(My back is toast and I can't brew professionally anymore.) I made a thing for homebrewing, not sure if it's actually new? The results might have implications for inline oxygenation.
I found that my air was quickly forming large bubbles that weren't mixing well with the liquid. This very much reminded me of using inline oxygenation stones in small breweries: it's very hard to get the O2 dialled-in, and by the time you're at the tank a lot of the gas has already come out of suspension.
I realized that introducing another axis of motion would literally force the air to travel a longer path over the same length of fitting. So I made a new venturi nozzle that forces the air along a helical channel, changing the collision of the fluid parcels from a perpendicular 2-D interaction into an oblique 3-D one.
You can see the difference it made in the video (huge), but it got me thinking if introducing a small fitting upstream of the O2 fitting to induce flowing wort to spin might improve oxygenation overall. The flow past the stone is theoretically fully turbulent, but even when considering turbulent flow, rotationality can vary. For a small amount of flow pressure loss, you could theoretically improve your O2 uptake or reduce your wasted consumption--but I'd love to be able to prove it. Same theory should also apply to inline carbonation.
Has anyone seen work before studying the impact of flow pattern on O2 pickup? Am I retreading earlier work?
Cheers
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Matt Philip (WeCanDrinkTogether)
Severn ON
(519) 588-3242
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