Two stills complete and ready to run..., when Spring arrives

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SenileToo
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Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 7:34 am
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Two stills complete and ready to run..., when Spring arrives

Post by SenileToo »

I couldn't wait. After six months of reading, planning, more reading, gathering materials and a lot of work, my two still project is finished, cleaned and tested. Just gotta wait for Spring! The pot and LM/VM Combo stills can be mounted on either an 8-gallon or 13-gallon 5500W electrically heated boiler. There are two liebig condensers, one with a 1/2" tube inside a 24" X 3/4" jacket and one with a 3/4" tube inside a 36" X 1" jacket. Both have a spiral of 12ga wire soldered to the core inside the jacket. Both knocked down the steam generated during the vapor leak tests. There is also a product cooler for the LM side of the reflux column. Its a 1/4"ID tube inside a 20" X 1/2" jacket with a wire squiggly inside to maximize the sidewall contact. The reflux head condenser is a coil of 60" X 3/8" CSST. It works! Of course you gotta have parrots. These were my first built components and a pain in the butt! I thought it would be good to have foreshot and cleanup drain valves.

The control box is on a 30 amp GFCI breaker. Yes that's a PID..., only for monitoring boiler temperature. The knob is a pot that controls a 40A. 240V SSVR to adjust the power to the element. the display under it shows the volts and amps going to the element. There's a push button for the cooling water pump power.

The guidance in the forum was invaluable, especially the design drawings posted by Hookline. Here are the results, including a glimpse of my 30-gallon reservoir/water hose fed water supply system. Yet to be built is my mash mixer. Not shown is my web-based temperature monitoring system for watching head vapor, liebig and reflux condenser outlet water, and water supply temperatures with alarms (yeah I know. not necessary!). Thinking about a thumper head for the 8-gallon kettle to run in series with the pot still head on the 13-gallon kettle. Cant wait to do the sugar wash for the sacrificial runs!

More pics in part-2 post
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Last edited by SenileToo on Mon Feb 01, 2016 2:52 pm, edited 9 times in total.
Old isn't a state of mind. It's what happens after awhile...

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