Take Off Rates & ABV??

[O'Mahony]

I thought it might be interesting to see comments on "Take off rates and ABV" So folks what are your experiences with your particular design? Also what are your preferences as to stillin time verses ABV?

I did my first product run yesterday (I will post results tonight) and I found that in order to achieve the 95+ ABV the take off rate was 1 drip per slow second. I also found that I could triple + that rate and still have a ABV in the 90's. I have no feel yet for how important the super high ABV is to me. Running a 45" tall 2" diameter inverted reducer Boka. Cheers O'Mahony

[WalkingWolf]

How it was explained to me was height = purity and width = speed (so to speak). I think it'll be benficial to the discussion if folks will include their still specs when responding to this thread.

[Samohon]

Well I have a 1500mm colum 50mm stailess, ran it fast didn't worry about temp to much, lot of reflux happening, takeoff was way to fast and got 92 - 93%. I was kind of suprised and I have to say I am happy to run it faster and settle for 92 - 93% - it saves a hell of a lot of time.

I love this distilling thing

+1 Spud... I used to run my 1500mm column slow and get 96% abv everytime, some runs were 10 - 12 hours... Collecting the last 1.5 Liter on my VM came out at 87% abv on average and was bloody clean stuff... Now I just collect @ 92% abv and save 3 hours on the whole run...

Man, we all dilute down to 40% - 50% anyway, so what does it matter if theres alittle more water diluting the distillate...

Just my $0.02c...

[loneswinger]

Man, we all dilute down to 40% - 50% anyway, so what does it matter if theres alittle more water diluting the distillate...

Man you are preaching the truth. I always thought of purity as eliminating other contaminants, heads and tails . I do not consider water an impurity.

My column is 50 mm by 1000 mm packed with SS scrubbers. VM on top with 1.5" gate reduced quickly to the Liebig. I normally run 1L/hr and get just under 95% purity. It will run a little over 3L/hr with 92% purity. The reason I don't like to run it this fast is the tails will come in earlier if I do. I could probably get away with 3/L it in the middle of the run. Since I do marathon runs I devote the whole day to it anyway and figure its not worth the risk of early tails. I charge the boiler with about 45 Liters of 30%. It takes about 16 hrs to do the whole run (and at least 5 gallons of propane). But, I end up with enough quality neutral to top off a 6 gallon carboy at 42%. I only do one such run every few months so the one long day doesn't bother me.

-Loneswinger