Plate Questions

[Big Stogie]

I have been reading the flute talk thread a few times and some of the others too, (starting to get crosseyed ) and I a bit confused about hold size and count I have seen bigger holes smaller holes and a large difference in hole count. I see mile high sells a plate done that has 128 holes .080 which seems light to me but I don't know the current thinking, so what are your thoughts? I
also notice anther site that seems to build mostly bubble plates and not many sieve plates any opinion there?

thanks
BigStogie

[bluefish_dist]

Personally I like sieve plates better. I found they can handle more power without flooding. They are also cheaper to build. I did my own plates and used slightly smaller holes than .080" and did 230 for a 4" and just over 500 for a 6". Found they easily run 30w per hole. From what I remember reading larger holes needed more power and were slightly faster, but would not run with lower power. Smaller holes would flood sooner, but didn't need as much power to work. Somewhere in the 1/16 to .100" work at our scale and powers.
I have extra 4" plates that I would sell as I no longer run 4". I made up 10 when I made them.

[Big Stogie]

can they be fit to DVW? if so let do something. I have some tools.
thanks

[bluefish_dist]

They are sized to fit into a tri clamp fitting. They are just under 4-1/4" in diameter. The hole pattern is a 3 1/2" diameter, so there is about 3/8" of copper outside the hole pattern. I have 5 that are unused. Pm me you email and I will send photos. Too hard to make them small to post here.

[Big Stogie]

sent you a PM, thanks!

[FlintHills]

I’ve been trying to decipher all of this column info as well. Seems like I read you’d want an 80” column assuming it was 4” in diameter and packed; keeping true to the 1:20 ratio? So how many plates are recommended for a setup like that as well as the spacing between plates? And is there a feasible way to put the plates all into one column?

[bluefish_dist]

I’ve been trying to decipher all of this column info as well. Seems like I read you’d want an 80” column assuming it was 4” in diameter and packed; keeping true to the 1:20 ratio? So how many plates are recommended for a setup like that as well as the spacing between plates? And is there a feasible way to put the plates all into one column?

That would only be if you wanted a neutral from plates. At the hobby level packing is much cheaper for a neutral column. I currently run a 96" packed column for neutrals and planning on upgrading soon.

For whiskey and rums, 2 - 4 plates are plenty. 5 to 6" spacing is fine on a 4".

I would not put copper plates in a column permanently as they need to be soaked and scrubbed for cleaning. So either assembled into a stack that can be removed or use T's with tri clamps.

[corene1]

When I built my plates I read quite a bit on HD and decided to go with 10% of the surface area of the plate as openings After some time I wound up cutting it down to 7% as my heat source couldn't quite keep up. It is a pretty simple calculation. Pi times radius squared equals area. Figure it out for your plate size then take whatever percentage you want ( most say somewhere between 5 and 10 percent). Then figure out the surface area of the hole you intend to use and divide it into the the total amount of open surface you need and it will tell you how many holes to drill. I also like to use .080 holes, they seem to work well.As an example. A 4 inch plate has12.56 sq.in.of area. a hole that is .080 has .005 sq.inches of area. 10% of 12.56 sq. in. is 1.25 sq.in. Divide that by the area of the hole which is .005 and you come up with 250 holes. So a 4 inch plate with 10% surface opening will need 250 .080 holes.

[HDNB]

to carry on from Corene's info...

250 2mm holes are going to want about 30 watts each to run and have enough vapour speed to keep distillate from flowing down through the holes. that would be 7500w on that 4 inch.

follow the other part of her advise and lower the open space to 6% and a slightly smaller hole...i used 2mm on my last plates at 6% and i need a fair amount of heat to hold the liquid up. A wee bit smaller hole, maybe 1.7-1.8mm will be my next try. the distillate is just too slippery for the bigger holes to hold at moderate power...it would allow for a lower w/hole ratio.

somewhere here there is a calculation for the power to hole size, damned if i can find it though.

[corene1]

to carry on from Corene's info...

250 2mm holes are going to want about 30 watts each to run and have enough vapour speed to keep distillate from flowing down through the holes. that would be 7500w on that 4 inch.

follow the other part of her advise and lower the open space to 6% and a slightly smaller hole...i used 2mm on my last plates at 6% and i need a fair amount of heat to hold the liquid up. A wee bit smaller hole, maybe 1.7-1.8mm will be my next try. the distillate is just too slippery for the bigger holes to hold at moderate power...it would allow for a lower w/hole ratio.

somewhere here there is a calculation for the power to hole size, damned if i can find it though.

Well here is a question in a question. How do you calculate the power needed when it is gas fired and measured in BTU's?

[bluefish_dist]

I used 1.8mm x 210 on a 4" and easily did 6000w. i ran them as low as 4000w with no issues holding up liquid. I would recommend those dimensions.

1 btu= .293 watt. So 6000w/.293= 20,500 btu. Or run it until it floods then back off a little.

[FlintHills]

So to clarify, I run a 5500w element and the top of the cone is 4”, I would either need to have yet smaller holes, less of them or a combination there of to get it working right, correct?

[HDNB]

I used 1.8mm x 210 on a 4" and easily did 6000w. i ran them as low as 4000w with no issues holding up liquid. I would recommend those dimensions.

1 btu= .293 watt. So 6000w/.293= 20,500 btu. Or run it until it floods then back off a little.

Corene, the problem with gas is not having a meter to see where it's set.
an ammeter on a electric set up, you can calculate the watts with precision at any setting.

i calculated my net input power into the still by timing and bringing a known quantity of water from a specific temp to another specific temp (rad's calcs on parent site are right on the money from what i can tell) but it only tells me net power to the kettle, full blast at the pressure it's at ATM. so there is a lot of estimating on gas.


there are calcs on dr.google for Btu's to watts or bluefish's formula ^^^^

the only thing you need to know on gas is that you have more power available than required, and just dial down from there. playing by ear.

for example, you use 200 x 2mm holes at 30 w/hole to figure it will handle 6000w
using a 80K Btu turkey fryer (input) give a 60k Btu output, use 50% reduction for line loss to the air you'd have 30K Btu going into the mash, approx 10,000 watts.....more than enough for that 6000w example, just turn it down to less than flooding.

[bluefish_dist]

So to clarify, I run a 5500w element and the top of the cone is 4”, I would either need to have yet smaller holes, less of them or a combination there of to get it working right, correct?

You can easily run a plate with 200-250 1.8-2mm holes on that setup. I ran my plates with 1.8mm holes X 210 on 4000w with no issues. Reading odins posts he suggests that vapor speed also effects flavor, so you should adjust heat input based on more than just flooding.

[HDNB]

vapor speed also effects flavor, so you should adjust heat input based on more than just flooding.

no doubt. i was just suggesting something "less" than flooding. it took me about 10 runs to find a good speed on my system. after the first 8 runs i was ready to drive over it with a tractor.

[Swedish Pride]

So to clarify, I run a 5500w element and the top of the cone is 4”, I would either need to have yet smaller holes, less of them or a combination there of to get it working right, correct?

You'll find that plates are very forgiving in how many you have and what size they are.
I've about 80 2.5mm holes on a 6" plates. I drive it fine with about 80% of the 5500w that are available.

I think it's 2-3% hole area

[Saltbush Bill]

Swedish is right , the number and size of the holes is very forgiving, to many and to big is probably more of a problem than too few or too small.
On my own 4 inch Bubble plate column the perforation holes are 1.5mm and they are on a 5mm grid pattern, there are 219 holes on each plate give or take one or two.
Been running this still now for 6-7 years and wouldn't bother changing the hole size or quantity.
In my opinion the power a lot of people are running here is much greater than need be, Most of the plated columns Ive personally run or helped to run will run very happily at between 2400w and 3100w

[corene1]

Thanks for the formula. It backs up what I had estimated by eye. My burner is 25,000 BTU max so at that output range it is a bit easier to get set properly than one of the high BTU burners although heatup time is a bit longer.