Bubble plate sealing...

[CaboDiablo32]

Good evening all,
Long time reader, but just made an actual account so I can get in on the conversations. Thank you to everyone for all the information I have learned from this
forum already! I have stayed up hours into the night reading posts on here for months.

I'm taking my water wings off. I played with a 1 gallon still years ago, graduated to a 6.5 china-made stovetop 2in column reflux, now just received my brand new 13gal 4in flute with sight glasses, bubble plates, controller, elements...the works. Very excited! Only have about 15-20 runs ever under my belt so I still have little clue to what I'm actually doing, but man am I enjoying myself! Now that I have a worthy setup I plan to run as much as I can and really learn the in's and out's of my new equipment and hopefully really dial in my skills.

So here goes...

I did a test run with water to make sure everything works and I have no leaks. I had my bubble plates installed, but they do little more than sit on the compressed gasket between the column sections. I noticed during the water run that no fluid was building up on the actual plates themselves. Upon disassembly, I realized I'm losing liquid between the plate and the column wall for a variety of issues.

1) The plates are different diameters...
2) Some of the plates were bent during shipping...

A good learning exercise...and I guess the point of a test run! I can recut a new plate no problem (was actually thinking about doing it out of a flat sheet of HDPE?), but them I thought about tubing. Bought some from the local hardware store and after a slit down the middle made a great gasket, did some research on here and realized the material my local store had was no good, and I should be running PTFE tubing. So I ordered some up.

But here's my question...

On the test fit I did with the tubing I had, I placed it in the column and everything seemed to fit nicely. I positioned it right above the gasket where the 2 sections come together and after clamping the sections on, I pushed the bubble plate down to rest firmly on the gasket - to create as much of a seal as possible. I poured some water down the column wall as a test and everything worked 100x better...however I still had some escape. After about 10 or 15 seconds most of the liquid had leaked down to the pot, but there was still enough water resting on the bubble plate to swirl around.

Am I being too critical of this? Or does this seal need to be absolutely 100% tight so all loss to the lower plates is done via the downcomber? Is there enough vapor travel activity happening in the gasket holes to still perform adequate refluxing?

Thanks in advance!
Cabo

[xyz123]

HDPE is a bad idea, I know the Russians are fond of PTFE, but copper or stainless seems to be the go.

Alcohol will act differently to water, as long as it is sealed and there is no liquid leaking externally I would give it a go.

The vapour pressure will help to seal it.

If that does not work then there may be a running fault (operator error) or a design flaw that would need to be investigated further.

[googe]

Either I've had to.many rums, or this is confusing. Is it a solid body plated column with a slide in plate tree, or modules?. You say the plates sit on the compressed column sections, is the plate between the sections, or do you instal.the sections together and then the plate slides down to sit on the seal?. Have you got a pic of the still?.

[CaboDiablo32]

Thanks xyz, I was hoping alcohol vapor would behave and cause a different outcome. Guess I need to wait until the latest bubbles stop bubbling to give it a try

Googe- Could be your rum, might have been my whiskey...let me give it another try.

Here's the still I'm working with

Here's the column sections disassembled with the gasket that goes between the sections.

When the column is all together, the bubble plate only sits on this column section gasket. The only way the seal is created is from the weight of the bubble plate (here's a pic, but with the sections disassembled)

Here's a pic of it installed. Notice the large gaps between the bubble plate and the column walls, this is where I'm losing liquid.

So my plan is to install 1/4 PTFE tubing around the bubble plate before installation, to act as a gasket to the outer column walls.

Here's a pic installed. Once inside the column, I will press this down as firm as I can against the column section gasket (so hopefully the new tubing against the original column section gasket will make everything water tight)

My question is; even with this additional tubing installed as a makeshift seal against the original column section gasket; it's not 100% watertight (although is a huge improvement over having no tubing at all). Will this make a difference? Is this normal for columns with bubble plates to not have 100% seal internally from bubble plate to the inside column wall?

I hope I explained it a little more clear this time... Thanks again in advance!

[xyz123]

PTFE tubing, wow, cool, where do you get that?

[CaboDiablo32]

Seems rare. Only place I found it for sale by the foot was eBay. A little expensive but will overall be cheap if it gets the job done.

I'll let everyone know how it works out.