condenser with more surface area

[RumBull]

why not make a "poor" mans" versions
your regular 1/2 inside 3/4 with 1/4 inside of that

I thought about this in the beginning. I did not want to decrease the vapor path volume, which speeds it's travel through the condesor and thus decreasing some of the gains. I calculated the the area of a 1/2"(my original condesor) circle= .19", the area of a 3/4" circle=.43, subtract the inner 1/2" from the 3/4" and you get .24". Now the thickness off the 1/2" needs to be subtracted so it gives you a very equal volume in the vapor path. These are still small fittings and not that expensive. I knew that moving up to a 3" pipe on my still from 1 1/2" was going to require a bigger condesor but wanted to keep it short. This was what I came up with.

[Hawke]

Did a little more calculating.
Using the outside diameter of 1/2" copper, which is .625, it comes out to .30
Internal of 3/4" is .44. So the actual vapor path is reduced to .14 from the .196 of the straight 1/2".
For actual contact area though, you go from 1.96 square inches per inch for the 1/2" pipe to 3.92 square inches per inch on the tripple wall.

[RumBull]

Thanks Hawke,
I did not know what the outside measurement was on a 1/2" pipe.
I do have a different calculation on the surface area however.
.5" 2 p r =1.57.........1/2" pipe has 1.57 square inches per inch
.625" 2 p r = 1.96
.75" 2 p r = 2.35.........You add both the outer 1/2" surface and the inner 3/4" surface for the new vapor path giving you 4.31 square inches. Giving you 2.75 X more surface area.

[Hawke]

Rumbull,
The correct formula is: pi x r x r. i.e. 3.14 x .25 x .25 (for a 1/2" diameter) to get area. For circumferance, it's pi x diameter or 3.14 x .5 This will give you your square inches per inch.
Although copper is actually larger than advertised, (sold as NOMINAL I.D). actually comes out around .562 for 1/2". This can vary depending on manufacturer, but won't be less than 1/2" I.D.
O.D. will always be the same though. (5/8" or .625)

[RumBull]

For circumferance, it's pi x diameter or 3.14 x .5 This will give you your square inches per inch.

We are in agreement. pi x D or as I had said 2 x p x r. My math is correct. You get 2.75 times more surface.
.5 x 3.14=1.57
.625 x 3.14=1.96
.75 x 3.14=2.35

[Hawke]

Not sure where I messed up on my math. (maybe the 3rd corn likker sour) But we are in agreement.

[RumBull]

Used the condensor for the first time yesterday. It performed well although I found a small leak on the outer water jacket at the top joint (which was a self fabricated piece so no wonder it leaked there ) If you have ever tried to resolder you know what a pain it can be. Got nice fat glob on there but won't know if it is fixed for a few days. It holds water now but so it did before. The heat has a way of finding your weak spots!
The water was a slow trickle so I am calling it a success. It is hard for me to compare apples to apples with my old condesor. I have completely changed the whole still set up. I pulled the exiting water hose around so you could see the water flow rate next to the parrot in the picture.

alc. and condensor water flow rate

Pictures FR143 045.JPG (63.17 KiB) Viewed 5317 times

The nice feature of this new condensor is the steam port being at a 90 degree angle and on a bronze union. This allows it to pivot to any angle or height! I can raise or lower it to suit any collection vessle.

[myles]

Am still working on the new boiler but the condenser is done. A variation on this design with a coil instead of the outer jacket. Mine has a 22mm inner with the steam between the 22mm and the 28mm tubes. The 28mm tube is cooled by a 6mm coil. Length of cooled surface is 36",




28mm input from the lyne arm and the tap that you can see at the top end is just there to balance the coolant flow rate between the centre tube and the outer coil. If I still need more cooling after this, I will feed the output into my original 24" standard Liebig (15mm in 22mm) although this new one has loads of cooled surface area.

[CoopsOz]

Fark, you don't muck around! Looks good.

[rad14701]

Geez... That's one expensive looking condenser... Nice craftsmanship though...

[blanikdog]

Pharque me!!!! One hell of a job. Makes my old pot still belong in the scrub. Nice work indeed.

blanik

[Mud]

Here's a pic of the condenser I built based on RumBull's design. It just needs the water infeed reduced to 3/8" and it will be done. Then I'll shine it up and let it oxidize.

new triplewall condenser - small.JPG (52.54 KiB) Viewed 5116 times

There are few differences. The water outfeed is a 3/8" tube branched out of the 1" jacket. Fittings are expensive so I try to avoid buying them whenever possible. I can get up to 1 liter/minute with this setup, which should be plenty. BTW, this is my second try. Had a bad joint inside on the first one. There was no way to repair it.

Glad you posted this RumBull. I messed with Punkin,'s Pint's, and your design a couple times trying to figure out an easier build that could be angled. Wasn't able to do it. At least not without using much larger pipe. Good plan.

-Mud

[RumBull]

Glad it works for you Mud. I like your 3/8" pipe in the middle. If I made another, that is what I would do. Gives you more steam path volume with only a minor reduction in surface area, and less fittings.
I just finished a stripping run tonight with the condesor. I was pulling a gallon in 20 min. without any steam coming out the end. I have found that it works best with the water entering the outer shell and exiting the inner tube. The outer shell will be cold 3/4 of the way down and warm near the end, with the top outlet hot. I have not found it's limit yet. You got love that this condesor is only 22 inches long and condesing a liter in 5 minutes! I love it, love it!

[Mud]

I posted late last night. Just realized how that 1 liter/ minute reads...That's the cooling water flow. And the inner pipe is 1/2". Just the infeed line will be 3/8". The elbow on the 1/2" made for a close tolerance inside the 3/4". I filed down the thickness just a hair after soldering. Using 3/8" soft inside would avoid all that.

Rumbull's triplewall condensor mod small.JPG (9.96 KiB) Viewed 5015 times

The water outfeed area is a little complicated but it will work. The drawing shows a reducer made by capping a piece of 1/2" pipe, drilling a hole in the 1/2" cap and passing a piece of 3/8" soft through. That method works well for making odd stuff the hardware store doesn't carry. Might be hard to find a 1/2" hard x 3/8" soft reducer. The local store here has them in stock, but it's the only place I've ever seen them.

Hope all that makes sense.

-Mud

[myles]

I notice that you have mostly built your condensers with all of the reducers etc inside the outer jacket. I tried this too but found there was not enough clearance.
For mine which is a bit earlier in this thread, I did it the other way with the outer jacket shorter than the inner. OK I used an outer coil instead of a 3rd jacket, but that is just a minor variation.
Having the inner section longer than the outer jacket makes the overall length a little bit bigger, but the build is much easier. More so with the use of the T junctions.

[RumBull]

Myles,
It appears that you are useing the presoldered joints that have a lump around them. Those would cause your clearance issues. The standard joints do not have clearance issues in this design and are cheaper. Your way around this with the coil has made a cool looking condensor. With all the extra fitings, valves and coil, that could not have been cheap. How is it performing for you?

[myles]

I will let you know when I have tried it in earnest. I am still building the new pot to go with it, and have had a bit of a delay. I did test it out with a domestic steam generator - the sort you use for cleaning b-b-q's and stripping wall paper and it seems to work ok. If the new 20 litre pot overpowers it, I have a 24" liebig from the 5 litre pot that I can add as a second stage just to finish it off.

[Ozark Shiner]

I just wanted to add my experience with this condensor design.

I made a couple of minor alterations to the design. I used .5" for the interior water line and 1.25" for the exterior water jacket. The vapor path was made with 1" copper. The reason that I did this is that:

1) I calculated that the inflow water and outflow water would be roughly balanced based on cross-sectional area.
2) It increased the cooling surface area of the vapor path.
3) Most importantly - it's what material I had on hand !!!

I made the vapor path roughly 26" long. The rest of the construction was true to the original design.

The results were AMAZING !!! I can strip with full 220v 4500w of power and keep up no problem. The outside shell of the condensor doesn't even get hot and the distillate coming out is quite cool. I use a submerged pump in 20 gallon of water. Fow rate of the pump is about one gallon per minute.

The take off rate of the distillate is an amazing 2.5 gallon per hour !!! A process that used to take the better part of a day now takes a little over two hours.

I just want to say thank you to everyone who takes the time to share great information on this site. Also want to thank RumBull for the extra help in getting me through this project !!!

[myles]

That sounds good. I'm glad RumBull started this post as I had not thought of trying this design before.

That take of rate is impressive. Can't wait to try mine as I have a 36" vapour path beween 22 and 28mm tubes. My pot build has been delayed but I am at the stage of building the water seal sytem at the moment.

[uh-60 pilot]

Gentleman,
I have tried to construct the liebig from this post and do have a comment for future builders: the 1/2" inner jacket is too big for the 3/4" vapor channel. The others have hit on it here, with my one experience building this condenser there just wasn’t enough space where the 1/2" makes its 90 through the 3/4" especially after you solder it. If I were to try it again I would definitely try 3/8" or even something different inside the vapor channel. Thanks for all the good ideas RumBull this is a very good design overall.

[Gr8brewer]

Just posting so I'm sure to find this again... Really nice work.....

[myles]

Just as an update I thought I would show you another variation that I built. I wanted a shorter version, so I put a 21" long 1/2" inside 3/4" liebig inside a 1" inside !.5" liebig. Again I used a coil instead of the outer jacket.



A little bit fiddly to build and I moved up 1 size on the outer T fittings and included a reducing adaptor to make the build a bit easier.









I have just taken off the outer coil to replace it with a nicer looking one so will post the finished item later.

[ozone39]

Very possible to applying to modifying a lower steam tube on a ponu.......or better yet, building a complete ponu out of straight pipe with no coils........White board time....3 to four layers of different size pipe inside of each other with either steam, condensate, vapor, or cooling water,,,,hummmmm

[astronomical]

good stuff. should be a sticky. The diagram really clears up confusion.