how many BTU to boil 90 gallons?

[Brew Chef]

I'm designing a nano-brewery (2 bbl) for a small brewpub appllication. The largest burners I've seen are 315K BTU in natural gas and propane. All batches won't be 90 gallon boils however, so I will not always need a lot of power. Will 315K BTU do the trick?

[bbrodka]

http://www.plumbingpro.org/Documents/btu.doc

[Brew Chef]

I wasn't able to get a yes or no out of that link...could anyone please help me with that?

[JoeV]

A BTU, short for British Thermal Unit, is a basic measure of thermal (heat) energy. One BTU is the amount of energy needed to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. "a pint is a pound the world around" so each gallon weighs ~ 8lbs. Make it easy say 100 gallons or 800lbs. You want to go from say 150 to 212 (boiling) thats about 60 degrees so that gives you a demand of 48000 BTU. So if you had a burner that delivered 48,000 BTU/hour it would take an hour to heat to boiling. You get the idea?

Cheers