The mysterious tale of very long ducting and an intermediate fan 🌬
hive-151781·@c0ff33a·
0.000 HBDThe mysterious tale of very long ducting and an intermediate fan 🌬
 Coffee, the raw green coffee bean harvested in plantations around the world needs to be roasted before it can be ground up and used to make you a tasty brew. You can see the top sack of Colombian Excelso Arabica has 70kg of green coffee in, the others mostly have 60kg - all that coffee needs to be roasted before the average consumer can make use of it. It seems a long time ago back in December when I decided to increase my roasting capacity six fold, by purchasing a monster 30kg batch of green coffee - quite a big upgrade from my existing 5kg batch of green roaster. Of course in December 2019 my sales were increasing, cafe's, coffee shops and restaurants were buying roasted coffee in bulk and investing in new equipment made sense to keep up with demand and reduce the amount of time I spent stood in front of a roaster. Before this new machine even finished being manufactured, the hospitality market of the UK changed quite possibly forever, Coronavirus became a pandemic and mid March 2020 the UK had it's coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, public houses and hotels shut for an unknown period of time - along with any other retail outlet that did not supply food for consumption at home. I know you all know what has happened with Coronavirus, this is just to point out before this new piece of equipment even arrived in the UK the entire customer base it was supposed to supply closed for an indefinite period of time.  It arrived of course, two weeks into the first three week Lock Down period - that complicated actually getting the monster into the building and built up somewhat. I was going to borrow our neighbours forklift to unload it and get it inside - they shut when lockdown started and are still shut today! So with a bit of puzzling I managed to work out that I could pay my local pallet shipping company to take the delivery for me, and then they subcontracted a haulier with a Moffet (lorry with a fork lift attached to the back) to deliver it from them to me. Some cunning use of the upper floor hoist winch - passed through a hole in ceiling I cut allowed the heavier parts of the machine to be fitted without a forklift. Putting the bits together that it came with is one thing, it still needed an electrician to run a three phase power feed to it, a gas safe engineer to run a gas pipe to it, and of course it needed the ducting running to the outside.  To keep costs down I fitted the ducting myself, that was fun - it's all hanging from steel wire, the 3m long pieces of ducting needed to be cut with an angle grinder to size and the joints and angles fitted in. In an ideal situation the roaster sits at a wall, and the ducting exits behind it and then straight up to above the roof top. The only place I could fit this in in the warehouse - the back wall exits onto a street and public footpath - so if I ran the ducting through the back wall it would be a hazard for people walking on the path, so my alternative path is bringing the ducting forward from the roaster, and then up through the centre of the building. This way it does not affect anyone - but distance and the long stretch of ducting caused me problems...  Here you can see the exhaust fan motor, it is leaking chaff and smoke where the motor spindle runs through into the fan chamber. There is a seal on that spindle, but the assembly is not designed to hold back pressure. Pressure occurs when the air the fan is pushing out through the ducting encounters resistance - when the ducting is too long or the outlet of the ducting is below roof level. My ducting is too long and I don't have it above all surrounding rooftops. This alone was not a massive problem, but there was a big problem when I turned on the cooling fans to cool the freshly roasted coffee - the extra airflow of the cooling fans made smoke blow out of the chaff collector anywhere it was not fully airtight  It's quite hard to see in a static photo, but the chaff collector on the left is leaking smoke bottom and also top where the exhaust pipe fits, plus the exhaust fan top right is still leaking smoke. It resulted in quite a lot of smoke inside the warehouse after four or five back to back batches.  The solution is an intermediate fan, fitting this at the far end of my ducting means this fan will suck the smoke toward it and blow it out, working in unison with the roaster fan that is trying to push the smoke out of my existing ducting run. But it's not as easy as fitting a fan in the ducting, oh no - because the fan needs to sucking the smoke at the same speed the roaster is blowing it. The roaster move 1200 m3 of air per hour, this fan moves 1695 m3 of air per hour - so if I just wire it in stock it will suck far too much and the roaster will not work correctly. The solution is to buy on top of the fan, a variable speed controller so you can change the amount of air it sucks.  Here it is, a variable speed controller that basically takes the 240v UK mains power in, and then feeds it back to the fan - but at the lowest setting just 220v - the voltage difference slows down the fan motor rotation. At between position 1 and 2 the intermediate is exactly matching my roaster fan - I tested this with the well known lighter test - to test draw on a roaster you remove the sampling spoon you use to check the roast colour, place a lighter in front of the hole it came from - and the angle the flame is pulled into the hole indicates the draw of air. Test with just the roaster running, compare with the intermediate fan - on it's highest setting the intermediate fan extinguishes the lighter (expected) at the point between 1 and 2 it matches the flame tilt the roaster alone produces.  It all sounds so easy, but really it took some hunting to find a fan that would have enough suction to match the roaster, and fit in the ducting, and work with the variable speed controller. And then when you buy the fan, and the controller - you get just them - so fitting the fan in the ducting which is a big job alone, you then need to wire it to the controller, and then wire the controller to a fused switch that connects to your power supply. And to do that you need to run a length of twin and earth power cable from the fan to the controller - which I wanted next to the roaster to make it easy to use - so that's at least 15m of cable from the roof down to where the roaster is.  Run the wire from the fan through the blanked window, the ducting is the other side of the window on the right.  And then through the ceiling and along, finally down next to the coffee roaster and connect it into the fan controller. Then we need a second run of twin and earth back up where it needs to join the power feed for the double socket next to the roaster, and additional single socket I had to run to the air compressor position because it had a stupid tiny power lead. And that power feed is already running along the ceiling so stand atop the ladders, cut the isolated feed, fit it into the fused switch left and right, add the power feed for the fan bottom - connect all six wires up while wobbling on top of a ladder. Oh the copper pipe is the gas main - so avoid putting pressure on that too.  And once you are done encase the wires in trunking to make it a little neater. All wired in the fan works fine, it's connected as per requirements to a fused on off switch - although the switch is a bit inaccessible without a ladder. The fan speed controller has it's own fan on and off switch so the fan is isolated by that anyway. It works, and the big test will be tomorrow when I have around 5 batches of coffee to run through the 30kg roaster - hopefully the warehouse will be smoke free with this new addition to my set up. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1436/9884/files/HiveWitness.png?v=1584738949 Active HIVE Witness alongside @derangedvisions, if you appreciate the effort and work we put into the HIVE blockchain please consider giving us a Witness vote. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1436/9884/files/26uUsAjKTsXCBRzTxRJWxpz7qLMdK4Nq6Ha3QAmrmWNLCRanwo7bm4u3q4gVRDSXLV3mUoesji71EHS9EzNeLY2U1iX8hiALyYyJkVJRr9uubS3wk2MUcDqcZeJWCuLobQSUw8ptYrWvhx1grPT2gCz6WGTzzUU61CNk3p.png?v=1584739150 Proud sponsor with @derangedcontests of @brosino , free to play and cash out HIVE rewards, head to [Brosino Website](https://brosgn.net?ref=816) now and start playing. <div class="pull-left">https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1436/9884/files/6VvuHGsoU2QD2aHbJiivbVZV6nAA4BJrX2xi1Ybtwnz84D173SiRakoJuoQXpo9pVQ19fC8P9Lnf3GDQygnL4bq5dzHUyBJ7gsavWeq8vSmKk5dNjcLD3JKv4t9su8.png?v=1584739234<a href="https://discord.gg/8CVx2Am">Visit #BRITS Discord Channel</a> Join #teamuk and make your posts easily found, post with the tag or create a post in <a href="https://peakd.com/c/hive-151781/created">teamuk community</a> so your fellow Brits can easily find and support your work.</div> https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1436/9884/files/99pyU5Ga1kws91ecJjkANAzfstp5ietJ4ACvk9NVThN2EyupXMYZPqdN23kCveZB5MXqg8G4KEe4gv7PFGQ3gWQ9gM8SGisu3gbcR3WCgC7sZTotUspzKxeiLwEwo5HQxv.png?v=1584740120 I distribute [coffee roasting machines](https://topercoffeeroasters.co.uk/) and also [espresso coffee machines](https://www.pennineteaandcoffee.co.uk/pages/espresso-machines) and [roast my own Speciality Coffee Range.](https://www.pennineteaandcoffee.co.uk/collections/speciality-roasted-coffee) being one of the premium [coffee suppliers Yorkshire](https://www.pennineteaandcoffee.co.uk) including a wide range of [filter coffee sachets](https://www.pennineteaandcoffee.co.uk/products/knightsbridge-filter-coffee-sachets-50-x-3pint?variant=31757582282). Finally I have a dedicated website to my [Artisan small batch roasted coffee](https://whiterosecoffeeroasters.co.uk/) featuring roast and post packs and super easy coffee subscriptions. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1436/9884/files/2N61tyyncFaFVtpM8rCsJzDgecVMtkz4jpzBsszXjhqan9nvqLVF9uyK5cd5ypDPBqfQSwHrAxsu3N5Ad1N8zZPJeFpFfAwEBoXU6fsUAhY1pZdBeZkJffx8YRQgZejQWfZRBGcvEWZU.jpeg?v=1584740243 The Coffee Break Discord Voice Chat Show, in @thealliance Mondays 10pm UTC hosted by @c0ff33a and @enginewitty  <center>[Vote for my Witness](https://hivesigner.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=c0ff33a&approve=1)</center>
👍 limka, toni.ccc, hivecollective, sayee, buzzbee, thehive, brayias, choco11oreo11, joseph6232, emaillisahere, caoimhin, djtrucker, podg3, misstaken, daisybuzz, jussbren, suigener1s, thehouse, honeychip, tommys.shop, hivewaves, paulman, thealliance, jan23com, littleshadow, yeswecan, dadview, elizacheng, underground, jackmiller, mamadini, hardikv, phelimint, astrea, platosgroove, khimgoh, hazem91, musicapoetica, ashley4u, alliedbanking, cloudedmercy, hive-123585, alliedfun, dreemsteem, gohba.handcrafts, creativesoul, burkulese, maxabit, vlemon, tyedyefirepower, iamjadeline, bengy, cygon, marshalmugi, cardtrader, themarkymark, buildawhale, makerhacks, upmyvote, ipromote, suonghuynh, zirochka, the-table, thealliancebank, silverquest, acta, actifitsmart, mehta, veganomics, stubborn-soul, redes, dhingvimal, stsl, bmj, dcooperation, jatinhota, fun2learn, scottshots, friendsofgondor, zainenn, star.lord, digital.mine, amariespeaks, howtostartablog, fabiyamada, davemccoy, nailyourhome, edthecanadian, ambiguity, juliamulcahy, nancy8htaylor, voxmortis, fkrebtcgib, fucanglong, deborah0p2011, coolbuddy, philippekiene, mumma-monza, erkejtcnqp, yrkxxtypza, coolguy123, brainpod, fiftysixnorth, rlrmqenttv, susanuallen, taskmaster4450, linda2hall, fsrssckqyc, inthenow, helen30carter, barbara100hall, livingfree, created, wildo, mary98white, molovelly, kjjcyeasjn, iqmeiktjuy, mvushitfex, donatello, princessmewmew, krazypoet, boicizcxqo, bluefinstudios, mdzumswdyk, oscarps, marxrab, crescendoofpeace, brandnewaccount, shit-posts, rihanna2, satpttidts, rezoanulv.dblog, michellexlee, detlev, simgirl, afifa, joyshqeydc, cryptocurator, betty7xroberts, helen39thomas, betty99clark, byn, l7nrlsls7l, zhgslkdctu, progressivechef, christianyocte, morellys2004, qmzbyerkgm, jennifer4qturner, susan462011, sharon8hernandez, blstbabxkv, nolasco, snowpea, cooknbake, calumam, ilhuna, helen9lee, dvujponphy, guvilxoxqr, uhjhhxmyvn, linda2012miller, barbara4tyoung, yyexepenqd, revisesociology, xbozbeeagv, lisa9fwilson, bksoirkkia, dorothy2brown, betty3walker, helen27taylor, maria782011, helenmrobinson, jdrhgzhxcc, lindanscott, kimberly99carter, silverd510, kqjstvbxlv, lisa6i9, rmttjeygef, cmxcxyuqeg, ytogwislvx, contentpublisher, linda2010davis, tattoodjay, andy4475, crisangel, omra-sky, brian.rrr, fambalam, quotes-haven, slobberchops, livinguktaiwan, sinochip, littleksroad, chromiumone, chris-uk, sinlg, sultan-aceh,