Home Distiller

The idea of the double boiler is to have the outer liquid boil at a higher temp then the inner one, otherwise you are losing the applied heat as steam. My idea for the steam system would be a container with an element, then a pipe coming from the top, entering the still doing some downwards spirals,...

Producing steam is less economical then a double boiler or even just direct heating?

I just figured it would be easier then a double boiler, but with less chance of burning then direct heating. I'm thinking of a design like a thermosiphon reboiler.

I though I'd hear about people piping steam into their still to supply the heat, but nobody seems to mention it. What is the problem with using steam to boil the still?

actually you don't destroy all the ethyl acetate. but you do shift the equilibrium to a favorable position. the salting of the acid removes it from the equilibrium equation. the equilibrium exists between ethyl acetate and ethanol + acetic acid once deprotonated the acetate is no longer an acid. th...

Anti bumping granules? I think they are lumps of alumina. The idea is to have surface area crevices to allow for nucleation of the vapour bubbles. Anything rough works well to generate the boil.

I'd imagine broken ceramics would work well, like brick chunks or pot chunks.

Cutting is done by putting a valve between the product tube and the atmosphere. You can then seal the vale, release the pressure to the collected parts and attach another collection jar. The problem is cooling the distillate to stop it from re-evaporating. If you are boiling at room temperature, you...

Yes, I appear to have hallucinated a "bi" in your previous post

It is a bit more harsh then bicarb, with a pH of around 9.3 (bicarb is <8), but nicer then hydroxide. Where can you get it from?

Entropy of vaporisation is proportional to pressure (In a round about way). Boiling point is inversely proportional to pressure. Enthalpy of vaporisation = entropy * boiling temp. So the change is not very big. As an example, I have the enthalpy of vaporisation for water below. T boil Pressure entha...

Sodium carbonate works much better than baking soda. Its also a good copper cleaner. I dont use it in the booze anymore because I havent had anything turn out nasty enough to need cleaning up.I dont recycle my begining heads and ending tails anymore.They go down the drain,or in the charcoal lighter...

In "Distilling the wash", "Stripping" there is a large post about the effect of baking soda on ethyl acetate. While accurate in that the addition does hydrolise the ester to the alcohol and acid salt, there are a few errors. ethyl acetate which is . you've guessed it . an ester w...