Another MES Mod - Cold Smoker Assist!!

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tallbm

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Dec 30, 2016
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Well if you have ever followed my posting history then it would be of no surprise that I am about to attempt another mod for my MES smoker hahahaha. I have 2 in testing at the moment that I will post about someday soon but this is post is about a new one about to go into testing.

This is a Cold Smoker Assist Mod!!!

The Goal: Pull air through my MES smoke when cold smoking similar to how air is drafted out of the smoker when hot smoking.

If you've ever cold smoked you know that the smoke doesn't really want to travel so well like it does when you hot smoke. I hope that this bit of suction will help :)


The idea would be to connect the blower fan to the top of can that has the top and bottom cut of the can.
The combined fan/can would be placed over my MES vent.
When turned on, the fan would then pull/suck air up from the MES causing similar behavior to how air/smoke travels when doing a hot smoke!
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I plan to put steel scrubbies in my mailbox mod duct joint to filter/scrub creosote from the smoke as to keep the fan from clogging on. We'll see how this works :)

I look to put this all into affect with an 8.5 pound Salmon Lox cold smoke this Friday night/Saturday morning (if the fan gets in that quickly) when I apply the 4 hours of smoke to the Salmon Lox.

Worse case it has no effect. I can't possibly see how it would have negative effect as I have already cold smoked Salmon Lox once before without this mod.

I'll report back with my findings, wish me luck! :D
 
Hard to find a 3" y connector to stick in the top vent upside down and blow air into the opposite side so smoke and forced air from the fan come out the stem of the y. Maybe put a cork in the grease trap drain hole to keep all air coming in through the mailbox mod. Mine has been plugged for a couple years. I haven't generated enough juices in the bottom drip pan to use the drain hole so I foil over the hole in the bottom drip pan and plug the drain from the outside to keep all air coming in through the 3" chip loader opening.
-Kurt
 
I realize that's a tiny fan,what is the CFM?

10.3 CFM.

[Edit: Fixed the cubic feet number]
The MES40 is no more than 12 cubic feet using the outside dimensions (I don't have the inside dimensions).
Just know that I have a convection oven motor with a 4 3/4 inch fan blade instilled in my smoker that should be pushing well over 100 CFM.

I'm just hoping th elittle 10.3 CFM fan can pull smoke and air out so it isn't sitting in there stale and just trickling out as it sees fit lol.

Let me know if you see any major holes in this approach as I am no HVAC guy or an engineer in this kind of area :)
 
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Without a speed controller you're gonna have to put holes in the can with a church key/drill to get the flow you want without it acting like a vacuum cleaner.A better way might be to have it blow over the vent to get the flow you want.
 
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Blowing over the vent is definitely an option as well that I had not really considered much.

With the can + fan approach I am pretty sure I won't be able to pull anything close to 10.3 CFM from the blower fan because the top vent still has all the MES vent "damper" stuff in place. Also if I had to cut it down the suction/flow I could always play with closing off the vent some. I don't have a control for the little blower fan.

The internal convection fan will be stirring so I don't know that it will "force" much air out of the vent but it should give the air in the smoker a good stir.

This is all great discussion and food for thought. I'll for sure try out the options and see what does/doesn't work... if anything works at all hahaha :D

Keep the ideas/feedback coming! :)
 
I tried nearly the same thing last January (see it pictured in my MES30 mod thread). My blower is also about 10cfm, and I think it was pulling the smoke through too quickly to allow it to cool and condense in the mailbox & duct. Added the speed controller later, but did not rerun cold smoke test with it.
Interested in seeing your results.

John
 
Hi, I also used a fan. Mine was a computer fan mounted in a piece of 3"aluminum stove pipe. I used a 120 to 12 volt volt rheostat to control the volume. I put mine in the chip tube. It works great. Tomorrow I will take some pictures if anyone wants to see it JTED
 
Hi, I also used a fan. Mine was a computer fan mounted in a piece of 3"aluminum stove pipe. I used a 120 to 12 volt volt rheostat to control the volume. I put mine in the chip tube. It works great. Tomorrow I will take some pictures if anyone wants to see it JTED

I believe I can put the blower on a controller if need be but I won't be putting it in the chip tube. My mailbox mod will be feeding smoke into the MES through the chip tube hole. I will put my blower fan to work over the top MES vent to pull smoke/air out :)
 
I tried nearly the same thing last January (see it pictured in my MES30 mod thread). My blower is also about 10cfm, and I think it was pulling the smoke through too quickly to allow it to cool and condense in the mailbox & duct. Added the speed controller later, but did not rerun cold smoke test with it.
Interested in seeing your results.

John

Oh yeah I saw that! Your design is another option I can try.
As of this moment I was thinking I would allow the sucking portion of the fan to suck the air/smoke and then blow it out, but your design kind of makes a draft with just the blowing aspect. I like that idea since no smoke enters the fan.

I do have a fan speed controller I can hook this up to so I will try the various approaches at full fan speed first and THEN I will look at dialing the speed down with the controller.
Also with my initial design I can still use the MES vent "damper" to reduce the amount of suction/flow no matter the speed be it full blast or dialed down :)

Finally, I plan to put steel scrubbies in my mailbox mod elbow joint to work like smoke filters. I believe johnmeyer johnmeyer does this with great success in his setup. This should help the creosote out of the smoker :)

Any additional feedback is greatly appreciated guys, keep it coming! :)
 
I just use a regular fan to blow on the smoke generator. I leave the ash tray open about 1/2" & it gets the air flowing through the smoker. I'm sure this would work with the mailbox mod too.
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Al
 
As an engineer, I see a few things I would do differently.

1. Blow, don't suck. Yeah, yeah, I know ... but anything that causes the smoke to go through the fan will muck it up in short order. Think of what the vent on your MES looks like. That same gunk will get onto not only the blades, but the bearings as well. (No, despite what you may think, bearings in those fans are not "sealed" in any meaningful way). So, if you are going to try to give the smoker a little assist, put the fan on the inlet, not the outlet.

2. Slow the fan speed WAY down. I have an old lamp dimmer on a fan that I use to exhaust air from the cabinet that holds my "home theater" equipment, most notably the amplifier that drives the speakers. It can go pretty slow.

Every commercial smoke operation I've seen, including the old smoke houses, don't have smoke going through like a five-alarm fire, but instead only the slightest movement. So, I think that all you want to do is ensure that you get a "draw" started. Some people simple heat the MES for about a minute, to make it 5-10 degrees warmer than ambient. That usually gets things started.

The only good thing I can see from forcing a little (and I mean little) more air through is that it will make sure you get plenty of air to the smoke generator. I don't know if there has been a long discussion in this forum about how smoke changes as you increase or decrease the air available for combustion, but I have seen elsewhere that incomplete combustion produces smoke that is less pleasant.

So a little extra air might be a good thing, but 10 CFM, which is a complete air change every minute, seems like a lot.
 
Al and John thanks for the input!

Al, I have put a fan on it in the past with my 1 cold smoke and it helps make sure the pellets get air since there is no "sucking" flow going on to help draw air through the pellets. This worked to keep the pellets going but the smoke just kind of lingered and really did not want to move up and out of the smoker. This left my salmon tasting a little harsh with the Alder smoke (known for being light) but it mellowed out perfectly in the fridge over 24 hrs.

John, thanks for input. I think I will try having the blower fan just blow OVER the vent in hopes that it draws the air from the smoker up and out but I'm not sure it won't cause air to blow INTO the smoker lol.
Heating the MES a little is not an option for me. Here in TX my cold smoking temp margins are quite low so a 5-10 temp increase might put me over a desired cold smoking temp of less than 60-65F in the smoker :(

I think jwed980's approach to build a fan driven wind tunnel tube to help draw the smoke up from the MES vent may be the best approach. I will be able to regulate my fan speed with a dial based device so maybe just causing a fan driven slow/slight upward draft to help suck some air up and out of the MES will be the ticket. Also I should be able to cut the MES vent damper out if I can't get the fan slow enough and I still need less draft/suction to occur :)

I just know that with my last cold smoke that the air/smoke did NOT want to really move up and out of the MES with a fan blowing on the mailbox mod to supply more air so I need the complimentary effect of sucking/drafting some air from the top to assist things.

This will be an interesting little experiment and I will be sure to report back! :)
 
To the Laboratory!

Oh yes my friend!
The Salmon comes out of the cure tonight. It will be soaked, rinsed, and then sit in the fridge to form a pelicle for 36 hours. I'm hoping to smoke tomorrow night but it might have to keep forming a pelicle until Sat morning when I can get to it :)
 
You will find all sorts of ideas at sites that discuss how to get a good draft in a fireplace chimney. One of the recommendations is to use a taller stack. Your MES doesn't have a stack, but you can easily create one by just sticking 3-4 feet of 3" conduit into the opening. That may be all you need.

The next thing is to take that stack and put a 90-degree elbow on it. Point the opening of that elbow downwind. This page gives you some idea of what is going on:

https://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/buildings/stack-ventilation-and-bernoullis-principle

I just sketched up an idea that I might pursue if I get back into using my MES/Mailbox Mod combo for cold-smoking. The idea is based on what you see in that link above. You create your own "wind" and that creates suction across the end of the stack. Let's see if I can can a photo to upload to this site ...

Nope ... upload photos is still broken. It is aggravating that this still isn't fixed. Here's a link to the pic, hosted on another site:

Photos001_zpshzj75uqd.jpg
 
FWIW - I bought this 3v to 12v dc motor controller from Amazon for less than 8 bucks.
Blower being used is 12V @ 0.18amps max, so it's well within the controller's current rating (2-amps IIRC).
Never re-tested cold smoke using speed controller, but I may go back and do it anyway for learning purposes.

These pics should give some idea of air flow being induced using my "McGyver" cardboard proof-of-concept mock-up with the speed controller.
Induction hole (normally goes over rear-facing smoker vent) is 4-1/8" diameter with a 3/8" wide strip of bathroom tissue attached for visual indication.

Speed control set at minimum - blower is turning slowly but hardly any airflow is being inducted:
20171213_184933a.jpg

Speed control set slightly above minimum - more airflow is being inducted:
20171213_184947a.jpg

Speed control set at maximum - still more airflow is being inducted:
20171213_184959a.jpg

I am very pleased that this induction concept works well enough without exposing the blower to any damaging smoke or heat.

I love building "cheap-n-dirty" mock-ups with whatever is at hand for proof-of-concept testing and/or problem solving.
Fun stuff...in the name of science...or smoking...or scientific smoking...or whatever...

-John
 
Thanks for the input guys! Great images and experiment jwed980, I like seeing the cloth draft into the box.

I don't know that I have the materials at the moment to do some of the designs you guys mention.
I have some cardboard boxes and 1 can with the top and bottom cut off. Once I get the fan in I'll see what I can put together.

I'll try to rig up the simplest approaches to create draft and see what works :D
 
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