compact column design

[Lubavitcher]

i was thinking about a way to have a very tall column in a low ceiling room. this is what i though of, and i want to know what you guys thought. the red arrows are the vapor and blue is the reflux.

[kiwistiller]

the problem you have there is the effective column height is the same as if it was just one column, as the reflux path is the same height - half your sections will not be refluxing. Sorry
How much height do you have to work with?

[LWTCS]

How do you propose to control reflux if you are looking for this design to behave more like a "reflux column"?

This will behave more like a set of thumpers. Charge those two off set chambers with liquid and you've got two thumpers.

Just finished building this similar concept:


http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 0#p6831483

[Lubavitcher]

from what i have read the mos important thing is the temp gradient in determining effective column height, but it is true that that design is missing a some reflux but the reflux would always be centered in the design which is a plus.

im not sure about eight or nine feet. but i might move in the near future and the ceilings in many basement apartments in brooklyn are like 6.5.. im really just kicking around the idea as an alternative to offset still design.

kiwi im not sure about what your saying, how do you explain this 250l vodka still holstein made? they dont have their reflux traveling the length of the whole column. cuz they cut the column in half

[LWTCS]

Those rigs are plated, no?
See olddog's "Evil Twins" build.

[Lubavitcher]

@LWTCS of course there will be a reflux head at the top this is just the colum design, not the head, the top part could be LM VM or Even CM if some one wanted to

the vapor entry ports would be higher then the reflux exit lines so there would he no bubbling and hence it would have no thumper like quality

and yes the holstein still is not mesh. but that is irrelevant cuz i was just pointing out that the reflux from the bottom of one column doesnt make it up to the top of the next. so they lack full reflux.

[kiwistiller]

yeah plated designs are a bit different. I'm not familiar with the exact still you've posted there, but it looks to be passively refluxed (which works a lot better on plates rather than packing). If i'm picking it right from your pic (I may not be) there is reflux being generated passively at each plate, so it isn't as critical to have the reflux flowing down from each section. Still, I imagine there is still an efficency loss (in product lost, not so much %) because each column there will have to have the bottom draining. With that in mind, there is a big difference between two sections on a still that looks to be 20+ plates, and 5 sections on a small scale still. olddogs design would be a better one if you're thinking of multi columns.

If you have a schematic of that still I could probably do better than speculate. OD or Rednose may be able to chime in, I know they've done a lot of research into plated columns and are more likely to be familiar with it.
Cheers
Kiwi

[olddog]

Here are some pics of my plated columns, the twin column has 6 plates in each column and is designed loosely around the design of a Coffey still, but made for single batch production, not continious like a Coffey still.

This is my latest build which is a 4" five plates column.http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 5#p6835235

OD

[rednose]

Plates work basicly like thumpers (vapor pass a liquid bath) but have the advantage that they are mounted one on top of the other with that also have less heat loss than thumpers.

What you wanna do is something like a 5 plate column and it would be much better to do it like OD has just done.

If you run stripped low wines on about 40% you can get easy to around 90% ABV with 5 plates, than each additional % of ABV will need more efforts in the built (also kills most flavors), that's why some stills are so high or have double columns (neutral stills). Anyhow higher than 95% in home made stills is very difficult to archive and higher than 96% you'll need a vacuum still and special product tanks as it will get back to 96% if the product is open to natural air.

I will built soon a four inch 9 plate SS column shooting for about 93% ABV vodka.

Joe

[Lubavitcher]

@kiwi yeah there is bottom draining look at the diagram see the blue arrows thats the drain that empties the Reflux in to the column beside it. and the whole point of this is to make it possible for a person with low ceilings to have a 3 incher thats 90 inch height equivalent.

yeah OD your still is like a coffey still except it has no pump to pump the hot feints back to the top of the 'Analyzer'
the design i proposed is close to your still only it achieved half reflux by gravity feed.

OD? where is the run info on such a still
btw im only interest in mesh packing i dont have the time or energy to be involved with plates

[LWTCS]

There is no "run info" as such.
It is aquired anecdotal info within the thread.

OD, rednosen and whoever bought OD's evil twins are prolly the only ones that have any hands on with this hobby sized concept.

[Lubavitcher]

how about this one. the red is vapors the blue is cooling the half circle on the right is a plate i figure they way you put this together is to use a a barrel fill the bottom with packing and drop in a disk then repeat
this is a packed column design with a tray element to it. please dont take it the other way around

[The Baker]

Hi, lubavitcher and folks,

L., I don't think your latest will work, liquid will run along the flat trays instead of dropping through the mesh ( and forming little drops on the mesh which should be carried up again with the rising vapour which is condensed and falls down and.......) ('refluxing'; hence, a reflux still).

But to reduce height you might consider;

Use an electric element in your boiler rather than gas (saves the height needed for the gas ring under the boiler).

Use a transverse shotgun condenser (What did you call them, Harry?) (another senior moment!) (it has lots of little tubes instead of a coil...)
Anyway that will save a fair bit of height you would have used for the more common coil-at-the-top-of-the-column condenser.

Use a boiler which is very short and fat (not necessarily cylindrical, could be square, could be a cylinder laid on the side with the column rising from the middle, say...)
and that will save you height too.

[Lubavitcher]

Thor's hammer?

[The Baker]

Thor's hammer?

Sorry, not familiar with that.

[stock doc]

I believe Lub is referring to a heat sink made for computers by Xigmatek

[rad14701]

A horizontal shotgun condenser is known as a Thors Hammer, as Lubavitcher mentioned...

Actually, Lubavitcher, that design might work... It wouldn't even have to be barrel shaped, even a copper box with shelf plates... Any condensate that settles onto the "plate" above would be heated and re-distilled by the warmer vapor below... And a small bit of downward slope of the plates (just enough to avoid pooling) probably wouldn't hurt either... It would essentially be like folding down a tall column... I had the idea of trying that with a tall straight column but the folded zig-zag concept seems better, at least from first glance...

[manu de hanoi]

A horizontal shotgun condenser is known as a Thors Hammer, as Lubavitcher mentioned...

no, "thors hammer" is a coil inside the T not a shotgun.

Perhaps baker's wanted to say "cross flow shotgun condenser"

[kiwistiller]

+1 manu, jackoson crossflow is what harry development for his enviro friendly still. thor's hammer is what riku developed to integrate a heads reservoir and condenser in less height than other ARC designs.

[Lubavitcher]

I believe Lub is referring to a heat sink made for computers by Xigmatek

nice joke... but no

liquid will run along the flat trays instead of dropping through the mesh ( and forming little drops on the mesh which should be carried up again with the rising vapour which is condensed and falls down and.......) ('refluxing'; hence, a reflux still).

the tray above will be soaked with cold liquid that will cause condensate to form on the bottom of the tray which will drip on to the mesh below... besides the mesh is only a place for the vapor to condense on so when this happens the vapor will travel horizontal and hit it. and if your worried about the packing staying wet you can buy self wetting pack and the packing will wick heat out of the vapor in to the reflux on the bottom and the reflux will get blown around allot at the end of the plate

[rad14701]

Ah, yes, I remember the discussion about naming a while back... Did a search and see that it was back in 2008... Prior to Riku's design we had always called a cross flow a Thor's Hammer around my neck of the woods and, obviously, we still do... A buddy of mine has one that probably as as much weight in solder as it has copper and feels more like a 8 pound maul... Riku's is definitely a simpler build...

[kiwistiller]

liquid will run along the flat trays instead of dropping through the mesh ( and forming little drops on the mesh which should be carried up again with the rising vapour which is condensed and falls down and.......) ('refluxing'; hence, a reflux still).

the tray above will be soaked with cold liquid that will cause condensate to form on the bottom of the tray which will drip on to the mesh below... besides the mesh is only a place for the vapor to condense on so when this happens the vapor will travel horizontal and hit it. and if your worried about the packing staying wet you can buy self wetting pack and the packing will wick heat out of the vapor in to the reflux on the bottom and the reflux will get blown around allot at the end of the plate

Make it then, tell us how it goes.

[olddog]

Yep, talking and theorising counts for nothing until you put it into practice and report your findings.

OD

[LWTCS]

the tray above will be soaked with cold liquid that will cause condensate to form on the bottom of the tray which will drip on to the mesh below... besides the mesh is only a place for the vapor to condense on so when this happens the vapor will travel horizontal and hit it. and if your worried about the packing staying wet you can buy self wetting pack and the packing will wick heat out of the vapor in to the reflux on the bottom and the reflux will get blown around allot at the end of the plate

I am not really clear on your assertion. Could you be more specific about "you can buy self wetting pack and the packing will wick heat out of the vapor in to the reflux on the bottom and the reflux will get blown around allot at the end of the plate"

Thanks. Just trying to follow along.

[Lubavitcher]

the tray above will be soaked with cold liquid that will cause condensate to form on the bottom of the tray which will drip on to the mesh below... besides the mesh is only a place for the vapor to condense on so when this happens the vapor will travel horizontal and hit it. and if your worried about the packing staying wet you can buy self wetting pack and the packing will wick heat out of the vapor in to the reflux on the bottom and the reflux will get blown around allot at the end of the plate

I am not really clear on your assertion. Could you be more specific about "you can buy self wetting pack and the packing will wick heat out of the vapor in to the reflux on the bottom and the reflux will get blown around allot at the end of the plate"

Thanks. Just trying to follow along.

http://www.cannoninstrument.com/ProPak.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Pro-Pak’s self-wetting properties derive from a rectangular network of capillaries on the surface of the metal, produced by the combined effect of the holes in the ribbon and the roughness of the burrs. These properties ensure that Pro-Pak stays wet in service in the distillation column and retains its high efficiency. Because the surface area of the packing remains effective under low liquid loadings, high column efficiency is maintained at vapor velocities very much lower than the flooding velocity.

if you read their pdf they list the packings HETP data for different sized stills

[LWTCS]

Hmm. Those look pretty cool. Wonder how much input impacts the described behavior that you mention.

As a potstiller looking for "crisp flavor",I wonder how well a (small) aray of plates would perform with a stack of those little guys mounted at each level rather than a continuously/completely packed coulmn?

[kiwistiller]

not sure it would be ideal for potstilling, as it is most effective at low vapour speeds.

[Lubavitcher]

http://www.cannoninstrument.com/ProPak.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

the packing remains effective under low liquid loadings, high column efficiency is maintained at vapor velocities very much lower than the flooding velocity.

its implied above that the packing gives "high column efficiency" at normal vapor speeds and doesnt loose those propertys under low vapor speeds... i cant vouch for these guys all i can do is read their site and drool

s a potstiller looking for "crisp flavor",I wonder how well a (small) aray of plates would perform with a stack of those little guys mounted at each level rather than a continuously/completely packed coulmn?

i have never seen any material about how to achieve crisp flavor pleas tell all you know ... maybe you should use phosphoric acid and carbonation to get the crisp flavor just like the soda companys do. lol i assume mesh would also work fine in the same configuration (maybe 7% diffrence, nothing to worry about) if you have a short piece of of column like 6" by 1' you could throw some metal disks in there (as per the design above) without soder between the mesh pieces and find out

[The Baker]

A horizontal shotgun condenser is known as a Thors Hammer, as Lubavitcher mentioned...

no, "thors hammer" is a coil inside the T not a shotgun.

Perhaps baker's wanted to say "cross flow shotgun condenser"

Yes, thanks Manu.

[Lubavitcher]

@LWTCS i was thinking in class what you mean by crisp flavors....if you mean crisp vs body(creamy) then maybe you should sill out your product to a higher abv to leave behind more of the sugars and thick starchy compounds. also it matters what wood you use to age i like my drinks creamy the exact opposite but in crown heights they all drink Smirnoff (which is crips) so i put in some light toast wood chips and that made the stuff bearable if you want i could start a topic about this and invite you.