It is a work in progress and has gone through many incarnations to get to where it is so far . It is not complete but it is a working model now .
First off , my intentions of building a continuous stripper is not to have it run continuously but rather to embrace some of the advantages these stills have while enjoying my hobby at a new level .
So if you think that I have a still you can switch on and leave to its own devices to run 24/7 , look elsewhere ...that's not what I have made.
But if you want a stripping still that you can turn on and in 10-15 minutes be producing stripped wash with almost no cooling water required , then read on .In fact that's exactly what I have been doing all weekend . A couple of hours here and there , .... 200 liters of wash stripped without need to empty boilers ...and bugger all cooling water needed .
Most Continuous stripper threads start with vague sketches and diagrams and most seem to fizzle out with little coming to completion . I took the other approach and just jumped in and build stuff to see what worked ....and didn't ....and went from there . In saying that , I give thanks to all those that have paved the way in what is a minority part of our hobby .
Here's a few pics of the Chaotic setup this weekend ....but after that I will go back over my story of how I have ended up with what is here today .
Here's the setup .
There is a boiler on a few milk creates to add some height. The boiler has a total of 3300w elements in it ( 2400w + 900w) just because that was the maximum I have ...(got a 1350w but can't find it in my messy shed )
Above that is 1 Meter of 4" packed tightly with Staino scrubbers . That then comes down to the shot gun condenser off my Flute which doubles as the product condenser and the primary wash pre-heater . The 2" dropper down to the Shotty are pipes from my Thumper setup .( That's the only reason they are 2"....just happened to be lying around ) Following the Shotty is my old 3/4" over 1/2" x 36" liebig which functions as an Auxiliary Product condenser .It is just a backup . But I always have the pump running in the 2000 liter water tank while its operating ...just in case .
In normal operation , no cooling water is needed but as these strippers can run out of control , its a good backup ...also , as I found this weekend , running 32 degC wash through it requires a bit more help . The boiler has an outlet that gravity feeds via a U trap . In my first version , the waste simply exited from here . I have subsequently found the need to use a bottoms pre-heater . In this version you can see I used the Shotty off my old original 2" VM still ( which incidentally is now also used on my VM flute ) .....so as far as new things goes , this whole setup is basically just made out of bits and pieces I have lying around. There most certainly is a lot of miss-matching but timer will tweak all that . As far as wash goes . I ferment in a 200liter drum and fill a smaller 30 liter fermenter up from it .This gives me a working amount ...lets face it , I only want to run this still for a few hours at a time .
From this I have a Magnetic drive pump that feeds wash via a needle valve to the bottom of the primary pre-heater ( Main product condenser ) I measure the temp of the wash as it exits this pre-heater . This is the main source of heat exchange . As the incoming wash condenses the vapour from the top of the still , it in turn heats up . From here , it goes to the bottoms pre-heater . This is a heat exchanger that takes heat from the waste wash leaving the boiler and adds extra heat to the wash before it is feed to the top of the stripping column . (It actually has a more significant importance that I will talk about later). I have another Thermometer at the feed point in the top of the column so I can monitor how hot the wash feed is .
Thermometer number 3 is in the boiler head space . It shows if wash is entering the boiler still containing alcohol . Normally it sits around 99.5ish -100 degC but can drop down to 98 ish when things are pushed too hard .
I have to admit to being really crappy at taking records but I will try and give as accurate info as I can .
So this wash I run was a sugar wash 30kG in 180 liters ...so round 9.8% AVB ...call it 10%AVB
3.3kW power( 240 v rated elements ) .....it may have been closer to 3.5kW as the power was up to 248v during peak sunshine ( neighbors have grid feed huge solar array)
I monitor Temps at the feed point at the top of the column , the output from the primary pre-heater and in the boiler .
So here are some typical readings today:
Now it is summer here and my wash is around 32degC .
Wash temp leaving the Primary pre-heater 78.7degC Wash temp at feed point . 81.1deg C Boiler Temp and the all important take off rate was 4.6 liters /h @ 53ish % ABV ( temp not corrected ) And while these results are not to be sneezed at , I have to admit that whacking a keg full of wash on a roaring gas burner with a simple potty head on it gave me superior stripping rates
....but that's simply because I have way more gas power available than electrical . However... saying that , we have been in drought for many months now with total fire ban on what seems like every other day so to be able to run on mediocre Lecky with hardly any water usage is priceless to me ATM