 gpm sounds fast, but in a couple of years it might be just right.

[Tmeeeh]

The need for speed comes when you're re filtering barrels of syrup or when you're blending and hot packing barrels.