SPP Packing

[skow69]

Odin, thank you for this thread. I have read the whole thing several times. [Actually, I skip the pages where you got hijacked for the terminology debate.] It inspired me to read Ian Smiley's book [several times] and to try the method with my VM/LM combo. I bleed off the fores and heads on the LM side, switch to VM for the hearts, and back to LM for the tails. To my complete amazement, it works like a dream. In fact, the flavor is so intense that I ended up mixing it down with neutral like Ian suggests. On the second round I thought I must have lost my mind, so I had a friend try a blind test, and he preferred the "diluted" version as well. It still has more than enough taste, even blended 1 to 1 with neutral. I think it's important to note that the neutral must be absolutely tasteless to preserve the integrity of the whiskey. I suppose you might get something interesting by blending with a flavorful vodka, but I'm not going to try it.

I don't want to divert the discussion, but I have to ask about comment you made about SPP. I'll be happy to start a new thread for it if you like.

It seems that those darn Russians not only invented SPP, but also found the perfect way to run it. "Close to column flooding" they call it. As close to column flooding as you can get! By doing that, they can actually lower HETP even further. How they do that (I just found out) is by upping the power. And by adding a glass section as the top part of the column with packing. "Get as close to column flooding as you can all the way from where reflux starts to where the glass stops. Usually 20 or 30 centimeters. That's where you can really see the boiling (or so it looks, because it cannot be boiling but is gasses travelling up in an aquatiq environment) take place. Now, I looked at my rig, and it does exactly that: boiling action at the top. But just for 5 to 6 centimeters. You know what those Russians do? They up the power to like ... 2.7 kw on a 2 inch column. Now I do not even want to get close to that. 2 kw suits me fine.

A while back I swapped out most of my standard scrubbies for some material that is similar to SPP, made from a different kind of pot scrubber. This picture shows two short scrubbies above a section of the faux SPP.

faux SPP.jpg

This stuff is not as efficient as the real thing, for sure, but it did improve separation, and it forced me to reduce the power to avoid flooding. I am intrigued by your comment about the aquatic environment. With the borosilicate column and power control I can dial in flooding at any level I like, but I have always kept it down in the boiler because, frankly, it's pretty scary, and I thought it would decrease the effective height of the packing. I may need to reconsider that now. Could you point me toward a discussion of the Russian work, please?

Skol,
skow