He said, "Just let me try."
They said, "Other men have tried and failed,"
He answered, "But not I."
They said, "It is impossible,"
He said, "There's no such word."
He closed his mind, he closed his heart...
To everything he heard.
He said, "Within the heart of man,
There is a tiny seed.
It grows until it blossoms,
It's called the will to succeed.
Its roots are strength, its stem is hope,
Its petals inspiration,
Its thorns protect its strong green leaves,
With grim determination.
"Its stamens are its skills
Which help to shape each plan,
For there's nothing in the universe
Beyond the scope of man."
They thought that it could not be done,
Some even said they knew it,
But he faced up to what could not be done...
And he couldn't bloody do it! proved that he could do it!
---Benny Hill (Ok the last bit was me )
You may be wondering why I am quoting a poem by Benny Hill? Because I can't find the video DUH!
Now Let me explain it's relevance.
The other day I made an offhand reference to the way my old Boka used to run and stated that my little Boka "would sit there all day producing 96+% except in the middle of the run the temperature would drop half a degree and I would get a quart of actual 100% pure alcohol." Which believe it or not is an honest and true statement but somebody took exception to it and said
Quite frankly that just pissed me off because I know damn good and well what that little boka did and that I am not the only or the first member to have it happen. Many people who have had it happen are afraid to say anything because they fear they will be ridiculed. Of course since I am not one to back down when I know I'm right, respectability be damned, a bit of a discussion ensued about it and fortunately some other well respected members came forward and validated my claim.wrote:Statements like these can discredit all comments made by normally respected members.
Now for those who may be curious about how I did the seemingly impossible task of getting above azeotrope here is an explanation about it.
I have 2 boilers, a 15.5 gallon keg with a 5500W element and a 4 gallon pot with a 3,000W element and a bowl on top and connection for the column, which could be used with either the Boka or a pot head.
I'm really bad about not taking notes or not keeping them if I do take them but I found one from a small run I did on that little boka that at least shows how I ran it.
My little boka was 1.5" diameter with 42 inches of lava rock (scoria) packed section and a terribly under powered shotgun reflux condenser on top. This is why I advise people not to use shotguns on top of a boka because they are easily overwhelmed. I really don't wish to get into that argument again with people, been there, done that, I know all the theories about it and I'm tired of being told I'm full of shit when I know how things I've done worked
So anyway, my little boka's RC was under powered so I had to dial the heat back to the point it didn't push cold vapor right out the top. Apparently this somehow resulted in an optimal reflux ratio for my rig provided I took product off slowly. The other big problem with that column was it's size. At 1.5" diam. it was incredibly tediously slow.
The way I ran it was I would get it up and running and refluxing and let it stabilize like that for 20 minutes then crack the needle valve and start collecting at a half pint every 20 minutes. Once I started collecting I never closed the valve or made any other adjustments I just swapped out jars every 20 minutes, checked the temp and ABV and waited for the next jar to fill. When I took notes I wrote down the time it took to fill the half pint jar, the ABV of the alcohol and the temperature of the sample which was usually 60F because my liebig worked really well as a secondary product cooler and the temperature at my house is always cool.
One other factor that some people seem to think may be at play here is altitude. I live less than 300 feet above sea level. I don't know how that may effect the way things work but maybe it is a factor.
Now that all that has been explained I will talk about the run that I still have notes on. This was a 1/3-1/4 run meaning I apparently had the need for some neutral and didn't want to spend the time to do 3 or 4 ferments and 3 or 4 stripping runs and spend 16 hours sitting there watching it go drip drip drip and switching out jars ever 20 minutes. So I did a single stripping run in my keg directly into my 4 gallon pot which would usually give me around 3.5 to 3.75 gallons of low wines into the pot. I then installed the domed lid and set the boka up and ran it immediately. So that's where the run starts, switch on in a 4 gallon pot with 3.5 to 3.75 gallons of low wines. This was also before I installed the ammeter in my controller so I have no data about how much power I was using to do it
10 minutes after switch on the column was refluxing and rocking. I saw a post by Odin somewhere referring to rocking and don't know if he meant it was Rockin! like producing like crazy or actually physically rocking but in my case my little boka actually physically rocked. I contribute this rocking to the vapor swirling as it comes out of the boiler and into the column. I know this happens because one of the cleaning runs of my big borosilicate column was to do a sacrificial run with it assembled with no packing to keep solder flux and other contaminants from contaminating the packing. In this condition my big column can hold approximately 2-3 inches of liquid on top of the packing retainer which is a copper plate with .22" diam holes.
Yes I did a little target practice and shot the retainer to make the holes, Just kidding . I used a #2 drill bit which is .2210 diam. Why didn't I use a 1/4"? I have no idea but it was probably that I had a #2 drill bit handy at the time and not a 1/4 inch bit.
So 10 minutes in and the column was rocking gently back and forth like it always did and I started the reflux timer. 20 minutes later I started collecting. I didn't bother taking a reading on the first jar since that was the fores and tossed. Every other jar was collected at 1/2 pint every 20 minutes. The first jar came off at 90% at 172.2F, then the temp stabilized at 172.0F and the second jar came off at 94%. I will note my vapor temperature readings may be a bit off because I use a cheap Harbor Freight thermometer and I don't really care because all I'm looking for is a point of reference and rise in temp to tell me when tails start coming through. Product temp readings were taken with a thermometer double checked against 2 other thermometers for accuracy.
Once the temp stabilizes at a vapor temp of 172.0F it sits there until the phenomenon happens. Through this run when the vapor temp is 172.0F my notes say the next 5 samples were 60F at 96%, which actually meant azeo at 95.6%. Then 2 jars before the temperature drop I wrote down 172.0 @ 97% @ 60F so it was showing signs that the ABV had started to creep above azeo and the temp drop was about to happen. The next jar is also 172.0F and 97% @ 60F. Then the vapor temp dropped to 171.7. I know that .3 degrees doesn't sound like much but it actually means a whole lot. When that .3 degree F temp drop happened it meant the impossible just happened and magical elusive elixir was coming off. That one jar measured 100% @ 60F. In instances where this happened and for some reason the sample was even slightly warm and that temp drop happened it wouldn't even float the hydrometer so a temperature correction wasn't even possible but after it happened a few times I understood what the temperature drop meant and didn't feel the need to even measure it except to sit there and go WOW!!!!
On the next jar the temp came back up to 171.9, this always happened after the temp drop, the vapor temp always went up to 171.9 and not 172.0 after the temp drop was over. It then stayed there for the next 3 jars all of them showing 96% @ 60F. Then the temp started to show a slight rise to 172.9 @ 94% @ 60F. The next jar had the big temp increase and ABV drop at 192.4F @ 80% @ 60F. The next jar was the last one at 209.5F @ 75% and the run was over by that time because the distillate coming out had virtually no alcohol left in it.
On bigger runs I would get a proportionately larger cut of the pure stuff. I know I should have taken pictures of the thermometer and hydrometer as soon as I collected it for proof and the next day when it had come back down to azeo for someday when I dared to mentioned it and got ridiculed but didn't.
Yes after leaving the high ABV jars open to air overnight the ABV would drop back down to 95.6.
This is how every run on that little boka happened, it always did that temp drop and purity increase at the same point in a run and it became a matter of routine whenever I ran it. However it didn't take me long to tire of running the little boka and build something capable of completing a big run in 6-7 hours Vs 16-17 from switch on to switch off and the boka was packed away and neglected. Eventually I cut it up to send a section to a member who wanted to try a drop in shotgun in a 2" boka and some other projects. I think I still have most of the parts and if I came across another 24" section of 1.5" pipe it could be resurrected but I really have no desire to do so. With my big CM I gave up a very small percentage on the purity but gained a huge speed advantage and don't plan on going back.
Now that you have read all of that, if you want to ridicule me and say my alcometer is off or that by posting this I discredit myself and invalidate every post I've ever made, save it , I don't need the argument. Many scientists have had their careers ruined over the years by other scientists with narrow minded ideas not willing to challenge the norm only to later be proven right, usually many years after their death. If you refuse to believe my results, fine move on. If you wish to speculate on why it happened I welcome that. One idea was that somehow a vacuum formed inside the column while it runs, or something like that, LWCTS explains that idea much better than that on another thread
Maybe it is something about the lava rock, maybe the way it holds onto the liquid or maybe there is some impurity in the lava rock that reacts to the water to dry the alcohol out, I don't know, I am just documenting it and putting it out there so when others run across it maybe they will be willing to talk about it and we can actually learn something and prove that we can do it, rather than insisting that it can't be done.LWTCS wrote:Thinking that a precisely dialed in RC could to some degree prematurely collapsed rising vapor. The vapor collaps can create a vacuum like condition at that moment?