Condensing 6kw of power for a soxhlet extractor

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needmorstuff
Swill Maker
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:29 am
Location: UK

Condensing 6kw of power for a soxhlet extractor

Post by needmorstuff »

Hi All,

I have a 26l soxhlet extractor sat atop a 100l milk can boiler.

I want to use my full 6kw of heat to speed up extraction cycles.

I am having one hell of a time condensing that 6kw and despite my efforts steam still escapes the shotgun condensors I have tried.

To date I tried a 6" with 18 x 12mm tubes, 230mm long
a 500mm long 3" shotgun with 8 x 12mm tubes - the tubes i put scrubbies in to increase surface area.

Both failed miserably - even at 3kw! I guess condensing upwards is harder than condensing for product collection.

I don't have any more height to use... and to get 500mm i have to take my boiler of its stand so draining will be hard.

Ideally I'd like a horizontal arrangement for condensing - I have looked at this https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001115105557.html as it claims to knock down 9kw. It is only 300mm long so i asked them to make a 500mm and they tripled the price!

I have zero fabrication skills and i am in the uk.

What do you guys think is an option?

I thought maybe CSST in a 3" piece of spool with a central 3 way Tee - capped off at one end then a 3" to 1" offset reducing end cap at the other for the CSST to go through.

Or i could just buy the triple wound coil from distillex on Aliexpress and put that in a horizontal arrangement.

Help ;-)
MidnightThunder
Novice
Posts: 71
Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2016 12:55 pm

Re: Condensing 6kw of power for a soxhlet extractor

Post by MidnightThunder »

Still trying to fix this? I have a double wound CSST condenser about 11" long atop me 4" column and it knocks down all the vapor I will throw at it. I highly recommend this style and if I had anymore CSST when I did it, I would build it probably 16" long for a little extra capacity. 16" long double wound would probably knock down 9-10kw based on how mine performs.
needmorstuff
Swill Maker
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:29 am
Location: UK

Re: Condensing 6kw of power for a soxhlet extractor

Post by needmorstuff »

In short no.

My 3" shotgun (8 x tubes, 500mm long) can easily condense 6kw pointing downwards in product collection duties. Stick it atop a column to try use it in "dephleg mode" and it can barely manage 3kw.

My next venture would have been CSST! so that's an excellent shout.

I have just changed what I am doing as I was chasing my tail on this.

I am now going to collect the product and direct it to an external soxhlet (33l stock pot with a siphon back into boiler)
License number NRU/D/15/22
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