Putting older posts here. Going to try to keep the novice forum pruned about 90 days work. The 'good' old stuff is going to be put into appropriate forums.
well these pictures are pretty self explanatory. I dont think I had enough packing material. I was using bits of broken glass. I am going to start using scrubbies. I am concerned about using stainless in a my copper is that a problem.
Anyway I dont think that I have seen any stills designed like this please let me know what you think about the design. the column is a total of 28 inches with about 18 inches of the water jacket.
and can someone tell me why I cant figure out the img tag??
oh there we go
thanks
Last edited by kingearwig on Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
Can't see any in principle reason this basic design won't work. But...
The column needs to be plumb vertical for refluxing to work properly on the packing material.
The amount of column you have before hitting the reflux condenser section is way too small. You need a minimum of about 500-600 mm before the condenser for it to work as a decent reflux column.
But it shouldn't be too hard to fix both these problems.
The coils in the product condenser in the sink seem to go down then come back up over the edge of the sink. The path for the condensate must always only slope down so it can always drain out easily, or it will block the condenser up with liquid condensate and cause back pressure above it, which you do not want to happen.
I posted about doing this but no pictures.I did not get any feed back I
must not explained it so people could understand it.I have two cooling tubes
in the top that are 3/8" colum is 36"x2".I have a worm in a 55 gallon barrel
with a pond pump running water from the worm barrel thru the cooling tubes.
I have made 4 or 5 runs in it and it has worked great.I have two stills a very large one and a 16 gallon keg,Seldom use the big one takes to long to heat
when its full.I heat with propane But back to the first I have copper in the
colum about 2" down from tubes.If I want to run it as a pot still I take out the
packing turn off the pump and its a pot still.
bought wisdom don't come cheap,but it is a good teacher
ditto what others said. Plus the refluxing vapor needs to drip into the middle of the packing. I used a jacketed condenser on my reflux still but it was a vapor management/nixon stone type still. I used a 6" piece of 3/4" jacket and at full power and dead slow water flow, there wasn't a drop of water making it out the top of the column during the test runs. So you may or may not have problems getting vapors to pass the column
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HookLine wrote:Can't see any in principle reason this basic design won't work. But...
The column needs to be plumb vertical for refluxing to work properly on the packing material.
The amount of column you have before hitting the reflux condenser section is way too small. You need a minimum of about 500-600 mm before the condenser for it to work as a decent reflux column.
But it shouldn't be too hard to fix both these problems.
The coils in the product condenser in the sink seem to go down then come back up over the edge of the sink. The path for the condensate must always only slope down so it can always drain out easily, or it will block the condenser up with liquid condensate and cause back pressure above it, which you do not want to happen.
ok.... I can easily fix the condenser coil. but is plumbing the reflux column of great importance? I mean I get a lot better than pot still results right now. will plumbing the column help with the "stripping" process I have read about?
If I could just get 85%+ off of one distillation I will be happy. right now my 10% wash comes out at around 70%. Thanks for the help so far!! Great site you guys got here... no chat though?
kingearwig wrote:ok.... I can easily fix the condenser coil. but is plumbing the reflux column of great importance? I mean I get a lot better than pot still results right now. will plumbing the column help with the "stripping" process I have read about?
For the stripping (low wines) run, no, having the column plumb won't make a whole lot of difference. But it will for the reflux (spirits) run. If the column is not plumb the reflux condensate tends to run down the inside of the column wall, not through the packing.
well I understand the stripping run... I guess I used the wrong term. I what I want to know is whether or not it will effect the alcohol concentration of my once distilled product. also what kind of performance should I expect. I have bent the pipe today and it is almost plumb.
Yes being on slant would affect reflux it wold run down side instead
of on pacing if you got it almost plumb i'd try it ,as far as %
i do not know if it not high enuf just run again
kingearwig wrote:well I understand the stripping run... I guess I used the wrong term. I what I want to know is whether or not it will effect the alcohol concentration of my once distilled product. also what kind of performance should I expect. I have bent the pipe today and it is almost plumb.
Less reflux = lower % abv, less pure ethanol.
You may not get much improvement on that particular still because the column below the condenser section is so short. If you wanna hit 95% or close you will have to extend the bottom packed section quite a bit.
today I modified the thermometer port on the top of the column and I measured the length of the cooling part of the column at 335 mm. when I ran this still before I with broken bits of glass in the column I was able to stop the vapors there at the column. That must not be all there is to a reflux column. the ability to condense all the vapors and then tune it down so that only vapors of temp of close to 172 f get through. am I thinking all wrong here?
I cant wait to run my still but my turbo yeast wash is not ready. I set it up for 17%... I am planning on waiting till it is at 0 and I am planning to let it settle. Is this a good idea I have always been to impatient and just stilled it with a few % potential alcohol left in sugar. will the yeast and stuff in there precipitate out of there like I want it to I used alcotec 24... used one packet in 4.5 gal of water and sugar brought up to 17.5% potential alcohol.
so to run this still I turn on the water jacket at full cooling. heat the boiler to what??? I have been heating it to about 180 185 then tuning the water jacket flow until I started to see distillate. I could probably be pointed to a help page at this point
Usge wrote:Ok...so..I'll just ask.. Is the water on the reflux tower backwards???
Shouldn't the "cold" water be first...then the hot water at the top???
I believe that you want the cooler temps at the top of the column not at the bottom. it would be nice to hear from a local expert though.
So I have basically realized that you guys are right. if I try to get any reflux by flowing water in the jacket, it spits and sputters distillate. I am getting a bit discouraged. does any one want to help redesign these parts into a more functional reflux still.
After adding a doubler and running with no jacket cooling but with ss scrubbies in the column I can get 75% off of one distillation(also this was off of a 15 - 17% wash) but I would like to be able to get a good neutral.
it is only 3/4. that might be o.d. I am not sure. I am not against drilling a bigger hole in the pressure cooker. maybe drill a big hole in the top of the cooker and run like 16 in of inch and a half up to the jacketed part. if I did that would I want to put packing in the jacketed part?
It's probably been covered elsewhere, and you could do the calculations yourself, but here are a few facts to consider regarding column sizing... It doesn't take a whole bunch of studying of the main site, just a bit of math...
A .75 inch diameter column has about .44 cubic inches of volume per linear inch
A 1 inch diameter column has about .79 cubic inches of volume per linear inch
A 1.5 inch diameter column has about 1.77 cubic inches of volume per linear inch
A 2 inch diameter column has about 3.14 cubic inches of volume per linear inch
A 3 inch diameter column has about 7.07 cubic inches of volume per linear inch
As you can see, even a small increment in column diameter goes a long ways as far as vapor volume is concerned... Use the largest column diameter you can manage...
3/4" is okay for a pot still, but is too small to be running as a reflux. 1.5" is really the minimum workable size for reflux, and even that is on the small side. 2" is much better, pretty well perfect for homedistilling.
You will also have to make a new condenser at that size too.
By far the easiest thing to do is build a new column from scratch. Much wider, and taller. I also wouldn't use that kind of condenser, nothing wrong with it, but a coil condenser takes up less vertical space, which gives you more column height for the all important packing.
