PID and Selonoid Valve for chiller?

Brewtjbrew · Joined: 08 Aug 2015 Posts: 4

I am in the process of planning out my RIMS system which I plan to multipurpose not only for holding mash temp, but also for controlling whirlpool temp. For a bit of background the brew kettle and HLT are both gas fired with quick disconnects on all of the outlets running through a single pump. the RIMS will be inline after the pump. since I have already gone through the effort on this I thought why not go a bit further to make my brewday a bit easier. My Question is whether I can use the same PID I use to control the Element inside the rims tube to activate / deactivate a selonoid valve that would control the flow of water through my immersion chiller. So I would set the PID down to say 180 for my whirlpool temp which would activate the selonid to open thus cooling the wort and shut off once the temp was reached. All the while wort is flowing past my Temp probe in the RIMS tube creating the whirlpool in the brewkettle. at this point the element would fire to maintain 180 for however long my whirlpool might be. After the whirlpool I would then set the temp again down to pitching temp and the above process would repeat. I Have The AGPtek® Universal Digital PID Temperature Controller RNR Control Out Dual display For Fahrenheit(F) and Celsius(C). I was thinking that I had to somehow use the alarm function to accomplish this and include another switch for the selonoid which would bypass the alarm? Or is there a simpler way to do this like my stc1000 does in my fermentation chamber where it has a cooling and heating side on separate circuits? all of the information I have done so far points to the alarm idea but help me if I am wrong
Thanks for your help. Mug

attaching the wiring diagram I came up with here.

Yo_Pauly · Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 42 Location: New Richmond, WI

I suppose you could use your RIMS PID controller to activate the solenoid supplying water to your immersion chiller but I can't see how that would simplify your brew day to any large extent. The temperature of your wort should drop pretty quickly from boiling to 180 degrees by simply turning the faucet on and watching it for a couple minutes. Once it dropped to 180 deg turn it off again. After your PID is adjusted to the desired whirlpool temp it should stabilize without having to cycle the water on/off.

Be warned that the RNR controller is not the preferred choice to drive the solid state relay. It may work, but it or the SSR may fail prematurely. The SNR configuration is typically used in these designs.

Brewtjbrew · Joined: 08 Aug 2015 Posts: 4

I guess I just wanted to do it to see if I could. It's Probably not necessary but still pretty cool to have these controls all on one panel.. Next Im going to add an ignitor switch for my burner. Besides I always find myself running around trying to connect and disconnect the water for my chiller right before knockout. This makes the last 15muintes of the boil too hectic and the solenoid will give me a chance to concentrate on the final hop and whirflock additions with less fussing about finishing the boil and doing a whirlpool. Anyways I was doing some dry testing and the alarm will work fine for this. What I did is to set alarm 1 to whirlpool temp and set it to deviation high so that it is always on when the temp is higher than the alarm temp. I added in an override switch so that it is not constantly cycling the water. So right after knockout I just flip a switch on the panel and chilling water begins to circulate automatically until the whirlpool temp is reached. I can leave it on to cycle on off if I wanted too or i can just turn it back off until the whirlpool is over, reset the alarm to pitching temp and switch it back on to chill.

The Controller was a mistake though. I bought it after doing some research but I didn't see this information beforehand. My fault for not researching more thoroughly. Anyways in order to minimize the issue I just added a dc converter in after the Out relay which then goes into the SSR. I did the same thing for the solenoid valve. The output on the alarm goes into a transformer which sends the proper 24v AC into the solenoid. So in reality there is not much power going across the PID,s relays. I routed all the loads going into my outlets through the contactor instead.