Hello all,

I was just at a very small dairy plant (1500-3000 ltr/day) and they are not able to meet their cooling demands. Currently they have two 1900 ltr tanks, which I believe in the past held a glycol solution. Now there is only water. In the tanks there is a helical bare pipe 5/8 copper evaporator that basically creates ice during the night but only a small amount since its one row around the outside of the tanks all the way to the bottom. Im guessing there are about 14 - 20 passes (hard to tell since the tank was full of water). The ice get fairly thick, about 4 - 5 inches or so which I think is to thick. Im estimating the tank in the morning would be around 10-20%ice and the rest chilled water. They do not want to pump glycol around the plant, only chilled water. The evaporator is a 1 pass. The owners are small co-op of farmers and want to use what they already have and cannot invest in a new ice bank or some other system.

My question is, would it be possible to throw some more evap circuits in the existing tank, maybe about 4" of spacing between the pipes to create 1.4" ice in helical spirals from the top of the tank to the bottom? There would be a larger loop on the outside and subsequently smaller loops the further you got to the middle. The goal would be to try to create about 65% ice in the tank or tanks. I was thinking around 4-5 evap circuits fed by one TXV and a distributer. I cant seem to figure out how to properly balance each circuit. The middle smaller one would freeze first and then that would end up limiting the TXV for the rest of the circuits.

The condensing units they are using are two FH4524F HR R22 Tecumseh. Ive done some rough calculations and the condensing units may not be enough to create all the ice over night. So I could get a larger condensing unit and use it on one of the tanks and use two of the old ones on the other tank. Just some ideas.

The total daily load for the plant and full future production will be around 1 MBtu/ 293kwh

Im in a very remote region with very limited access to things, yes things. I do not have much experience in this sort of thing, just want to help these guys out if I can. Any ideas, concerns or objections would be most appreciated. Thank you!!