I need to heat a melangeur

Weezbo

it seems that the Fluid is moved along to another few machines...one reminds me of a sewage treatment mixed liquior areation process at around 105F as Mike was saying the process is fairly temperature specific and relying on the operators..so then i looked up some other sites in French... they seem to have a fairly vast Exam or filtration process for the operators:) For some reason i find that humorous...i am sure it is all industry driven to get the best people that they can find...none of the questions were Are you allergic to chocolate? or are you secretly addicted to chocolate ?...and seeking employment to eat us out of house and home...:)

hr

It's old granite wheels, iron and heavy

I need to get the table about 85-87F to keep the coca beans warm as they are crushed. It has a copper finned coil below the rotating granite table with a label for "steam connection"

I have no steam available, thought I would try some 180- 190 water. trying to figure a load number.

Weighs about 6000lbs.

hot rod

[Deleted User]

I'd go electric....

Bond some electric RFH grid to the bottom of the grinding stone, connected via rotary contacts also bonded (double insulated) to the center shaft, electric mat insulated with XPS, also bonded to the bottom of the stone, then monitor the top of the stones surface using a non contact surface thermometer, maintaining +/- 2 degrees F to operate a contactor.

No muss, no fuss, just nicely warmed stone :-)

http://www.warmzone.com/diagrams/index.asp


ME

Perry_3

The real question here

is how much heat is needed - and can hot water or electric provide it.

That will depend largly on how fast the beans will be fed and how much heat it will take to heat them up.

Electric may work well. But you may end up with electric elements in the place of the existing coil - and they could get rather warm. That will probably be simpler and more reliable than depending on rotating contacts.

Also, depending on how much steam pressure that original coil was designed for... I'm not sure hot water will do the trick.

It's a good puzzle.

Weezbo

Hot Rod, have you considered high temp fluid?

instead of the steam, drive the deltas higher by use of higher temp fluids...

you might have to take a serious hit on the ramp time when you first load the devise and its mass.

i am guessing out loud here that the granite will be like heating two yards of aggregate with a slight disadvantage in the temps it can see "suddenly",ramping it from room temp up at a gradual step to a target temp of say 90 and then having a control to make up for the heat loss to the "imported" mass to maintain set point might be the ticket.

you would be able to ,Target a temp,based on the heat transfer to the flow rate of the imported "Fluid" mass. sorta consider the coffee beans a cool fluid stream

Man i type slow *~/:)

it seems Perry is saying something similar here, i have indeed seen temps way big in hydronic applications

Glen

specific weight

of granite is about 170 pounds per cubic foot, or about 3 times that of water. So figure out your temp rise based on 6000 pounds of water and multiply by 3. So if a delta T of 15 is needed then 15x6000x3=270000 btus req'd. Roughly speaking.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

How is the ultimate temperature controlled? Some sort of thermostatic device or is it controlled manually by the operator? Or perhaps no apparent form of control?

If thermostatic or manually controlled, I'd guess that hot water should suffice but that warm-up time would be increased.

If no apparent form of control, I'd guess that it requires steam in some quite specific pressure range.

Any chance of contacting the manufacturer? or perhaps any manufacturer of similar?

Those seem to be extremely demanding temperature requirements made all the more difficult by the fact that that granite wheel and granite cylinders are rotating and turning. Is there even a reasonable place to install a sensor anywhere in the granite?

Sorry to be a question box, but from what I previously knew and just researched regarding the production of chocolate, it seems that you either have extremely precise and well-controlled automatic production where human skills have been increasingly replaced by automation (think Hershey) or "traditional" equipment requiring highly skilled operators e.g. "chocolatiers".

hr

the machine is 80 years old

from what the owner tells me. But the German manufacturer is still around and he has an e-mail into them.

The finned copper coil for steam looks to be about 1-1/4 inch with deep heavy fins attached. I'm not sure I could drive the load Glen calculated with HW through 20 feet of coil.

Pre-heating the beans could be a thought.

This gentleman tells me not many chocolatiers actually make chocolate from the bean anymore, most are re-packagers. Even Hersey is starting to sub out the bean crushing end of the business, he tells me.

hot rod

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Unknown

come'n Hot Rod

That's the equipment they use to smash and process moonshine... Where the mountain located?

Perry_3

Hot Rod

Actually, Glens calculations are more related to how much heat it will take to warm it all up. I am sure that this type of equipment took hours to warm up initially - and was rarely allowed to cool down to room temperature.

Once it is warmed up, then the only heat losses are what is radiated away - and what is needed to heat the beans up to temperature.

I to had thought of heating the beans.

I think this guy is on the right track with making his own chocolate. So many of the other companies are now addiding various modern additives to the process. Some old fashion dark chocolate is right up my ally (and the only chocolate I can eat due to allergy issues).

Perry

Mike T., Swampeast MO

The specific heat of granite matters MUCH more than the specific weight.

Specific heat of granite is 0.19; specific heat of water is 1.0. This means, given perfect heat transfer, that granite will heat right at 5 times faster than water. e.g. 1 pound of granite would rise 5F with 1 btu while one pound of water would rise 1. Sometimes we forget just how amazing water is...

Granite is also poorly emissive (.45 @ 70F). It will want to transfer its heat to the chocolate mixture via conductance before it wants to transfer its heat to the environment.

Hard for me to imagine that a water-filled HX coil of the type you describe couldn't heat the machine to the temps
required in some reasonable length of time and certainly wouldn't have a problem maintaining the desired temp unless the machine itself is exposed to winter weather.

A melangeur of this sort [appears] to be a batch process. Ingredients are added in the proper order and the proper proportion and ground for a significant period of time.

Time as required to produce a proper consistency appears to be more critical than temperature but chocolatiers CAREFULLY guard their secrets...

hr

Is that French for mixer?

although it is German built

I think it is used just to crack and flatten the beans before they move on to the melting and blending equipment.

The seller told him it would work fine un-heated. That's not really the case with the coca beans. The oils in the bean cause them to glue themselves to the wheel and table and plug up the whole process.

He tried a blower heater below but it stirs up a lot of dust. Not what I want in my designer chocolate.

I'm thinking about one of those small Laing combo pump heaters. They come with typical Euro 167F max controls however.

hot rod

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[Deleted User]

Yup...

A quick Googling of melanguer confirms it.

M

Dave_4

New word for me as well, but definitely French for "mixer". I did find some small (unheated) versions available--typically but not always used for chocolate.

From everything I read, the melangeur is used after the beans themselves have been fermented, roasted, shells removed, pulverized and germs removed (probably some steps I forgot). End result of this is called "nibs".

The melangeur comes into use when sugar, flavorings and other things like dry milk (for milk chocolate) are added to the nibs. It's here that everything the nibs are ground/mixed into the other ingredients to produce what we actually call "chocolate". The "fineness" (both texture and quality) of the chocolate [seems] directly related to the amount of time it spends in the melangeur.

Uni R_3

You need to look underneath...

It may be a m

Glen

so then -

that would put the load at about 18 000 btuh, assuming 100% efficiency? If so that certainly fowled up my thinking re heat absorption of a solid vs liquid. Heck - a small BBQ would warm that rocky plate of chocolate. But then a 20 foot coil ? 1.25 inlet ? That could be interesting - maybe HW could do the trick. Or IR lamps.

[Deleted User]

Yeah... IR lamps...

Placed directly over the product for "maintenance heat" during the melanuer process. According to the site I revieed, the beans are supposed to come in at 300 degrees F from their roaster station. And the beans generate their own heat from the friction of the wheels.

6 IR roaster lamps placed strategically around the top of the grinding wheel at 150 watts each = 3,000 + btuH.

100% efficiency to boot.

ME

biGPete

Floor heating

I recently purchased an Electric Radiant Floor heating   unit and it was real easy to install. I would say that it is more beneficial to use electric floor heating as opposed to radiant water floor heating.