Bubble Plate Still Flooding

[fzbwfk9r]

4" copper tube up here is $90/ft, I am not sure I'll go that route

Sheesh.
I bought old copper; four feet of four inch, ten feet of one inch and a partly damaged nearly three feet circle
of flat copper for ten dollars the lot.

Geoff

Nice.
Up here, NO ONE will resell copper, or any metal (Lead for Example) for that matter.
Recycle means to get it sent to the melter, and NOT for re-use!
Frustrating as all hell!

[Yummyrum]

ACfixer made a 6” still by cutting and flattening small diameter copper pipe . Wrapped it to make 6” dia modules . You could esily make a 4” still using 1.5” or 2” copper pipe .

Swedish pride made a plated still out of stainless steel salad bowls soldered together .

Many ways to skin a cat . Don’t just need to use 4” pipe .

[Saltbush Bill]

Swedish pride made a plated still out of stainless steel salad bowls soldered together .

The mad Swedes still worked well from all accounts Yummy, I talked to him about it many times in chat on another forum.
A plated column build is limited by your imagination and ability to improvise.
There are a few photos of it kicking around this and other forums.

[CopperFiend]

I may be two steps behind and a brick or two short of a full load, but here's what I'm going to be experimenting with at some point:

Just starting a 2" build of a CCVM that will augment my existing pot setup. Going modular, with a 2x2x2 tee going to my existing pot head connected to a long liebig. Minding my own business when I stumble into an interesting project. In accordance with the policies here, I won't mention or link to any off-site content.

The intent is to build 2" plates with custom made bubble caps and downcomers. The process involves fabricating the plate from sheet copper and the bubblers/downs from solid copper plasma cutting heads and 1/2" end caps. In this fashion, you can get 3 @1/2 bubblers , and 1@ 1/2 downcomers. I'm not sure it is possible given the surface area of the plate, but if I can force a 4th bubbler in there, I will.

That project is out on the timeline however. Most important is to get my column built and some practice just running reflux.

Best, Drifter

Since I started this topic, I've given up entirely on the 2" bubble plate idea. I made it exactly as you are planning to. Nothing I did could change the fact that the downcomers were not sufficient. I actually ended up with one up and three downcomers and it still flooded! I feel that the vapour speed created is just too much and actually ended up preventing liquid managing to drop down. I am going to make a 3" bubble plate setup when I get around to it now.

Copper.

[Saltbush Bill]

Has anyone tried to run perforated plates in these small sizes? Those with the correct downcomers might work........still gonna be as slow as hell though imo

[Yummyrum]

Has anyone tried to run perforated plates in these small sizes? Those with the correct downcomers might work........still gonna be a slow as hell though imo

Pretty sure there was a drop-in on CCSC that claimed that a few ( maybe 3-4) years back Salty . But yeah , IIRC , it was slow running .

But that doesn’t surprise me it was a 2” ,hell , how can anyone expect anything more from a small size . Thats why 4” is such a good all-round size …. But I’m not trying tb preach to the converted . …. As they say .

[n_plains_drifter]

Son of a gun. Wish I would have seen this before now. I've got all of my bits fabricated and was going to start soldering. Gonna need to rethink this project.

Since I started this topic, I've given up entirely on the 2" bubble plate idea. I made it exactly as you are planning to. Nothing I did could change the fact that the downcomers were not sufficient. I actually ended up with one up and three downcomers and it still flooded! I feel that the vapour speed created is just too much and actually ended up preventing liquid managing to drop down. I am going to make a 3" bubble plate setup when I get around to it now.

Copper.

[shadylane]

Usually, plates flood because liquid never has a chance to fill the downcomers trap. The rising vapor keeps the reflux from entering the downcomer. This can be overcome by priming the downcomer, or letting the plates flood and then turning off the power for a couple seconds. The reflux will drain down and fill the downcomers traps.

[n_plains_drifter]

Thanks for the tip Shady! Priming the downcomers sounds like a great experiment, and I'll report back on my findings.

I'm stubborn and decided that since I had all the parts fabbed I'd try building a plate last week. It went together all right, just a bit fiddly because everything is so tightly packed. I figured I'd test one and see how that goes before building any more.

Tonight I started tinning the ferrules for my column, so that will be a project that will take up some time. I'm making it modular with short runs so that it's easy to store.

Best, Drifter