Documenting my first build

[Vulpes]

Ok, I've been reading and thinking and planning and obsessing. I'm going to post on this thread until I get things up and running, at which time I can create a new thread illustrating tangible progress. This post is a bit long, it's me kind of thinking out loud and... ahem... distilling my ideas down. See what I did there? I also have a couple questions peppered throughout this post.

To recap, I am going to start with a pot still to get the hang of things. I'd like to have my setup in the basement, so that I have access to water and a drain, can run regardless of the weather, and am not permanently relegated to the garage. For safety (and more precise control), this leads me to heating the boiler electrically. I scored a free 1/2 bbl keg to work with as a boiler, but I want a larger opening than 2" and some extra ports for electric heating elements so I may end up not using this free keg. As an alternative, the 50L keg offered by USA Labs looks like a good deal as its already kitted out with a 6" tri-clamp opening at the top and a 1.5" tri-clamp on the bottom/side. The 6" port will give me flexibility with respect to what size column/riser to use and make clean-up much easier, while the 1.5" port can be used for a 5500W ULWD element or as a drain during cleaning. Ideally I'd have two more 1.5" tri-clamp ports along the side, one as a dedicated drain port and one for a thermometer or sight glass. If I really want to, I can seek out a TIG welder to help with those mods, but they're certainly not needed at the outset. As mentioned, I plan to use a 5500W ULWD heating element. To control the current flowing to the heating element, I'm looking at this triac kit offered by StillDragon (https://stilldragon.com/diy-controller-kit.html). It would also be nice to have a 1/6 bbl pony keg (7.75 gal) for smaller scale distillation, such as a second distillation of a stripped run.

I want a modular system for ease of cleaning, expandability, and ability to break down and store the still if it won't be used for extended periods. I scored some relatively inexpensive Cu pipe from a plumbing operation that was shutting down. I bought more than I needed because it was priced like 50% lower than retail, but I will actually use a mix of copper pipe and stainless steel tri-clamp fittings. I plan to go with a 2' riser made of 3" diameter copper tube to which I will solder 3" stainless steel tri-clamp ferrules at both ends. I'll throw some packing in the column (copper mesh or spiral prismatic packing) for neutral runs. [Question: do most people run their pot distillations of flavored spirits without any packing in the riser?] The riser will then meet with a tri-clamp (TC) conical reducer (3" to 2"), then to a 2" in-line sight glass (for some visual stimulus), and on to TC Tee fitting (2",2",2"). The top of the tee will be fitted with an end cap reducer and thermometer, and the side of the tee will go to a 2" TC 45-degree elbow. The elbow will mate to another TC reducer (2" to 1"), and then on to a copper Liebig condenser. I'll have to solder a 1" TC ferrule to the input end of the Liebig, and then if the Liebig inner tube is 3/4" then I'll also need a copper reducer (1" to 3/4") to transition from the TC ferrule to the input tube. I expect that the Liebig will be 36" in length. [Question: Is it overkill to have a Liebig with a 1" OD inner tuber/1.5" OD outer tube? Would a 3/4" OD inner tube/1" outer tube be sufficient or more appropriate, noting again that this will be a 50L (13.3 gal) pot still heated with a 5500W element?]

For cooling, I don't want to just run tap water, as that seems wasteful and possibly expensive, so I figure I will run a closed loop cooling system. This will consist of a large HDPE barrel (30 gal or 55 gal) to hold the water, and either a submersible pump or in-line pump to drive the water from the barrel through the condenser and back again. I ran some numbers estimating heat transfer in a typical 10 gal run, and it looks like 25 gal of water should be sufficient for pot stilling. This cooling setup will likely not be sufficient for refluxing though. Fractioning with a reflux setup would require a way to remove thermal energy from the coolant water (a project for another day). I would like to keep the coolant water potable, so that it can be used as a backup water source in case of emergency. This is simple enough, since I can get a food grade HDPE barrel, food-grade reinforced nylon tubing, and use lead free brass fittings for the coolant connections. Only catch is finding an appropriate pump that doesn't break the bank. [Question: any recommendations for inexpensive pumps that fit the bill?] I guess I could just go with a pond pump (not technically food safe) and just assume that if I'm having to break into my still coolant water for emergency drinking, there's probably bigger problems in the world than whatever impurities the pump may have introduced. i would also expect to grain and replace the coolant water every now and again to keep it potable, maybe some water purification tablets or something.

In any case, sorry for the long rant. I've included cartoon pictures of the proposed still, an exploded view that shows it broken down into components (excluding the heating and cooling portions), and the heat transfer numbers I ran.

Shout at me if you think I've gone off the rails or if I missed anything.

-V
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Water + Ethanol Distillation
Q=c*m*ΔT

Water
Enthalpy of Vaporization: 40.66 kJ/mol
Density (@RT): 1.00 g/mL
volume conversion: 0.264 gal/L
Specific Heat Capacity: 4.19 J/(°C g)

Ethanol
Enthalpy of Vaporization: 38.56 kJ/mol
Density (@RT): 0.789 g/mL
volume conversion: 0.264 gal/L
Specific Heat Capacity: 2.46 J/(°C g)

Hypothetical Distillation Run
ABV of Wash: 15 % (v/v)
Volume of Wash: 10 gal
Available Ethanol: 1.5 gal
ABV of distillate: 60 % (v/v)
How Much Distillate, if complete recovery of EtOH: 2.5 gal
Mass collected, Water: 3.78 kg
Mass collected, Ethanol 4.48 kg
Duration of Distillate Collection: 4.00 h

Water
ΔHdistill: 8,539 kJ
Power input to boil: 0.593 kW
Power input to coolant 0.593 kW

Ethanol
ΔHdistill: 3,752 kJ
Power input to boil: 1.758 kW
Power, input to coolant: 1.758 kW

Total power input to coolant: 2.351 kW

Volume of cooling water: 25 gal
Mass of water: 95 kg

Temp change of cooling water: 31.1 °C

[StillerBoy]

Thank you..

Mars

[Salt Must Flow]

You won't benefit having the riser full of packing during a pot still stripping run or a pot still spirit run. Since my still is 100% stainless, I put 3-4 rolls of copper mesh at the base of the riser due to the lack of copper. The only way to benefit from a fully packed column is if you have a reflux condenser.

The Liebig condenser I made was 1" over 3/4". It worked fine and was approx 4' long if I recall. I later made a shotgun condenser.

Most any pond pump should do the trick. Remember to first prime all of the lines with water before expecting the pump to recirculate water. Some people just connect a pump to empty hoses and wonder why the pump can't push water way up and through the system. It would require a pretty big pond pump to do that. If it won't recirculate the system after it is primed then I'd return it and get a bigger one. I use my home well water pressure and never used a recirculating setup.

When doing basic pot still runs, you won't see anything going on inside that sight glass except the vapor that initially creeps up the column, but that won't last but a matter of seconds. I really enjoy having a sight glass beneath the vapor takeoff on my VM still. I can see the amount of reflux falling onto the packing in the column. Without a sight glass, you can only imagine, but never see what's actually happening. For that reason I think they're well worth while just to give you something to look at. You can see if the column is flooding too.

I use 2" Tri-Clamp ferrules on my boilers for the elements to clamp to. 2" gives you a wider opening and it's easier for the wavy ULWD element to pass through.

Like you, I thought a 7.5 gal short keg would be awesome as a smaller boiler for smaller batches. Turns out they're not all that handy as a boiler. You can only install the heating element just as low as you can on a 15.5 gal keg and still requires the same amount of liquid just to keep the element submerged. I learned this AFTER decking mine out with a 6" ferrule on top, 4 swiveling castors, bottom drain, thermowell and a 2" ferrule for the heating element. I pretty much only use it just for blending all of my 97% ABV product and use the bottom drain spigot to fill 1 gal glass jugs. By all means collect one if you can find one. I heard they're not being manufactured anymore, but that could be bad info.

[NZChris]

Copper placement research.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0450.x/pdf

15% in the wash is a bit ambitious and may stress the yeast into making undesirable flavors.

[Vulpes]

Copper placement research.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0450.x/pdf

15% in the wash is a bit ambitious and may stress the yeast into making undesirable flavors.

NZChris, thank you! Journal articles! I am here for this!

Also, a 15% wash was just a straw man scenario I plugged into the spreadsheet I created. I just wanted to make sure that I had enough cooling capacity with the water barrel.

[Salt Must Flow]

Vulpes, I see your drawing shows a certain kind of 6" reducer on top of the boiler. I would compare the price of this kind of reducer from multiple sources. You might be able to save some money.

[Vulpes]

Vulpes, I see your drawing shows a certain kind of 6" reducer on top of the boiler. I would compare the price of this kind of reducer from multiple sources. You might be able to save some money.

Salt, I’ve actually found end-cap reducers from this company for less (https://conical-fermenter.com/end-cap-reducers/).

[Vulpes]

You won't benefit having the riser full of packing during a pot still stripping run or a pot still spirit run. Since my still is 100% stainless, I put 3-4 rolls of copper mesh at the base of the riser due to the lack of copper. The only way to benefit from a fully packed column is if you have a reflux condenser.

The Liebig condenser I made was 1" over 3/4". It worked fine and was approx 4' long if I recall. I later made a shotgun condenser.

Most any pond pump should do the trick. Remember to first prime all of the lines with water before expecting the pump to recirculate water. Some people just connect a pump to empty hoses and wonder why the pump can't push water way up and through the system. It would require a pretty big pond pump to do that. If it won't recirculate the system after it is primed then I'd return it and get a bigger one. I use my home well water pressure and never used a recirculating setup.

When doing basic pot still runs, you won't see anything going on inside that sight glass except the vapor that initially creeps up the column, but that won't last but a matter of seconds. I really enjoy having a sight glass beneath the vapor takeoff on my VM still. I can see the amount of reflux falling onto the packing in the column. Without a sight glass, you can only imagine, but never see what's actually happening. For that reason I think they're well worth while just to give you something to look at. You can see if the column is flooding too.

I use 2" Tri-Clamp ferrules on my boilers for the elements to clamp to. 2" gives you a wider opening and it's easier for the wavy ULWD element to pass through.

Like you, I thought a 7.5 gal short keg would be awesome as a smaller boiler for smaller batches. Turns out they're not all that handy as a boiler. You can only install the heating element just as low as you can on a 15.5 gal keg and still requires the same amount of liquid just to keep the element submerged. I learned this AFTER decking mine out with a 6" ferrule on top, 4 swiveling castors, bottom drain, thermowell and a 2" ferrule for the heating element. I pretty much only use it just for blending all of my 97% ABV product and use the bottom drain spigot to fill 1 gal glass jugs. By all means collect one if you can find one. I heard they're not being manufactured anymore, but that could be bad info.

Salt, my understanding is that column packing will increase separation even in a simple pot still setup with a packed riser. The packing promotes reflux within the column, effectively increasing the number of theoretical plates. Now there’s a ton of other variable of course, like still design, boiler charge, temperature ramp rate, etc, so one’s mileage will vary. But packing should provide some increase in separation. Of course, there’s no value to that in a stripping run, and regardless we’re not talking about the separation one might achieve with a proper VM/LM/CM still.

From my experience performing a bunch of distillations with all glass laboratory setups, I would expect to see some action in the sight glass even after the reflux ring rises past it. Even as the vapors are making all the way over the head and on to the condenser, there is still condensation and vaporization (reflux) happening within in the sight glass and lower down the column. The column walls are constantly transporting heat out of the system, heat being provided by the hot vapors and condensation. It might be a bit different if the column were a perfect insulator…

Again, I must defer to the more experienced, as all of my experience to date is laboratory scale distillation of compounds other that EtOH, but the principles still hold. We’ll see once I get something set up and running.

-V

[Saltbush Bill]

my understanding is that column packing will increase separation even in a simple pot still setup with a packed riser.

IMO the amount of extra separation will be about zero "once the column and packing heat up".....or if you get any at all it wont be noticable without some sort of scientific equipment to measure the difference.
This subject has been hashed over a lot of times here....a quick search will turn up many threads and a lot of different opinions.
You need a reflux condenser to get any benefit from packing.......once a pot still has a reflux condenser its no longer a pot still.
Somewhere around here I think is an experiment that Yummy did using a packed column on a pot and a non packed one.

[Vulpes]

IMO the amount of extra separation will be about zero "once the column and packing heat up".....or if you get any at all it wont be noticable without some sort of scientific equipment to measure the difference.

Completely agree, especially for the separation of water/ethanol. One would probably need a gas chromatograph to quantify any difference with/without packing, and it would likely be marginal for the purposes here.

[Twisted Brick]

From my experience performing a bunch of distillations with all glass laboratory setups, I would expect to see some action in the sight glass even after the reflux ring rises past it. Even as the vapors are making all the way over the head and on to the condenser, there is still condensation and vaporization (reflux) happening within in the sight glass and lower down the column. The column walls are constantly transporting heat out of the system, heat being provided by the hot vapors and condensation. It might be a bit different if the column were a perfect insulator…

This has been my experience as well. I get regular passive reflux drips in my sightglass throughout (basic pot still) spirit runs once past the foggy start-up stage and just before the still starts producing, presumably induced by the emissivity of my 3" copper riser/still head. I recently read of a string of significant dynamic copper reactions that can occur in a pot still on the way up from the condensation and re-vaporization you mention so I just added some additional 'angled lyne arm' copper to hypothetically increase some of these reactions. Just a guess, but SoMoFo's 2" all-stainless steel still might not be emitting enough heat to create enough of these refluxing reactions to be visible. I have never felt a need to run any packing in my riser.

Question: any recommendations for inexpensive pumps that fit the bill?

I have been more than happy with this pump. It's 7' max lift works nicely on my (64" packed) CCVM rig and despite being quite small, has never been 'primed'. It also drives my wort chiller to cool each mash to pitch temp. It's been a workhorse and I just replaced the original one I bought in '92 for chilling beer wort. The manufacturer's customer service rep told me the pump cannot be damaged by condenser valve resistance and works great in a 30gal coolant reservoir.

[Vulpes]

I have been more than happy with this pump. It's 7' max lift works nicely on my (64" packed) CCVM rig and despite being quite small, has never been 'primed'. It also drives my wort chiller to cool each mash to pitch temp. It's been a workhorse and I just replaced the original one I bought in '92 for chilling beer wort. The manufacturer's customer service rep told me the pump cannot be damaged by condenser valve resistance and works great in a 30gal coolant reservoir.

Thanks for this recommendation, Brick. I was toying with the idea of adding a water-to-air heat exchanger to the return line of the cooling loop (along with some computer fans to drive air flow over the fins). This won’t be necessary for pot still runs with what I’ve sketched out, but it may allow be to handle reflux runs with a different setup. Do you think that your recommended pump could hand the added resistance of the in-line heat exchanger?

[Twisted Brick]

Alas, I am not knowledgeable with the physics (fluid dynamics?) involved, so cannot advise you. How much resistance does your heat-exchanger have? Got a pic maybe?

[Vulpes]

Alas, I am not knowledgeable with the physics (fluid dynamics?) involved, so cannot advise you. How much resistance does your heat-exchanger have? Got a pic maybe?

Sorry, I thought I’d posted a link to the heat exchanger. 12”x12” is the smallest I’d consider going. I haven’t actually run the numbers yet on how well this would perform in my situation. No clue about the resistance, other than to say it would be reducing a 1/2” return line down to 3/8” as it goes through the heat exchanger.

https://www.outdoorfurnacesupply.com/12 ... rnace.html

[RC Al]

Nice piece of kit that

Its actually got 1" connections, the multiple tubes are 3/8, so not restricting at all.

The ratings listed for it are 17kw @10gpm & 800 cfm, sounds like your wanting to use less fan, which i think will be fine as the water flow rate wont be anywhere near that, fine enough that id possibly look at the 8*8 one @11kw and less than half the price, or if you want to play it safe get 2x the 8*8 and save $12.

Consider fan noise, some members get by with regular household fans with a shroud, high volume 4" fans are mostly pretty loud.

The pot still stripping run is when you need the most knock down capacity.

[Vulpes]

Okay, it’s been a while. I hope everyone is well. I’ve been busy with the less fun parts of life, so I haven’t made the progress I had hoped for.

Based on considerations of the limited spare time I have to play with, I’ve decided to purchase a modular bubble plate still. I’m choosing to spend money to save time on build so that I can move into fermenting/distilling sooner, and have ample flexibility to go in a few directions.

Recapping, my interests right now are to get comfortable with a fermenting and distilling a few sugar washes before moving on to rum, whiskey, eau de vie, gin, and aquavit. My reasoning for choosing a pretty standard CM bubble plate still (bubble plate sections, dephlegmator, 2” diameter 24” long shotgun product condenser with seven 3/8” ID through-tubes, proofing parrot) is its ability to handle running in pot still mode for whiskeys and rums by removing plates, to handle moderate increases in separation for whiskeys and rums as well by adding plates back in to the column and adding/removing sections as desired, and handle high purity separation by removing plate and adding column packing.

I have a 50L (13.2 gal) keg with a 6” tri-clamp opening to use as a boiler, and 5500W ripple element for heating. I am building a control box with an SSR controller, and I have a dedicated 50A circuit. For cooling, I have a 55gal drum for recirculating water. I expect that the water will start at about 20C. I’d like to eventually run the cooling water through a liquid-air heat exchanger in a duct with an inline blower, exhausting the heated air to the outside via a dryer vent. The heat exchange will hopefully extend the run time I can manage with a fixed volume of coolant water, and help to stabilize the coolant water temperature.

Here’s my question for the hive mind: given the setup I described, is 4” four-plate column too large to put on a 50L still?

I want to have fast runs given constraints on my time, which is what led me to 4” columns. But I am concerned about pairing a 4” coming with a 50L boiler, specifically concerned about product loss to loading the plates, and impacts to separating foreshots and heads. In the former case, will I lose an appreciable amount of desirable product to what remains on the plates, or will I typically be able to recover what I want and what stays on the plates at the end of the run are likely undesirable tails? In the latter car, will I find that the foreshots and heads come out very quick and limit my ability to identify when the hearts begin to flow. I know that for distilling under active reflux, column height and packing are the largest drivers of separation, but at some point diameter also plays a role. You wouldn’t want an 8” column on a 5L boiler, to give an extreme example.

I’m sure these questions have been answered a thousand times over, and know that I did try searching the forums before posting these questions. I’m sorry if this post feels redundant.

Thanks!

[Oatmeal]

I've run quite a bit with a 20, 30? gallon trash can as a water reservoir. Not enough for reflux. Just about right for a 10 gallon strip.

Rather than using a reservoir, I have started collecting the coolant from the hose and then use it to water my lawn and garden after it cools.

I should use the hot water to start a new mash (sigh).

Prefer not to waste water, but way easier to cool from the tap...easier to use a reservoir in the winter, especially when the landlord turns off your hosebib.....

[Vulpes]

Slowly, slowly…

This week I received all of the parts for my 4” 4-plate flute column. I have my boiler, my 5.5lW ripple element with housing and cable, and I have all the components I need to build an element controller. Plus, I just scored a BAP (20gal Spike brewing kettle) and a 50’ 1/2” copper wort chiller for less than I would have spent in fittings to convert a keg to a keggle. I just need to install a Weldless 1.5” TC Flange on the BAP so it will accept a heating element. Still need to pick up a container to ferment in, but I’m getting there.

Slowly, slowly…