Csst dimroth PC build

[Oatmeal]

[shadylane]

First time I've seen somebody building a dimroth csst like this.
Keep us posted on how it works.

[elbono]

Looks neat. What was the motivation? Ease of coiling? Surface area of corrugation?

What diameters are those pieces?

I use a dad300 style PC and love it.

[Oatmeal]

What was the motivation?

What diameters are those pieces?

My motivation was nothing well reasoned, that's for sure! Equal parts ignorance and enthusiasm. Mostly just farting around.

I pretty much ran a 3" boka last year for everything. The rc lets me get away without a pc. The set up works really well for me, so I have some room to play around with other concepts.
I salvaged a 3" copper san tee and want to build a vm, so I needed a pc and pretty much just designed it based on the junk I had, and my limited understanding of column diameter vs takeoff in influencing the reflux ratio.

There's about 4.5' of 1/2" csst in a 2" shell, 20.5" long.

[Oatmeal]

Keep us posted on how it works.

Works good! Propane burner is all the way up, everything is condensing. Water stuff needs rejiggering, as it is.....inelegant. Also, takeoff, which will likely involve a 45.

[shadylane]

I figured it was going to have alot of knock down power.
Would you have done anything different on the plumbing if you were starting from scratch?

[Oatmeal]

To further quantify good- 1.2(ish) litres per minute, water temp at exit too hot to touch after a second or two, low wines warmish. Collected roughly 9 to 10 litres in an hour.

Plumbing wise, I would have liked to bring the csst out of the shell to keep the joints outside. Maybe if I had bigger scraps, but it would be challenging.

The 1/2" pipe fits about an 1/8th into the csst, so uncertain how tenuous the joint will be (nice tight fit though...)

Otherwise water connections too close to take off right now (which'll get modified as I figure use configurations). Will probably shorten the water and use sharkbite stops to facilitate easier connections.

Making tidy water connections is the most challenging part for me.... More looking at copper porn to figure it out!

[elbono]

Plumbing wise, I would have liked to bring the csst out of the shell to keep the joints outside. Maybe if I had bigger scraps, but it would be challenging.

You're not kidding, I'm not sure my soldering skills are up to getting that joint coming out of the shell with csst sealed. But I am a stubborn SOB so it would seal eventually with enough cussing.

The 1/2" pipe fits about an 1/8th into the csst, so uncertain how tenuous the joint will be (nice tight fit though...)

I used 5/16 hose barbs

to connect to a short pieces of 8x10 mm tubing then 10mm air line push connects

to the rest of the system.

The hose barbs had a hex section in the center, I ground the points off to get good fit inside my csst. About 1/4" of tight contact hopefully the solder wicked up further.

I know some have concerns about smearing because distillate could collect in the corrugations but I love this stuff because it's so easy to coil, bend, whatever and the knockdown is great! A 72" piece of csst up and down in a 1" shell as a product condenser has handled anything I've thrown at it with a 65000 BTU propane burner. Not as purty as yours though...

[shadylane]

I know some have concerns about smearing because distillate could collect in the corrugations

A liebig made with Csst might have problems with smearing.
A dimroth wouldn't have that problem.
The vapor condenses on the outside of the tubing and drips off the corrugations.

@ Oatmeal
Is the cooling water plumbed cold to the bottom and hot out the top like a liebig?

[Oatmeal]

Hey elbono, flagged as fantastic - nice post. The csst soldered pretty easy (with the stay brite liquid flux) in close contact with the copper. It's thin enough the copper will heat it.

The challenging part would be getting the tube bent and out through the hole. The coil is really tight and just fits in the 2". It was more expedient to be able to slide a piece in even if it meant having to solder a joint in the pipe.

We'll see how it holds up!

If I'm reading your post right, you soldered the brass barbs inside your condenser? I'm trying to stick to parts from my truck, and currently just salvaged some 1/2" mip x 3/8ths barbed fittings (and hose/worm straps to go with). I like 3/8 threaded adapters, because I can thread a dishwasher supply on to adapt to a hose, or push the tubing over for the pump.

Eventually I'll have to put on my big boy pants, get some push fittings and stop using a junk pile to assemble everything!

Totally agree about csst being a great option. I would choose it every time. I did just roll a 3/8 double coil out of some scrap to see, and it was a pain in the butt, although I love it too despite the flattened and slightly kinked sections...

[Oatmeal]

Yep shady, cool in the bottom, hot out the top. 4' of csst is probably about the minimum, but it's a poor lazy man's shotgun (started as a proof of concept for me and spiraled out of control), so here we are.

The water temp isn't quite hot enough coming out, and the distillate not all the way cool, but good enough that it probably won't get changed

Should'a just built a long liebig like you advocate!

[elbono]

The csst soldered pretty easy (with the stay brite liquid flux) in close contact with the copper. It's thin enough the copper will heat it.

Definitely! If the flame touches the csst the flux is burnt. I used Stay Brite and Stay Clean liquid too. The hard part for me was getting the inside of the csst cleaned.

If I'm reading your post right, you soldered the brass barbs inside your condenser?

Yep, here's my test piece.

5/16 in one end 3/8 in the other. I ground the barbs some on the 3/8 and I think it was a better solder joint than the 5/16 but it doesn't fit my tubing.
I needed to go inside so the condenser would slide in and out of my 1" shell

My csst was sold as and marked as 3/8 OD but it's closer to 1/2, barely fits in 1" type M

The challenging part would be getting the tube bent and out through the hole. The coil is really tight and just fits in the 2".

The only way I see me getting that done would be to cut a U shaped slot in the end of the 2" and the fitting (el in your pic) so they came up tight against the csst when put together and then soldering the whole thing at once.

Hey elbono, flagged as fantastic - nice post.

Thanks, a blind hog finds an acorn every once and a while...