Distilling time for 30l of fermented Birdwatcher wash?

[The newbiest]

I was just wondering if anyone could give me an idea how long it would take me to run 30l of wash through a reflux still - 2 x 4000W elements for heating.
I don't mind if it takes the whole day, I just don't want to start it running at 7pm and be stuck with it all night.
I'm expecting the fermented wash to come out at around 8 - 9%.
Any and all guesstimates welcome.
I think I'm getting over excited now, my still won't even be finished for another 10 days or so!

Thanks,

Pat.

[hpby98]

Refluxing at 2x4000 watts... how big is your column!?

You’ll get into vapor speed issues and you’ll need a condenser the size of Texas to keep up with it

I run a single 4400 watt to heat up, then knock it down to 1100 Watts for running, altho I have just rebuilt my condenser to be 3x as large so hopefully I can up my reflux ratio a couple more points. I got a corrected 94.7% last runs with the old condenser. .

So refluxing isn’t such a quick process. It requires a careful balance.

For stripping runs, like a football match, more power is better. But for proper reflux runs it’s more of a ballet... lots to choreograph and balance to get it right. Not impossible by any means. Just means talking to it nicely vs screaming at it.

For example, my coolant temperatures - it’s not until my coolant gets up to 35+°c that my purity goes right up past 92%

Making gin and vodka is a good read... hit up starting at page 31, even more so page 60 on

http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/books ... illers.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[The newbiest]

Great link, thanks! Yep, he's putting in 2x2000W heaters because that's what I asked for - but they have power controllers as well so I can run them right down to 200W each - or turn one off and run one at 200w by itself! Which might keep it warm enough for the fermentation bin...
Column is 3"dia , 72" tall as I requested with the option to change it for a 2" one if I don't have any fun with the big one.

[cranky]

There are way too many factors to give an answer on the information you have given us. There are approximately 15419.63 drops in a liter so there will be approximately 41633 drops of pure alcohol in your wash. If you collect at 1 drop per second that's 694 minutes or about 11.5hr plus whatever heat up and reflux time it takes. Obviously if your takeoff speed is faster you will finish faster and there are some other variables that go in there that can greatly effect things, like column size, height, packing...etc

Edit, posting same time as The newbiest
A 3" colum shoul be capable of much greater speed than my example but there still isn't enough info to give an accurate estimate and everybody does things differently.

PS. don't forget you still have to do cleaning and sacrificial runs.

[The newbiest]

Yep, thanks - on having a skim read of the PDF above, it's a lot more dependent on my still, how close I want to try and make my cuts, etc. than it is just "30l of wash, how long?"
That's a great book, very informative - sent to the office printer!

Thanks,

Patrick.

[hpby98]

There are way too many factors to give an answer on the information you have given us. There are approximately 15419.63 drops in a liter so there will be approximately 41633 drops of pure alcohol in your wash. If you collect at 1 drop per second that's 694 minutes or about 11.5hr plus whatever heat up and reflux time it takes. Obviously if your takeoff speed is faster you will finish faster and there are some other variables that go in there that can greatly effect things, like column size, height, packing...etc

A drop is generally considered to be 0.05ml, which means 20 per ml.

If you have 30 lires to run at 8%, that gives you 2.4 life’s of pure, but probably 3.5 liters with heads and tails and imperfections.

That’s 70,000 drops, and at 5 drops per second gives you 14000 seconds or about 4 hours.

Add in warm up time of an hour and a half, plus another hour to let your column stabilize, and you get to about 6.5 hours

I did up one spreadsheet for tracking and estimating your mash / wash progression that’s here

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=69958

I’ve done another for reflux runs but haven’t posted it yet. I should as it helps a ton.



———————

Edit

Some guys ran a test and found ethanol droplets come in at about 1/2 the size of ethanol. 0.027 ml per drop

Your altitude and pressure will also factor in though. I’ll have to do some tests myself

https://surfacetensionandimfs.wikispaces.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[cranky]

There are way too many factors to give an answer on the information you have given us. There are approximately 15419.63 drops in a liter so there will be approximately 41633 drops of pure alcohol in your wash. If you collect at 1 drop per second that's 694 minutes or about 11.5hr plus whatever heat up and reflux time it takes. Obviously if your takeoff speed is faster you will finish faster and there are some other variables that go in there that can greatly effect things, like column size, height, packing...etc

A drop is generally considered to be 0.05ml, which means 20 per ml.

If you have 30 lires to run at 8%, that gives you 2.4 life’s of pure, but probably 3.5 liters with heads and tails and imperfections.

That’s 70,000 drops, and at 5 drops per second gives you 14000 seconds or about 4 hours.

Add in warm up time of an hour and a half, plus another hour to let your column stabilize, and you get to about 6.5 hours

I did up one spreadsheet for tracking and estimating your mash / wash progression that’s here

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=69958

I’ve done another for reflux runs but haven’t posted it yet. I should as it helps a ton.



———————

Edit

Some guys ran a test and found ethanol droplets come in at about 1/2 the size of ethanol. 0.027 ml per drop

Your altitude and pressure will also factor in though. I’ll have to do some tests myself


https://surfacetensionandimfs.wikispaces.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The fact of everything is you can take off however fast or slow you are happy with and that varies greatly from person to person and can't be predicted from the information that was given. It's all up to The newbiest, it's also up to him how pure he wants to take it off at and a theoretical spreadsheet about it has no effect whatsoever on reality. If his warm up time is 30 minutes and his reflux time is 10 and he collects at 50% at a rate of a liter every 10 minutes he will be finished in less than 2 hours and we don't need a spread sheet to prove that. We can throw math at it all day long but in reality the only answer to how long it will take can be answered by The newbiest when he is actually doing the run.

[hpby98]

The fact of everything is you can take off however fast or slow you are happy with and that varies greatly from person to person and can't be predicted from the information that was given. It's all up to The newbiest, it's also up to him how pure he wants to take it off at and a theoretical spreadsheet about it has no effect whatsoever on reality. If his warm up time is 30 minutes and his reflux time is 10 and he collects at 50% at a rate of a liter every 10 minutes he will be finished in less than 2 hours and we don't need a spread sheet to prove that. We can throw math at it all day long but in reality the only answer to how long it will take can be answered by The newbiest when he is actually doing the run.

Numbers can't lie tho, and it's helped me plan out and track where I am in my reflux run coming off low wines

No worries tho cranky - lots of different ideas here

A preview of it is here, with a little prodding I'll take the time to document and share it:



original size:

https://i.imgur.com/YNWEaHU.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow