Introduction and ARC Still questions (Not 56k friendly)

[TEC]

I like everything but the parrot's beak. I think the distillate will be too hot to get an accurate reading. Also I'd worry about the reflux liquid cooling from the ambient air and disrupting the equilibrium.

But then again I could be mistaken.

[nimrod77]

I am still struggling with the concept of this design. There is a column “sensor” surrounded by packing. The “sensor” column will take the same temperature variations as the packing up and down its length. Let’s assume the condensed liquid falls down to the bottom. It will start to boil because of the temperature at the bottom of the “sensor” column is greater then the boiling point of the liquid. Now – if the condensing rate at the coil is greater them the leak rate at the bottom, it will continue to fill with fluid.

This is the part that gets sketchy.

I believe that the “sensor” tube will fill to the top and boil over giving the “reflux” to the packing. After some time, the temperature at the top of the packing will drop from the boil over liquid and create the first “liquid reflux”. Once it is lowered – the boiling will slow and stop until the temperature starts to rise again at the top of the packing and the “sensor” column will fill with a higher grade distillate.

Now if the first fill of the “sensor” tube is say 90% then it boils over and levels off. It will only fill the tube with the next fractionating % then boil again. So the first bit out is not at 96%.

After awhile, it will produce at the max 96% but it must fist cycle to that state.

Is this the concept?

As you say, the percentage of the AVB will not rise straight away, hance the need to still take "Heads" with the ARC method I have used here. I am also building the Heads collection jar as shown in Riku's book. I'll post some pics of that soon too.
Hopefully the whole thing will be finished soon!
Cheers

[rkr]

Interesting concept and I think it will work quite well. The issue with this one is the large liquid reservoir associated with the parrots beak. As TEC said the temperature might be an issue, so insulating the external parts and getting a 77-78C correction table for the alcohol meter should be a good idea. I'd also recommend letting the system equilibrate untill you get 95.6% stuff at the beak. I hope it won't "splash" over from the beak when it starts to boil. In practice you can skip the beak and just let the column equilibrate for 15-30 minutes at the beginning to ensure that the sensorpipe is filled with 95.6% stuff. With properly designed column and small volume sensor pipe even that is not an issue.

The principle of ARC is to stop the product takeoff when liquid in sensorpipe starts to boil. In practice this happens by having a lower liquid mass on the collector plate/ funnel (above the product takeoff point) than you have in the takeoff part. This means that the pressure is released back to column and the reflux falling to the plate will mostly fall back to packing due to overpressure in the plate area. Some small amount will get back to sensor pipe replacing the boiled off liquid so the process can continue untill the boiling stops.

- Riku

[nimrod77]

My still is finished except for installing the element and giving her a thourough cleaning, and treating the brass parts for surface lead. Pics and descripitons to follow.........

[nimrod77]

.. all finished on my first leak test run (water only).

No leaks and all went well. The only thing was that the water output was a bit cloudy.. Milky colour... Any body have any ideas why this might be?
Cheers,
Nimrod.

P.S. I have a video of the ARC working if anyone is interested in seeing it...

[possum]

Maye some flux from the solder operation gettting cleaned out ? Just a guess. Cool concept ...good luck

[stoker]

where can I see the video?

[nimrod77]

Here's the link to the video You'll have to hold your head on it's side to see it right

Possum, I didn't use any flux so it must be something else .... mabey the gasket paper? Or mabey because I haven't cleaned the keg yet?
I have put down my first mash and am looking forward to trying her out with the real thing!!
All comments/questions welcome.
Cheers guys

[stoker]

I thought you would twist your outlet on the video, I just see it dripping (and a leak )

[nimrod77]

Yeah I can see that too
But like I said that was only a water run to find leaks etc and by the time I saw that I wasn't going to touch a HOT coloum to fix it .
I did have it upright (full reflux) and then leant it over to get some output.
The temp didn't go below 99.6Deg C for the whole run after I got output.
I can do another movie next time I do a run showing a bit more of the adjustments etc.
Cheers mate!

[nimrod77]

Finished my first run with ARC. Worked excelently. Stopped once the temp rose to high. Thanks Riku.
Here's a pic of my refined Still setup once it was finished, hence why the funnell is not dircetly under the output.

[rkr]

Good to hear it worked well. How was the quality of distillate? 95.6% stuff I assume. Did you use unstripped mash and was there a slight sweet taste at the end?

Cheers, Riku

[nimrod77]

Yep, 95.6%. Very slight smell of burnt sugar from a mash without stripping at all. The best advantage to this set-up is that I can change it to do whatever I like, either ARC, straight reflux still or a pot still
NJow I have to try the pot still setup