Pot Still with no source of running water (help needed)

[skidude]

Hey everyone, this is my first post. I've been lurking on this site for quite a while now and learning a lot, but now i have a question to ask.

I'm planning to build a pot-still to run out-back in the woods of my property. I'm making out of an old (but nice) stainless steel milk can, and it has a nice tight fitting lid. I'm going to use a vertical 1 to 1.5 foot piece of 3 inch copper pipe filled with copper pot scrubbers for some reflux.

I cannot run a still near my house.
I'm going to use a wood fire as my heat source and am having an issue figuring out the condenser. (no running water)
I want to run a water-less condenser much like this from the parent site:



Except instead of the fan I expect the outdoor breeze to provide airflow.
I have a bunch of these baseboard heater elements that i can gut and clean out. My first question is will this have the same toxic repricussions as a car radiator (lead poisoning)? I could use a cleaned out refrigerator condenser if that would be better.
Second question is will this provide enough cooling for the vapours to condense? I can use more than one in a row if need be.

My other (and more labour intensive) idea for a condenser is to use a 55 gal drum, have a huge copper coil inside and fill it with stationary water. I'd like to avoid this as I would only be able to perform one run per day because i would have to wait for the water to cool down between runs and it just seems that it wouldn't have enough cooling; in the later part of a run the water would be too warm.

Thanks for any input, this lack of running water is kind of a tricky thing to get around.

[GingerBreadMan]

I'd like to avoid this as I would only be able to perform one run per day

How many runs are you going to do a day? How are you going to get your wash to your boiler?

[Hawke]

A leibeg condenser could easily be run on a 12 volt recirculating system.
A 55 gal. barrel full of water, a water pump from a travel trailer or bilge pump from a boat, (both can be had pretty cheap) and a deep cycle battery should give you more than enough to run for 8 to 10 hours.
If you ran the cooling water output through a fridge condenser befor going back into the drum, I don't think you could get it too hot with continuous use.

[GingerBreadMan]

I'm not an expert, but....

... seems to me that if you got a lot of wash and planning on doing lots of runs per day. Couldn't you use some of the wash, run a coil through it (a worm condensor), then you're preheating the wash, getting it ready for the next batch...

[GingerBreadMan]

I'm thinking more about this, and think it's brilliant.

Use two worm condensors in a row, The first worm condensor sits in your next wash you'll distill. This will cool down the vapors and heats up the wash getting it ready for the next charge. The second worm is in the 55 gal drum of water, it cools down what the wash can't.

Seems to be energy efficient, no need to bring the wash up to a boil for the next charge of the still.

Ha!

[rad14701]

Passive air alone won't work unless you use a huge amount of finned copper... Huge as in like 50 feet, and that may not even be enough... Water is the way to go...

Now, you say you don't have water out there in the woods... Are you gonna be carrying in all that wash you plan on running out there...??? You gonna drive back and forth so everyone knows your route, or will this be a mobile unit rather than stationary...??? Are you planning on building a shed to hide the equipment or are you trusting that the wood smoke won't raise suspicions...???

I guess what I'm getting at is that you'd better think long and hard before considering running a large setup right out in the open... Be very cautious... Good luck...

[GingerBreadMan]

I got a brother with house on 100 acres of trees. He could do anything on his property and nobody would notice. Probably could build the next manned mission to the moon, rockets, launch pads and all.

Where he'd get noticed is buying the ingredients/materials.

He's got two sheds/buildings beside his house, one is 20x10 the other is 40x30. If he wanted to put a still on his property, he'd put it in his shed, have running water and cable tv if he wanted it.

[Hack]

I've been using a five gallon bucket with 20' of 3/8" copper tubing as a condenser for my 15 gallon beer keg still with a thumper for over a year now. For single runs it has been just fine without changing or circulating the water. Based on that experience I'd guess that with a 55 gallon drum to house my worm I could probably run all day long wash after wash with no worries. And that makes me wonder just how big of a still are you planning on running?

[Hawke]

Hack,
The 55 gallon drum was my idea, not his. He is wanting to run without water. I threw that out as an alternitive.

[Dnderhead]

being out in the woods is not such a good idea as it once was , unless you have a excuse to be there like a camp etc. with today technology
you can be spotted a long ways off, and something out of place attracts attention. just give me a idea where to look and i can find you.
and even take pitchers of your house!

[skidude]

thanks for all the replies.

It's just that my house is close to the road and there's always people around. We have lot of woods around with trails all though them with clearings, etc. I'm not worried about people being suspicious of a small fire, we burn stuff all the time around here, could very well be people having a cooking fire out at their camp. Or a woodstove in someone's cabin or house. And MANY people including a certain someone grow a personal amount of a certain plant out here year after year without any problems.

We use the forest for our home heating needs and bring the wood in on 4-wheelers. It's most definitely commonplace to see people cruising around on 4-wheelers. I'd bring the wash out on my 4-wheeler.

Now that I think about I guess I'd only be running one run in a day. I think I'm gonna go with the large drum (probably something a bit smaller than 55 gal) with a coil inside, it'd be a pain for the initial fill-up but rain and the odd manual top-up should keep it filled. I'd just have to transport water from the nearby marsh to fill it up the first time. I was also thinking about the 12V powered water pump and using a 55 gal resevoir, great minds think alike haha. But I'm gonna go with the Drum/Coil setup for simplicity sake.

My milk can is ~20 gal i believe, so a 55 gal should be more than enough stationary water to cool a run i think. Now that I think about it again the most I would probably ever run in the still is 10 gal prob closer to 5 gal on average, so could use a much smaller drum, right? Getting caught out in the woods is the least of my worries, the woods are our second home, we spend a lot of time out there, sometimes just to hang out. I see planes fly overhead every once in a while when I'm out there and no one ever comes knocking on my door asking what I was doing out in the woods on my own property. When the equipment is not in use i plan to move it under tree cover and cover it with a green tarp then camo net to keep it from corroding. Rolling a full 55 gal drum on it's edge will probably take some practice.

Thanks for everyone's help. I had my doubts about the cooling capacity of the baseboard heater but figured I'd ask anyway because it seemed easier than the drum/coil. If that is an ineffective cooling method it should really be removed from the parent site, that is where I got the idea in the first place.

[myles]

Are you planning on adding any chemical treatment to your water? I tend to change my water every few runs to be on the safe side, as I am a bit concerned about breeding nasty stuff in water that is being warmed and cooled repeatedly. Leigonella springs to mind.

I don't know if it is a real risk or not, but would welcome coments from people who do make a practice of using their water repeatedly. Do you add bleach or any other chemical treatment to your cooling water?

[Woody_Woodchuck]

I ran a 13 gallon pot, 10 gal mash, using a 30 gallon water heater (top cut off) with 50’ of 1/2” copper in it for the condenser. Water never changed in the water heater only topped off. On a 24 hour run only the top…. maybe 1/4 of the water was hot. Never had an issue losing vapor out the business end.

If your runs are really long or numerous, a few frozen 1 gallon milk jugs or 2 liter bottles floating in the water will help.

I did have a solder gasket or ring around the exit pipe just before the jug. I figured this would cause any leaking water to drip off there and not into the product. I do remember changing the water once in… ohh... many years. Didn’t smell and I don’t recall ever actually investigating what might be on the bottom of it. I would think some bleach or whatever would take care of any contamination issues someone had or just make changing the water in it easier with a faucet or something.

[bronzdragon]

It's just that my house is close to the road and there's always people around.

The area I practice my hobby is literally 15 feet from a busy road, on which police travel buy frequently. With a little ingenuity, you can go a long way.

I run my 5 gal. unit on electric and everything works just fine.

Hope you figure out your problem though. I agree with the other guys about the air cooling thing. I've seen the picture you had originally posted, and that is for a really small still, probably a stove-top model.

You're on the right track with the big drum for water and either a coil or a small pump you can hook to a motorcycle or boat battery.

Cheers

~bd~

[Ugly]

Three six foot baseboards should do it. Many use a copper central pipe with external aluminum fins. Take off the black iron and/or zinc plated connectors (materials safety first) and solder the center tubes together in an S pattern (inlet to outlet) by stacking the units. On anything but a super hot day with no humidity, that should transfer enough BTUs at that temperature differential to change the vapour to liquid. If you needed a boost, a fine mist from a portable garden sprayer would aid the whole thing along. Keeping it in the shade is important.

Modern baseboard is capable of transferring as much as 800 BTU's per foot depending on the temperature differential if you go with new stuff. Some of the better ones have an integrated dual tube design already raiding efficiency 30-40 per cent per linear foot of baseboard. All I've seen are copper core.

Another more advanced concept; a scaled up version of the heat tube design. Basically a sealed copper pipe with de ionized water and a wick inside. The whole thing is under vacuum which causes the water to boil at a very low temp and rising to the top of the tube where it condenses and is drawn back down the wick. The whole concept is based on evaporative cooling and has been popularized by modern day CPU heatsinks, though the idea has been around a long time. Putting a home made copper pipe under vacuum is simple enough with an off the shelf aspirator vacuum pump (20 bucks or less) and a fine raw cotton wick will do the job. I've experimented with this for A/C powered by open flame but finally went with (the tired and true) anhydrous ammonia due to a larger load demand that what you're dealing with.

I'm pretty sure I could design either system correctly for no water cooling if I knew something more specific about the volumes per minute and temps involved (internal external)