Valved reflux questions

pothead · Post by **pothead** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:21 am

Hey guys, a buddy of mine is making a valved reflux still, and he was going by the moonshine-still design. He decided to make the condenser can 3"x12" and making a double wound coil for the condenser. Now the design says 1/4"tubing.....1/4" tubing looks tiny...do you think they mean 1/4 id (3/8 tubing). And also, how many feet of it do you guys think it would take?

He is also making a collumn length adjustment, He is gonna make it 42" from the salad bowl to the top of the collumn (not including the condenser. Do you guys think it is too long?

Also, can somone with a similar design give me a run-down of their run start to finish including temps, and how much is being taken off, and wash size, ect. Thanks alot for the help guys.

~Pot

junkyard dawg · Post by **junkyard dawg** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:41 am

I made my condesor shell 2 x 10" It has about 18 feet of 1/4" tubing in a single coil. works fine. I think 3x12 is overkill unless the column is also 3"

That length column is great. I added another removable section of pipe to mine and it now reaches 68" of packed column for neutral spirit runs.

This still runs like a charm. Slow rise in temp. till it starts running distillate... full reflux for an hour and then slowly take off the heads. The temp will be steady for the whole run up until the collection slows down to a crawl.

knuklehead · Post by **knuklehead** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:57 am

Just like JD my column on this still is now 54" packed. I started with the length in the plans, then changed it to 36" packed and several months ago I added another 18". The column breaks into 3 pieces with unions so it's easy to pack and unpack as well as clean. My condenser shell is 6" long. I have a double helix coil using 16' 1/4" copper, not 3/8". 3/8" could be a real task to wind tight enough to fit the shell. If I had it to do over I'd have made the jacket a little longer then 6". Either 10 or 12" sounds good to me, really doesn't matter. My shell is so short that the coil reaches down into the reducer.

crackher · Post by **crackher** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 10:12 am

I have a similar modeified still.

My column is 45" long,

The base is 3" with a reducer to 2"

The Condensor shell is 14" long, with 1/4 single wound coil. I find this to be the critical component here. You want enough cooling so that you can run your still at the near max vapour speed, so that it can push more of the good stuff up to the condensor thereby allowing you to collect more, in shorter order. I would have gone with a double wound coil. Another idea I had (abiet a little too late) is to wind bare copper wire around the 1/4 tubing and then wind it into the coil you want. since the wire is in direct contact witht eh tubing the coilg by conduction is great due to increased surface area.

Another way I am trying to achieve this is by 'filling' the condensor shell with copper packing to slow the vapour while it is in the shell. Since I use an external heat source the vapour can really get moving in there.

Good Luck

pothead · Post by **pothead** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:30 pm

Hey crackher,
how many feet of 1/4" did you use for your coil? And how close does it come to the shell wall?

I know that 3/8" would be a pain to wind, but wow, I never realized that these designs actually meant 1/4"od . It just seens so small, I wouldn't think that 1/4" would stop all the vapors in its tracks.

Don Ventura · Post by **Don Ventura** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 11:34 pm

Naaaw 1/4 OD tube is fine for what we are doing. I used approx 19' out of a 20' spool of 1/4" refrige tubing I got at Home Depot. On a 1 1/4" tube I got an overall single coil of 15". I only have about 1/4" of overall clearance from the walls of the condenser, but the center whole of 1" is my biggest worry. The fill tube goes all the way up the center of the coil and the both the fill and exit tubes come out the top of the condenser and go down the side for about 6".

heres a pic.

I hear a lot of ppl are adding copper scrubbies to the condenser to increase the condenser volume. The cooling water cools the additional copper fibers that are stuffed into the center of the coil and when the vapors pass through they have more surface area to condense on. Kinda of like the same premise of the packed reflux column.
Hope that helps.

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DAMN NO DBL HELIX HERE!!!

Thorin · Post by **Thorin** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:27 am

what diameter the the tubing for your condensor?

just wondering, dont know exactly what size i should use when i deside to make my reflux setup. the 8mm was damn hard enough to make into a large coil for my pot-still (tube in a barrel'o water condesor), so i think i have to use smaller, but dont know exactly HOW small... 5mm maybe?

Thorin...

stoker · Post by **stoker** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 4:53 am

I use 6mm

Don Ventura · Post by **Don Ventura** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 11:41 pm

well for those crazy whacked out US measures, I used a 7/8" tube from a closet hanging pole, then wraped it in 50' of telephone cord. Why?
Well I'm not really sure... I just know the first coil I did on that 7/8" pole was too narrow for the condenser and there was way too much space btwn the coil and walls of the condenser shell. When I added the extra diameter of the wrapped telephone cord it widened the tube just enough so that it gave me a good fitting diameter coil that was a great fit. If you want I can try and take a pic of it, if that helps.

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DAMN CRAZY SOLUTIONS TO SIMPLE PROBLEMS!!!

pothead · Post by **pothead** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 2:27 am

Pictures are always great.

If you could post one the shows how close the coil is to the shell wall, that would be cool.

Thanks for all the help guys.

The guy that I am helping with this has enough copper for 2 stills like this, so I might offer him something for the scraps, and build one myself. Although I was thinking of maybe using bokakobs ministill design with a couple modifications. What do you guys think? Should I stick with the standard valved design, or try the bokakob design (but with a much taller 2" column)?

stoker · Post by **stoker** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 2:49 am

I used a 22 mm copper pipe ( the diameter of the condenser = 42mm)
with 6mm coil, it fits propperly