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DAD300 wrote:I etched one batch, a gallon with Ferric acid. It is kind of dangerous stuff. It completely eats copper, gets extremely hot on any metal and is hard to get rid of.

I did it in a milk jug, because it won't eat plastic. The jug got to hot to touch and it took tons of sodium carbonate to neutralize. Then the SPP held too much liquid during a distillation. Made the SPP very slow.

I later mixed it with non etched just to not throw it away. I would not recommend it as a standard process.

SPP is very effective without the etching. Don't bother...

I etched a batch with heat also...that was worse! It brought al the carbon to the surface and rusted.

Yummyrum wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 3:03 am Well I clicked on that link and it gave me a security warning. .... so .... thats what I think .
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shadylane wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:50 pm Just a thought on etching
When you get out of the shower, look to see what surface has the most moister condensed on it.
It's always the smooth surface

The Baker wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:51 pm

shadylane wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:50 pm Just a thought on etching
When you get out of the shower, look to see what surface has the most moister condensed on it.
It's always the smooth surface

On me or on the shower?

Geoff

The Baker wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:51 pm On me or on the shower?

Saltbush Bill wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 8:15 pm

The Baker wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:51 pm On me or on the shower?

Old farts don't have smooth surfaces.

bitter wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 2:56 pm 7 Years later still not got SPP for my 3" Boka.

Wth copper blocker I can get a clean 3 to 3.5 LPH with a 40% charge and 5.33 LPH both at 95%

I see odins post of OSPP and bunch of different sized Dad300 rferfs to size C .. So what size.. Based on reading 1/10 to 1/12 the column size means about 6.5 to 7.8mm My goal is the go a bit faster than 3 LPH say 4 LPH and be rock solid whole run till done.. I can easily put about 52" - scrubbies to hold it.. but seen DAD300 only needs 30" Trying to figure out if better to buy or try making it.. Also was reading on marbles and lava rock too.. but liek the idea of SPP in stainless for easy cleaning.

B

BrewinBrian44 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 6:36 pm

bitter wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 2:56 pm 7 Years later still not got SPP for my 3" Boka.

Wth copper blocker I can get a clean 3 to 3.5 LPH with a 40% charge and 5.33 LPH both at 95%

I see odins post of OSPP and bunch of different sized Dad300 rferfs to size C .. So what size.. Based on reading 1/10 to 1/12 the column size means about 6.5 to 7.8mm My goal is the go a bit faster than 3 LPH say 4 LPH and be rock solid whole run till done.. I can easily put about 52" - scrubbies to hold it.. but seen DAD300 only needs 30" Trying to figure out if better to buy or try making it.. Also was reading on marbles and lava rock too.. but liek the idea of SPP in stainless for easy cleaning.

B

I recently purchased 5L of 5x5 SPP for my 3” column on eBay, which resulted in about 43” packed height. It doesn’t meet the suggested guidelines for size in a 3”, but still worked fine. Before ever using the stuff, I did A TON of reading on this forum to have a solid crack at getting good results right out the gate. I’ve probably read this thread about 8 times among others.

The stuff works, that’s for sure. I did a test run since I needed to use the alcohol to finish some cleaning of new still parts. I only had some nasty feints on hand for the run. I successfully achieved the magic aquatic environment at the top of the packing which required almost 5,000 watts for my setup. I played with the take off rate with my VM valve and was able to draw off near azeo at 3qt per hour, probably could have ran even faster with a higher ABV charge and reached full azeo. Pretty sure my watered down feints were around 20%ABV and only 5gal diluted. At 2qt per hour it was full azeo.

Since the still was basically completely clean before the run, I did sneak a tiny, diluted down taste about half way through and promptly spit it out and rinsed. Considering the nasty crap I loaded in the boiler I couldn’t believe how clean and odorless it was. Tasted and smelled like premium vodka. I was blown away.

The eBay stuff was from Dr Gradus. I can attest to its quality. One thing though… the stuff comes covered in manufacturing oil. I did several cleaning regimens, but the best one by far was putting it in the dishwasher which I should have done prior to the vinegar, water and sacrificial alcohol runs. The detergent did a fantastic job cleaning off the oil. I just used a vinyl brew bag to keep it all contained and rinsed by hand several times after to get all the remaining detergent out.

After the run I rinsed it with hot water. To keep it dry for storage, I spread it out on a large beach towel and aimed a box fan at it. Bone dry the next morning. I’ve also read you can use the oven too.

Hope this gives some confidence for the sizes available online.

I’m very excited to make some tasty vodka with it!

3.5x3.5 has much more surface area, so it’s easier to get high ABV alcohol, by using SPPs. As an example, you can have look at our column Cosmo 3 inch which has 3 feet of height filled with SPP 3.5mm with power of 3000w it’s able to produce 5 quarts an hour of 96.0-96.6 ABV.

If you’re going to use 5x5 SPP and wish to have a closer result, you could heat with more power than 3kwt, because 5x5 SPP has much more space to come through and by having a height of 3 feet or 4 feet it’s going to produce 95-96 ABV with the speed of 5-6 quarts.