# Correct Plug for Wine Heater



## Paulusgnome (Mar 28, 2009)

Hi All,

My current employer is a manufacturer of industrial heaters down in New Zealand.
I am asked to get a prototype wine heater made for our sales team to demonstrate to US customers. This will be a tubular immersion heater with a flex and plug, made for wineries to use in heating wine during fermentation.

Our heater will be ~2KW, and will operate from 240V. There will be others made of a larger capacity, but this first is the demonstrator.

My question is regarding the correct type of plug for this heater. I was thinking that it should be a Nema 6-20. Can anyone confirm that I am on the right track with this?

A supplementary question: the food-grade flex that we are using is quite fat -it is just on 16mm diameter. Can I expect this to be a tight fit into a 6-20 plug, and is any particular brand more likely to fit better than others?

Cheers,
Mark aka Paulusgnome


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

Paulusgnome said:


> Hi All,
> 
> My current employer is a manufacturer of industrial heaters down in New Zealand.
> I am asked to get a prototype wine heater made for our sales team to demonstrate to US customers. This will be a tubular immersion heater with a flex and plug, made for wineries to use in heating wine during fermentation.
> ...


I am an electrician in food and pharma at the present, so I feel like I can give you some pretty good advice on this. 

The plug? Unless this is just for demonstration only, I wouldn't use a plug at all. Use 1/2" sealtite conduit whip with a 1/2" NPT Stainless Steel sealtite connector on the end of that whip for the factory electrician to wire your flying leads into a conduit body. Plugs in food and pharma are discouraged. Water gets into everything during washdown. A plug is another place for water to get in and they last only but a short period of time no matter what you do.

If you feel like you must use a plug, the IEC pin and sleeve plugs and receptacles (that you're probably already familiar with) are the first choice. The second choice is the yellow weatherproof twist-lock plug/receptacle combination (aka: Woodhead connector). The NEMA designation for that would be an L6-20P and L6-20R.

Your next question: What you're calling "flex" I might guess is flexible cord? We use "flex" in North America as a slang term for flexible conduit. It's unlikely you'll get 16mm into any NEMA L6-20, but you'll get it in an IEC pin and sleeve connector gland easily. Again, I'd encourage you to just put flexible conduit on it with raw wire tails for them to wire in directly.

Be advised that NO food plant or winery in likely to have a 240 volt receptacle just hanging out to plug in a demo unit into. 240 volt receptacles are installed for specific utilization equipment and aren't just there waiting for something to be plugged in. Our normal "convenience receptacles" are 120v, and they're even few and far between (as far as spares go) in food and pharma due to frequent washdown and water infiltration.

I'm happy to consult w/you on your design if you like. Feel free to PM me.


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## papaotis (Jun 8, 2013)

i like my wine cold:smile:


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## papaotis (Jun 8, 2013)

then i read all the post. very informative MD!


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

papaotis said:


> i like my wine cold:smile:


Yeah, I'm quite familiar with the need for some tank heating during fermentation, but immersion heaters to do so is a new one on me. More typically the tank jacket is heated with sanitary process water. Then some valves switch around later and the jacket is cooled with sanitary chilled water to break the ferm process. I'd guess an immersion heater must be for a really small scale or boutique type of manufactory.


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## Helmut (May 7, 2014)

I wouldn't put a plug on it for production, I'd leave of the plug off, and allow the electricians to install flex conduit as they need.


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## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

My guess is there may be a 240v outlet somewhere but I would check with the wineries here in this country and see what type of outlets they usually have available near where you need them.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

I'm not sure why I didn't put the clues together before. I'll bet this is for the home brewer. 2KW, immersion, cord and plug connected. That's the only thing that makes sense. 2kw seems about right for a home brew batch in a plastic drum. An ordinary factory batch tank of 120,000 pounds would take more like a half-million input BTU. 

If that's the case, and this is for home brew, it should more properly be 1500W and operate at 120V, and have a regular 5-15P straight blade cord cap. Probably an integrated GFCI cord cap, actually, if it's a metal sheath immersion heater.


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## mitch65 (Mar 26, 2015)

He said it's a demo.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

mitch65 said:


> He said it's a demo.


True, but there still needs to be a place to plug it in.


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## mitch65 (Mar 26, 2015)

True that, would something this size actually be introduced into the process? r would this be a lunchroom demo? In which case (similar to your home brew scenario) a smaller 120V heater would probably be easier to find a source for.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

mitch65 said:


> True that, would something this size actually be introduced into the process? r would this be a lunchroom demo? In which case (similar to your home brew scenario) a smaller 120V heater would probably be easier to find a source for.


I'm left scratching my head yet. It'll be interesting to hear back. It's probably midnight in nz


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## Bird dog (Oct 27, 2015)

mitch65 said:


> True that, would something this size actually be introduced into the process? r would this be a lunchroom demo? In which case (similar to your home brew scenario) a smaller 120V heater would probably be easier to find a source for.


And at 16.6 amps (2kw/120v) would need a dedicated ckt.


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## Navyguy (Mar 15, 2010)

Any heating that I have been involved in with the food industry (large scale) has always been from a boiler / heat exchanger system. I can't see there being a good reason to use electric heat with a separate probe, etc.

If your plant (location) is HACCP certified, that will need to go through the hoops individually and then added to the process requirements for cleaning, food safety, monitoring, etc.

Now if this is consumer grade, then I would look at something that would work with an existing stove or dryer receptacle configuration or even an EV charger configuration.

Cheers
John


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

Bird dog said:


> And at 16.6 amps (2kw/120v) would need a dedicated ckt.


The more I think about this, the more I've got myself convinced this is for home wine makers and they'd be better off making it a 1500 watt, 120 volt version that anyone can plug in anywhere to an ordinary convenience receptacle.


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## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

MDShunk said:


> The more I think about this, the more I've got myself convinced this is for home wine makers and they'd be better off making it a 1500 watt, 120 volt version that anyone can plug in anywhere to an ordinary convenience receptacle.


Yeah, I have never seen a heater like this used in a production facility at all.


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## Paulusgnome (Mar 28, 2009)

A few additional details:
The heaters are currently used in commercial wineries in NZ and Australia. They are based on a design from a European manufacturer.
We currently make and sell a 2.4kW single-phase and a 8kW 3-phase heater, both of which are popular with wineries here and across the Tasman. We are now redesigning them for the US market.
The heaters are stainless-steel sheathed, and the flexible cable that they connect to the supply with is a food-grade silicone-insulated cable.
Here, the wineries use them by dropping them into the fermentation tank on a tether and plugging them into the nearest outlet.
The prototype that is being built does not necessarily represent the size/power of the final product, we wanted s sample that was small enough to carry in a suitcase.
Thanks for all the help gents, especially Mr Shunk.


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