"Agrajag", the 6" Bubbler

[Zak Griffin]

Weeeell... Here's the story of the adventure that I've had trying to build a Bubbler.

Initially, I had planned to turn my 3" pot into a little perforated plate bubbler... Was going to be easy, cheap, and quick.

Then I found this; (Apparently I don't have any pics of the entire pipe uploaded... This pic will have to do!)



an old solar hot water system tank. or, as I see it, 6' of 6" copper pipe with end caps on it So now the

Plans now call for a 4 bubblecap plate 6" bubbler with a packed section... My old 3" pot will turn into the product condenser and sightglasses.

I'll be running 4x 2" bubblecaps on each plate, with 1.5" risers and 1" downcomers.

My reflux condenser; 150mm tall with 9x 3/4" internals









Not finished yet obviously, but it's getting there.

My product condenser is 550mm of 3" pipe with 5x 3/4" internals. I can't build it until I've got aaaaall of the other bits though, because I have to kill my current pot still to make it.

Hence the name, Agrajag

[Zak Griffin]

I should add;

Boiler will be an 18 gallon (~70L) stainless keg, with a 6" still port, 4" fill port, drain port and 2x 2400w electric elements...

[bellybuster]

18 gallons in 3 1/2 minutes!! Whooohooo!
This should be a gooder

[Zak Griffin]

That's the dream, BB!

I only get a chance to run ever couple of weeks, if I'm lucky, so at the moment it's months between spirit runs with the pot, which means months between new liquor! Hardly acceptable.

With this new one I should be able to knock out a batch of new booze every fortnight or so, and everyone's happy!

[MitchyBourbon]

At first I thought Agrajag might be the Indian equivalent for Judge Advocate General stationed at Agra (where the Taj Mahahl is located). That just didn't make any sense. Then I remembered The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Haha!

Nice work!

[googe]

Good stuff mate, good to see you giving it a go . Be interesting with the 4 x2" caps, where are you placing the downcomer?. I run single 2" caps with 1.5" risers, they work great. good luck!.

[Zak Griffin]

googe, I was planning on running the caps on 4 points of a 5 point star, with the DC on the other point... Know what I mean? And each plate will be at 180° to the one below it. Should work alright yeah?

[dirtymax731]

Will a 18 gallon boiler power that size column well? Will definately be watching this one

[googe]

Yep, I know what you mean. Should work well, having the downcomer at 180 will get a good flow across the next plate. I love bubble caps, they run well and produce beautiful flavours!. Though, ive never done perf plates, to lazy lol. Are you doing modular sections?.

[Zak Griffin]

I'll be running a plate tree... The budget isn't going to stretch another couple of hundred $$ for a heap more 6" clamps, unfortunately.

The RC and PC will be on triclamps though, so it won't be completely one piece...

The 70L boiler should do the trick... I've got my eye out for a 100L boiler though!

[googe]

Yeah, can get expensive once you start adding clamps and stuff, especially 6" lol. I think olddog has done a tree with caps, I think the biggest thing will be getting a good seal against the wall cause caps need a decent bath depth to work properly were as perf plates don't, from what I understand.

[Zak Griffin]

Yeah, I've thought about that... Think I'll probably make the plates .2mm ish smaller than the ID of the pipe, and go nuts with thread tape around the outside of the plate... Should work?

It's already going to set me back the best part of $500 to build this thing, and I didn't spend a cent on the pipe...

[Hound Dog]

When i made the 6" bubble cap plate that goes under my packed column I put a band around the side so the plate forms a dish. This way the plate still holds the condensate for plenty of action even without a perfect fit around the edges.

[Zak Griffin]

Not a bad idea at all Hound... Though with a 20mm bath, I'll be covering up about a third of my sightglass...

Hopefully I'll be able to finish my RC this afternoon, and I might even start knocking some caps out

[Hound Dog]

Perhaps one of the more experienced flute guys can chime in but it seems that your sight glass should be a little above the fluid level of your plate anyway. Otherwise it will just fill with liquid and you won't be able to see in. I thought the glass should be about two inches up so you are looking down on the caps.

[Zak Griffin]

of course!

If I cut 20mm high bands of 6" pipe, take 1mm out of them with a grinder and solder them back together, it should fit snugly on the inside of the pipe... Solder these bands onto the top of the plate and I should be sweet!

Obviously I'll still need a couple of laps of thread tape around the edge to stop vapour rising around the edge of the plate...

[Hound Dog]

You can probably get it snug enough to not matter about that little bit of vapor. Once again, one of the flute guys should chime in with better advice. I made a single plate as a sort of bubble ball to go under my packed column and it is a pretty snug fit in just a hand formed sheet copper cylinder with a seam up the side. Since you are using pipe and just cutting a ring like you described, I bet it would be a perfect fit and work well. Put the sight glass in the middle of the section and you will be set.

[googe]

Good idea with the Weir hound dog, I remember someone doing that ages ago, might be in the flute talk thread. you shoukd be able to get a pretty snug fit if you doing some filing. The bottom of my sight glass is level with the top of the cap, it's a good height for seeing everything without the bath level effecting it. You could probably havit higher if you wanted cause you have more veiwing space. What size windows you doing?.

[Zak Griffin]

Sightglasses are 3"...

Cut my caps, downcomers and risers today. Gunna go 3x 2" caps, just not enough room for 4...

I'll get some pics up soon.

[Zak Griffin]

Alriiight, pics;

Started with this lump of pipe I found out the farm a while ago... Pretty heavy walled, and nice and bashed up as you can see...



it's close enough to 1.5"... a bit hard to tell because most of it is a tad beaten up.



I cut enough for the risers and the cups on the downcomers...



Then used my special vice and a flap disc to get them square and even height;



And it's a bit hard to see, but here's the mockup of the plate with 3 and 4 caps... You can kind of see the size of the 6" pipe in lead pencil on the bench...

3 plates is easy;



4 plates is pretty snug;



Considering that the ID of the pipe is actually smaller than the circle I've drawn, and by the time I get a weir in there as well there's not gunna be much space between the caps... How close together can the caps be?

[Zak Griffin]

A small update;

Spent an hour or so in the shed this arvo, tidying up the my caps and cutting some sheet for the caps, and the sightglasses...

Made this little jig up to cut ~50mm ends for my bubblecaps... the center drill bit in the holesaw is snapped, which lets me cut complete circles out



First I cut out ~90mm circles, for the outside plate of my sightglasses... Then I cut 50mm circles out of the centre of them. they will end up with full sized centre holes, I just wanted to make use of the offcuts first... I used a piece of the 6' pipe, split and annealed, for these...

then I cut the other 8x 50mm discs out of scraps of thinner sheet I had laying around... Nothing gets wasted around here!



Tomorrow I might get a chance to solder up the bubblecaps :handgestures-thumbupleft:

One step closer!

[googe]

Good.stuff mate, love the jig , I did my caps the same instead of using end caps, saved lots of $. How are you going to connect the sightglass flange?, you'll need to hard solder it cause when you solder the sightglass main body to the column the flange will probably melt out?. Love your work

[Zak Griffin]

Yeah, I'll hard solder the flange to the SG body, then soft solder the SG body to the column... The rings that I cut today will sit on the outside...

It'll go; [COPPER RING] [SILICONE GASKET] [BORO SIGHTGLASS] [GASKET] [FLANGE]

Make sense? They'll be screwed together with stainless screws, not held together with a triclamp... Cheaper, and I think it looks cooler as well

[googe]

We think alike!, that's how I did my first sightglass, just to be different lol . I used a 4" cap with the center cut out, it slipped over the flange nicley.

[Zak Griffin]

That looks the goods, googe!

I'm not going to cover up my screws though, I'll just polish up the copper ring and pick out some nice shiny stainless screws

[Zak Griffin]

Got 5 of my caps done, and one of my caps 3/4 done... Hopefully tomorrow I can have another play and get the rest of them soldered up, and then I can start cutting the slots...

[googe]

Good stuff mate, your killing it!

[heartcut]

Nice build and good fortune with the pipe!

[bellybuster]

its been a couple days without pics.... not acceptable

[Zak Griffin]

There'll be pics tonight BB!

Thanks for the kind words guys. Just trying to show that with a bit of luck, some basic tools and a few hours, anyone can build one of these stills