Why Copper in Liebig?

Anything cooling/condenser related.

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corene1
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Re: Why Copper in Liebig?

Post by corene1 »

I remembered reading this post a few days ago and wanted to add into the discussion of alternate materials and expansion rates between the two as I just had a failure, Nothing bad but it did happen. My liebeg is 3/4 copper inside a 1-1/4 id stainless tube. The stainless tube has end caps that are stainless and TIG welded together and the copper tube that runs through was silver brazed using safety silv 45 a very good filler material that has a 45% silver content and makes a very strong joint. Well I was doing a cleaning run on my still tonight since I did some modifications and at the end of the run I noticed a little drip. The bond between the silver at the stainless and copper joint had just started to separate from the stainless end cap. So there you have it, stainless and copper will eventually pull themselves apart. Never would have thought that there was that much expansion and contraction on a 36 inch piece of tube. This particular liebeg had about 30 runs on it. Makes me think about all the condensers out there that are 2 different materials. My Graham condenser was 5 inch stainless tube with a copper coil inside and it is fine so I am assuming that the coil has enough room for expansion and contraction.
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