Chill My Smoker

[sneeferson]

As i am in Thailand the ambient temps day and night are often around 80 or higher, during the days often much higher.

Also due to the fact that i am far from the USA/UK/AU i can not just whip down to Lowes or Walmart and collect myself a smoker.

Thankfully there is a local manufacturer who makes extremely good stainless grills and smokers, i am having him custom make one so that i can use my dehydrator wire racking shelves, so i can transfer from smoker to dehydrator with zero efforts.

Now as i have the luxury (and the expense

) of a customized smoker, i can/will ask the manufacturer to make some mods.Due to the high ambient temps i want to drop the temps on the smoker. As it will be made from 304 grade stainless, i figure ice will be my friend here.

I was just wondering what everyone might suggest, in terms of great engineering plans for reducing the temps or for how to place/store ice in a smoker to best effect. Let your inner engineer be free, what would YOU do to your smoker if you were in my shoes.

I have a few ideas myself, i am not without my own set of ideas on this topic, i am not asking people to do the thinking for me... just trying to see if anyone has an inspiring thought or some input that can add to making this the greatest smoker on earth.

The dimensions will be roughly

Height: 36-40"
Wide: 20.5"
Deep: 17"

 

[daveomak]

Sneeferson, evening....   WOW..... custom 304 SS smoker.....  

....  Let me see what I would do with someone else's money..... You could freeze plastic bottles with water in them and change them out every hour or so.....    You could have a cooling coil built that was installed above where the smoke entered to cool it, and have a recirculating pump run ice water through it... ice water comes from an exterior mounter reservoir with overflow as more ice was added....  With those temps you have in Thailand, you might need extra cooling...  refrigerated glycol can get to temps below zero F which would add a significant amount of cooling, of course you would need a freezer for the liquid glycol container and plumbing to the pump and coil...

Then there is the Liquid Nitrogen container... hooked up to a solenoid, temp controlled to inject Liquid N periodically.. of course the fire would go out.... I had a Mass Spectrometer that was set up for cryogenic analysis with liquid nitrogen.... cool....

You could add methanol/water to the plastic bottles to lower the freezing point and reduce the temp also.... Here is a chart..
https://statich.smokingmeatforums.com/1/18/18e38b53_FreezingPointsMethanol-WaterSolutions.pdf
Take plenty of pics......    Dave

 

[sneeferson]

WOW Dave... You let loose your Inner Engineer and your Inner Scientist also!

Cooling Coil + Iced Water Reservoir - Yes! This is a really good idea

Glycol - I must Google this, sounds interesting. I have a double door fridge, tons of freezer space. Sadly nothing to hunt here and no gun, so my freezer is not filled with venison!

Liquid Nitrogen - Umm, i think I'll pass on this idea... sounds a bit unsuitable for use anywhere near a flame.

Methanol/Water - Sounds pretty interesting, and very feasible, your PDF is also extremely helpful and saves me some Google.time. +1 Rep.

I was thinking of double walling the unit and filling the walls with ice... the problem with that idea is the cost of even more 304 SS, i am not Donald Trump so another idea had to be found. I was thinking a large tray like area on the top of the unit, filled with ice, the ice cools the SS and cold falls, while heats rises, so having this ice on the top was my idea.

But a cooling coil... that's a great way for me to move cold something all around the cabinet. Any ideas on what to make the coil from? I am guessing Copper or SS.

I guess i can fill a cooling coil with water+Methanol or even maybe glycol.

 

[daveomak]

If you use a cooling coil, it will need to be isolated from the SS to eliminate electrolysis...   Don't forget pics during all stages of the build...  Dave

 

[southernsausage]

Cant wait to see what ypu come-up with.!!! Omak's ideas are hardcore...

 

[daveomak]

Sneeferson, here is an interesting article put out by Dow on it's glycol and uses....    I saw it in use on the tube.... a guy made "shaved ice" snow cones.... the ice was in containers submerged in -50 deg F glycol and froze in a few minutes.... It was really hard ice and stayed frozen longer than "normal" ice.... A tub of this stuff in my freezer I could flash freeze steaks with little intramuscular rupturing of the cells for better storage, (if the vac bags would handle it).. 

http://msdssearch.dow.com/Published...rans/pdfs/noreg/180-01112.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc

 

[sneeferson]

If you use a cooling coil, it will need to be isolated from the SS to eliminate electrolysis...   Don't forget pics during all stages of the build...  Dave

Dave, is it possible to explain this in fractionally more detail?

I will start a new and dedicated thread to the build, though i am not building it myself, it is being built by a manufacturer. At the very least i will be able to show the original design pics and then tons of great pics of my own custom model.

Cant wait to see what you come-up with.!!! Omak's ideas are hardcore...

Hardcore indeed, but very useful info and has given me much more thinking/planning/researching to do.

I will share the entire experience.

 

[daveomak]

Sneeferson.....  electrolysis....  dissimilar metals will create electricity when given the opportunity... one being the anode and one the cathode...  One will sacrifice....   Isolation by insulators should work.. (rubber grommets, nylon spacers etc)....  Here is one article that is informative....   Dave  

http://www.berridge.com/Preventing Electrolysis.pdf

http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Forms-galvanic/galvanic-corrosion.htm

 

[sneeferson]

Great, short and very easy to understand, thanks Dave.

 

[smokebrew]

What about flowing cold water, ice water really, over the out side of the unit. Design it so the water catches in a vessel of some type that has a sump pump in it. Use frozen pop bottles to cool the water, seems like it would work and don't have to add/take up any space in the smoker.

You could probably figure a low flow/high volume solution of pulling air from a freezer through the smoker. Not sure how with out too much air movement but should be possible.

 

[sparkypyro]

Liquid nitrogen is inert and harmless aside from the really cold part. Just last weekend we were at a wine tasting event and one if the wineries was making wine ice cream. They just poured liquid nitrogen into the bowl on a Kitchenaide stand mixer, poured in some wine then turned it on and in about 20 seconds you had frozen wine ice cream.


Sent from my iPhone using voodoo and smoke signals.

 

[linguica]

Liquid nitrogen is inert and harmless aside from the really cold part. Just last weekend we were at a wine tasting event and one if the wineries was making wine ice cream. They just poured liquid nitrogen into the bowl on a Kitchenaide stand mixer, poured in some wine then turned it on and in about 20 seconds you had frozen wine ice cream.
Sent from my iPhone using voodoo and smoke signals.

Is liquid nitrogen available to home cooks?

 

[sparkypyro]

Try Airgas for pricing if in Southern California.


Sent from my iPhone using voodoo and smoke signals.

 

[piaconis]

I'm a big fan of the glycol method. We utilize glycol in our data center. We pipe it through special computer cabinets to chill the equipment rack, instead of wasting the energy cooling the whole room. It's very efficient at drawing the heat away.

You'll have to post us some pics when you're done. Would love to see it work.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2