I just ran across this and remembered your post. http://moonshine-still.com/reflux-stills/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Its a design by a guy named Edward Adam from 1801. Pretty cool...
No they are more like dephlegmaters. But the cooling water is ran over the balls to get reflux on the inside of the ball walls. There are some pics of it in operation.
Not sure, Mr P. If I look at the diagrams and the explanation, they cannot be. Where does the reflux go to? Given there is only a drain downward back to the boiler (normally for cleaning only), my guess they put liquid in those balls. Or the reflux stays there and gasses bubble through. Please check out the link. Maybe my reading is off, but I don't think so.
Odin.
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
I was wondering along those lines as well Odin. How the vapour reflux is separated in those balls intrigues me. There is a diagram on the oxygenee link but it is hard to see as it is a scan from a very old diagram.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Prairiepiss wrote:No they are more like dephlegmaters. But the cooling water is ran over the balls to get reflux on the inside of the ball walls. There are some pics of it in operation.
No. A dephlegamter is an internal reflux condenser. These are external cooled thumpers meant to increase ABV by their use just before the worm. In the case of absinthe they do not want to strip flavors. Pot still, run hard and use a thumper. A really cool thumper!
RECTIFY. 1. : to purify (as alcohol) especially by repeated or fractional distillation
further down the website they say : "The rectifying balls are continually cooled with water, allowing the heavier vapours to condense and be redirected back to the pot. Everything else passes through the condenser coils below. In most cases the rectifying balls are only used for part of the run, and many distillers prefer to bypass them entirely."
Doesn't sound like a thumper to me. Sounds more like a dephlegmater that the reflux is redirected back to the boiler. But I could be wrong?
Prairiepiss wrote:No they are more like dephlegmaters. But the cooling water is ran over the balls to get reflux on the inside of the ball walls. There are some pics of it in operation.
No. A dephlegamter is an internal reflux condenser. These are external cooled thumpers meant to increase ABV by their use just before the worm. In the case of absinthe they do not want to strip flavors. Pot still, run hard and use a thumper. A really cool thumper!
RECTIFY. 1. : to purify (as alcohol) especially by repeated or fractional distillation
A dephlegmater is a partial reflux condenser that returns reflux in a condensed liquid form back to be redistilled. And also allow vapors to pass so the can be condensed and collected as product.
So if the ball is cooled by running water over the outside of it to induce condensation on the inside. That condensation is then returned to the boiler. And vapors that do make it through are then condensed in a separate condenser for the product output. Wouldn't this not be the same thing as a CM still?
LWTCS wrote:Shoot my eyes are going.
I have been trying to view these since you posted over yonder and can't seem to see through all the busy back ground noise.
Yeah Larry the pics are a bugger, it looks to me as though the Lyne arm joins the ball at the base so is feeding the vapour into the ball from there. However the condenser worm also comes off the base of the ball somewhere so I am wondering how they pull that off, ie condense some of the vapour to (gravity feed?) back to the boiler and then somehow have the non condensed vapour travel into the worm.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Hey PP, I am of course making a statement based on what I can see in the pictures and understanding absinthe distillation and basic distillation principles. My argument would be that there is no logical reason for having the ball work as a reflux condenser. It could, but why the hell would you? Builders don’t build without logic.
Partial is not a relevant word to reflux condensers. It is a reflux condenser or a product condenser. Reflux condensers will induce reflux by condensing or not. Many guys run their rig at full reflux until they feel they have "equilibrium? WTF does that really mean? A cute phrase. I keep my rig at full reflux until I feel the heads have had a chance to mostly reach the upper plate before I start take off. Is that equilibrium? People spout so many cute phrases that general theory and principals get lost in the pile of BS posts.
Just my POV. ( I learned that acronym one from watching online porn)
The drawing is cool, You are getting good at the computer work. I already know what the circuit would be if you were to return distillate from the balls.
Why would the hell would you do that? Think from a practical pint of VIEW!
Even if the pictures don’t make sense. Make sense of them. Builders do things for a reason. If they wanted to have reflux condensers why wouldn’t they have put them in the column? They are making a high flavored distillate. Pot still and use a doubler. Distillation is science but not rocket science.
I didn't say it was a good design. It looks quite old to me. Who knows what they were thinking? They use to build some crazy looking stuff. And its not really designed to be a still. It was designed to flavor a previously distilled product. While distilling after maseration.
Ok I didn't add the fact that there is coolant plumbing going into the balls. I'm assuming there is a reflux coil in it of some sort? If you dig around a little on that site. There is more info. On this page they have posted pics of the original schematics for it. They show all but the inerds of the balls. http://www.oxygenee.com/absinthe/alambics2.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Isn't it a combo of both: dephlag/thumper? Looks to me they are cooling the balls, thus creating reflux (like a "lentil" on top of those old alambics). Inside vapour collapses to liquid. But when you look at the inside of the balls, you see more then just refluxing taking place. A liquid pool forms thru which the gasses (that will be partially refluxed) bubble up. "Dethump"?
Now I know not my Absints. But if it were geneva they were making and I was really, really trying to think outa the box, and trying to make sense of the "why" and especially "how" and "where", I would go and say: "okay, let's put some essentials or oils or absint herbs in a base liquor in the balls and then lead the gasses from the main boiler(s) thru them."
But I am not the artist here.
Odin.
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
If you think about how they used to make Absinthe and the statement that these balls were only used for 'part of the run' then maybe it makes sense.
they used to collect everything, so no significant heads cut. So maybe they ran the balls during the first part of the run condensing the heads and returning that to the pot for flavour enhancement. When you do an Absinthe run there is a very distinct change in flavour profile (from the herbs) as the run progresses.
The stronger flavours are definitely through the hearts and tails so I can see why they would like to balance out their product flavour profile with some return of heads.
I could see that this would be particularly useful if your herb bill was lacking in either freshness or quantity and can also see how this would now be an out dated practice as in general herb quality is better now as it was in the 1800's
Why the balls were at the end of the lyne arm is beyond me as my techo knowledge on still building is close to 0.1 % perhaps it was also merely a plumbing/close to worm reservoir issue?
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
If you think about how they used to make Absinthe and the statement that these balls were only used for 'part of the run' then maybe it makes sense.
That also tells me it shouldn't be a thumper type of apparatus. You wouldn't be able to use it part of the run. Well you could but I don't see any kind of drain valves to control that.
I still think its just a pot still with a dephlegmater in it. It's just built to fit in and around the cooling and collection tanks.
I know this is just interpretation of a picture, but I think you are looking at this the wrong way. The balls appear to be mounted over the worm for a reason. There is NOTHING inside them but vapour.
A logical assumption - and that is all it is - is that there is a shower head above the ball and that cooling water is sprayed over it and drips into the worm bucket. The cooling is on the outside and the vapour is on the inside. Any condensed fractions go back to the boiler. The only reason it is at the end of the lyne arm is to get it over the worm bucket, so the water has somewhere to go. Well that is what I would do, if I was going to try this technique.
Yep that makes perfect sense, however with the crappy pics it is the position of the worm and lyne arm that has me wondering. The worm seems directly underneath the ball and the lyne arm also joins the ball through an appendage slightly lower than the ball.
So do you think that the outlet for the worm is slightly higher on the ball so to allow the draining of condensate into the return to boiler line?
Hang on I just found another pic which I think goes with your theory. However again the schematic confuses a bit because you can see a joining beneath the ball...worm maybe?
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
The other pictures on that website seem to show the balls covered in limescale, which reinforces the idea that they are externally cooled. Its hard to see but I suspect the vapour goes in and out higher up the ball, and the condensate is taken out from the bottom.
Although that latest picture looks like the vapour goes in AND the condensate comes out through the same tube. That implies some sort of funnel or slant plate liquid trap inside the ball to catch the condensate with the vapour going out the bottom directly into the worm.
From the pics of the ball in action not only can you see the scale on it. But there is steam coming off of it. And you can plainly see the outside wetted. Now you can also see the cooling supply drops into a funnel that leads into the ball. If you look close there is another tube coming out of the top and curling around. Can't tell where it goes? But if I was a guessing man. And clearly I am. I would say there is a coil condenser inside the ball along with the outside surface cooling. But other then that its pretty much like my simple drawing.
