I think I like building these still just as much as sampling the sweet output.
I recently aquired a new 50L beer keg to convert into a boiler. A few stainless steel fittings and a friend with a penchant for Tig welding later, Voila, new boiler. A local company had a supply of stainless steel sanitarity tri-clamp style fittings along with male threaded adapters. I bought them along with a supply of a half dozen of the PTFE gaskets. I had to shave off the rounded rib on one side of the gasket in order to get the proper height across the joint to the keg. A local shop did a 5 minute TIG weld job to fit them together for me and said no charge. I said thank you very much. I've done lots of work with those guys in the past, I won't think twice about doing more in the future....
Outside of the coupling and nipple welded in the keg, the only other mod was to remove the Sanke internal tube.
I purchased a 4500W heater element at the Home Depot. it fits nicely inside the 1" NPT 150# coupling with a healthy wrap of PTFE tape. I have since added a threaded hose adapter to the drain so I can attach a garden hose and drain the contents of the boiler out through the back door of the garage...
I read through all the posts on the PSR-25 phase angle power controller. it was the way I decided to go versus the Triac version. I purchased a volt meter and ammeter from Newark online. Unfortunately the amp meter blew up on the first run and now needs to be replaced. I wired it in downstream of the phase angle controller. Not sure if that was the reason why it failed on the first go or not. I will wire it upstream of the shutoff relay and phase angle controller on rev 2. I wired in my flow switch. if I lose water flow, then it cuts all power to the boiler. I wired in a light bulb on the top of the enclosure. If the light is on, then the heater element is powered up. If the light bulb is out, then a low flow is detected and the power has been cut to the boiler. There is a 3/8" needle valve on the discharge side of the flow meter/switch for adjusting the water flow.
I have a packed section that is about 1 meter in length. I use copper mesh as the packing. I placed unions at both ends of the packed section so that I can fit a variety of heads on the top end, or leave the packed section out alltogether and then place the heads directly onto the boiler adapter for doing stripping runs. I placed thermometers at the bottom and the mid point of the packed section just for the fun of it. I do see a temperature profile of about 4-5 degrees across the packed section while doing reflux spirit runs.
Then I can select which setup I want. My first build was a double headed nixon stone offset head design that didnt work out too well. I ended up cutting off one head and recycling the parts. The resulting conventional Nixon stone head works extremely well. I can make 95% off this head consistently. I have a product cooler that takes the input water feed first and then out to the condenser at the top of the still.
I also built a Bokakob head and VM takeoff head. Since both have union connections, I can stack the Boka above the VM takeoff for a comined LM/VM configuration. The resulting configuration is shown here prior to insulating.
The rest of the photos will come in post #2
