Cooling water flow direction?

[NZBoka701]

Hi everyone,

Sorry if I missed this in the search, I have been googling about and searched the forum to no avail. What is the correct direction for the coolant flow on a double helix coil? Mine is 28ft of 10mm copper wound down and then back up again. I have been running it with the water going in through the outer coil and back through the centre coil, twinned with copper mesh up the centre it has hell of a knock down power but am I running the coolant in the right direction?

[hpby98]

I don’t believe they’ll be much of a difference. Although it would make a bit of sense to do the inner coil first.

[Yummyrum]

Guess its sitting hairs but I’d go with the way OP has purely because the outer coil is much larger than the inner and therefore the overall condenser assembly would be closer to the counterflow ideal ..... but in reality it doesn’t seem to make that much difference how its run so long as you have enough coolant flow to not allow any vapour to escape .

[NZBoka701]

Thanks, I guess I will just leave it as is seeing as there doesn't appear to be a steadfast answer. I was just wondering because I am having some control issues at the moment. It has a tonne of knock down power, so much so that the cooling water valve is set to almost off and its a tiny little trickle that is SCALDING hot but still gives full reflux with no vapour escape. The issue is that I struggle maintaining equilibrium. I can see the vapour go up as I have a sight glass at the top it hits equilibrium and the head temp sits at around 79c, I leave it like this for 20 minutes or so with the output shut. I open the output valve and the temperature starts rising (and the abv of the output lowers) so I increased cooling water and the temperature still went up? For some reason if I turn off/down the cooling water the head temp lowers?

[shadylane]

As normal, I'm confused
What is the double helix coil being used on/for

[NZChris]

As normal, I'm confused
What is the double helix coil being used on/for

I suspect the clue is his user name.

[NZBoka701]

Would have helped if I said that! It's a 3" by 48" boka