heat exchangers are designed to transfer energy, in the form of heat, from one substance to another. Effective and efficient control of temperature being essential to every stage of spirits production, distilleries use many different types of them, from ones as simple as a pipe that carries hot vapor through a vat of cold wine to intricate and highly engineered pieces of equipment capable of heating or cooling hundreds of gallons of fluid every minute. They are used to heat and cool the mash, remove the heat of fermentation, drive the distillation process, and then condense and cool the distillate. Even the still itself acts as a heat exchanger, transferring heat from the vapors inside the still to the air in the room. Heat exchangers can also be used to make a distillery more energy efficient, by recovering waste heat and transferring it to parts of the process where the heat is needed.
See also chauffe-vin; distillate; distillation, process; fermentation; and mash.
McCabe, Warren L., and Julian C. Smith. Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2001.
By: Nicole Austin