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poor franki.... he's been replaced

Fantastic looking still. Bravo! I'm just trying to grasp some of the concept of how it works. You mention that you drive it at a slow simmer and that you collected fores at 90% which then dropped to ~80% during heads and the remainder of the run. At the end your output dropped from a steady stream to a few drops.

So does this mean:

a) your resulting output contains only heads and hearts with no tails coming over?
b) by keeping a steady low simmer and not over driving the still it will keep a steady flow until all the hearts are squeazed out?
c) driving it harder at the end of the run could then force more of the tails out?

hmmm, now that I think about it a little more, I might be way off track...

Olddog, you mentioned that a disadvantage to this still is that now you won't be able to collect the tails for adding to future runs, but it just occurred to me that all you need to do is cut your return line and add a pair of valves and a tee, and instead of having it feed back to the boiler, you could have it feed into a collection jug. This way, it's there for adding to another run if you want, maybe for a bit more flavor in Franki's thumper, and all the while, you're keeping it out of the boiler, so it's not being endlessly recycled in -this wash. Or you can let it flow back to the boiler until late in the run, and only them switch it to a collection jug. Lotsa options, pretty easy modification to make!

The second run with this unit resulted in trying more experiments, after collecting all of the hearts and the output had decreased to a few drops, I cranked the gas burner to a rapid boil, I did manage to collect tails. The increase boil rate obviously created enough steam to allow the tails to be forced past the plates.

CoOkEd wrote:Fantastic looking still. Bravo! I'm just trying to grasp some of the concept of how it works.

The priciple of how it works was based on a Coffey still which separates heads, hearts, and tails, and is a continuous still. Mine is just for batch production.

CoOkEd wrote:b) by keeping a steady low simmer and not over driving the still it will keep a steady flow until all the hearts are squeazed out?

Yes this is how it works for me.

CoOkEd wrote:c) driving it harder at the end of the run could then force more of the tails out?

Yes I have just tried this on my second run with this still.
Whether it would works better with the same plate system in both columns I don't know. I firstly built the column with the slant plates after being inspired by Barney Fifes experiments but I added the external plate drains to mine. Then Decoy posted a plate column experiment, which I addapted for the primary column. So the whole thing is really an accumulation of different ideas, which turned out to give me a very suprising result.

Being a simple potstiller I know little about reflux stills, but yours is a bloody bewdy!! Glad you got the result you did. You deserve it.

blanik

Thanks for the comments Graham, Its funny though, I still regard it as a potstill, even though it has fractionalising columns. I run it like a potstill, there are no coils or valves to worry about. The cost of the build was not that expensive either, $49 for 1 metre of 2" and about $100 worth of fittings and a few bit of copper out of the scrap box.
It would be good if another member tried this design as I feel that it has even more potential than it has now, but my building itch has been satisfied for now, and any modifications with have to wait until the bug bites again.

OD

Ok, so was bored this weekend. I decided to copy one of your towers. I'm gonna run it as a pot still and see how she performs. If she does poorly, I'll add the other tower. I went with 8 slant plates vs. 6.
I'm not completely finished with it yet, I still have to solder a few connections and then it'll be done :8)

Thats looking good, I will look forward to hearing the results.

If I may be so bold,,, why do you use the down comer tubes . why not just drill a small hole in each plate? or a tab as the slant plate does.

A tab might be easy at the top and bottom of the column, but I think it would not be easy to get at all of them to bend the tab down. Also the external downer tubes will add a bit of cooling to condense the down coming liquid to the next level. but all things could be possible as it was just an experiment that turned out to work.

What we have here is a perfect experiment; I have 7 plates, butt has 8, and dawg has 6. I don't use downtubes, and instead let the plates overflow to the column, but otherwise, mine and butt's is the same.. Mine is simpler in design and to make, but I'll admit there's no way for me to know how much real overflow is happening, other than the real world end-results.

I look forward to seeing how this one performs!

howdy butt wheat & olddog, so from your pics it looks like your slant plates are installed alternate, left and right so to speak, and from the pics it also looks like each down tube feeds the next plate on the same side of the column which is not the next lower plate which is on the other side?

would it not be better for each downer to feed the next lower plate? or do the down pipes go through the column far enough and actually feed the next lower plate on the other side of the column? which is how I think i'm going to approach my own build up of a single column.

thanks for your insightfull work.

MM.

Mashman, Yes the slants alternate on my still, left/right. The down tubes feed into the next lower one on the same side, not into the very next one on the opposite side. If you do as your saying, you will have to distance your plates further apart up the still? I can tell you its a PITA trying to solder everything so close...I ran into the prob of heating a tube to solder, then the plate below heated up its solder started to run, and so forth...

Wrap adjacent segments with a wet towel (heat sink) to avoid this.

Thanks butt wheat, i'm going to have the bottom of the down tubes go through the column far enough so as to feed the next lower plate. and as LWTCS says iff you wrap sections in wett towl etc or partially fill with water to cover the section your not soldering or clamp on a big heat sink you can usually solder very close to other joins without having them come apart.

MM.

Wonderful workmanship on the Evil Twin project. Please excuse my questions - they are not ment as criticism but are rather a wish to learn. The performance you are getting from this still more than answers any critic.

It seems to me that this still is one long column, broken at the midpoint and rejoined side-by-side. Do you see it in this way? Is there some advantage to the twin configuration? I assume that you cover that wonderful copper up with insulation when you make a run. Or is running uninsulated needed for the reflux action? Does the Evil Twin need a time for stabilization (like a reflux column) or is it ready to go once the foreshots are gone?

Then comes the question which really shows my ignorance: If the tails return line went to a separate collection container rather than returning to the boiler, wouldn´t you get more hearts? I seems to me that the boiler charge is reduced in ABV by these returns, causing the boiling point to climb and the heavy alcohols to become vapor. If you could run the boiler dry, a simple over temp switch could save the day.


old duffer

Hi Old Duffer, Let me see if I can explain how things came about. I have been running my Frankenstill (Potstill with integrated thumper) for some time, and had thought about adding a second thumper just to what it would produce, as the Frankenstill usually starts in th 80'sABV and runs down to the 40's for the tails. I then noticed Barney Fife's developement for a Boka style plated potstill, I thought I could use this for making my cuts more stable, so I build what is now the second column and used the Frankenstill as a test mule for this purpose. It did not give any increase in ABV, but it made cuts more predictable without any loss of flavour.

At Xmas time my wife bought me a book on whiskey showing all different types of stills, and reviews on whiskey's from all over the world. One still mentioned sparked my interest, which was the Coffey still developed by Anneaus Coffey from Ireland, which was used to produce whiskey, but stripped out the heads and tails, and just delivering the hearts. This was a continous stripping still for mass production, and I have only the use for a single batch still.

I decided to build a new still using the Coffey principles, whereas a Coffey still has 18 plates in each column, I had already built my second column using only six plates, so it would be difficult to determine where to take off the hearts from the column, the Coffey still takes them off at the fourth plate of the 18 plate column, so I decided to bypass the hearts takeoff and let the heads and hearts come out of the top of the column.

The primary column it made from plates developed by Decoy but with minor modification, whether the rig would run better with the same type of plate in both column, I don't know

As far as the tails return is concerned the schematic for the Coffey still shows the heads and tails being returned to the Analizer to be re-distilled.

I don't think that insulation is a concern, but what might improve my current design is a external cooling coil around the second column, this could be fed from the exit of my leibig and then returned to my cooling water supply.

There is still a bit of development going on with other forum members trying different options, all I know now is that I have a still that will produce a clean, high ABV, and still retain good flavour. I'm happy


OD

olddog wrote:I don't think that insulation is a concern, but what might improve my current design is a external cooling coil around the second column, this could be fed from the exit of my leibig and then returned to my cooling water supply.

I knew you wouldn't let this build go

Bet yewd be pulling very close to 90s with a bit of cooling (some how).

hmmm. What would olddog do?

LWTCS wrote:Bet yewd be pulling very close to 90s with a bit of cooling (some how).

It starts foreshots at 90 now.
I have found the macro control on my camera, will take some better shots on the next run.

High 80's, but high flavor, also. No different than 2 or 3 distills in a open pot still, or a couple runs with a thumper.

I finally got to run my rums today, and ran the whole deal at 1500 watts, and collected very full flavored hearts, though I didn't check the ABV. I was at 45% ABV when I switched to tails collection; it was -that- clean up to that point, yet full flavored.

I'm seeing too much of the heads coming through with the early hearts on mine, but the tails are separating very nicely. In trying to think of a way to separate the heads from my hearts, I keep coming up with something very similar to what Olddog created. Not having the talent or copper to do it, I may be adding my old Bok condenser at the top of my column(before the takeoff to the liebig) and use that to compress and collect the heads, then shut it off for the rest of the run. Problem is, how do I stop water flow to a condenser that will be inside the hot column? Only thing I can come up with now is a complex by-pass system with a drain-off tube.

We'll see; in the end, The Evil Twin(TET) might just be the simplest solution!

A full version of a Coffey still could be made, with 9 plates instead of 18 with the spirit take off being from the second plate instead of the 4th and the heads being returned to the boiler along with the tails in the true Coffey mode The wash pre-heat feed through the second column would not be required as it would be run in batch mode not continous mode

Well well! The solution is so much simpler than I had though(he says while slapping his forehead!)!!

Last night, as the temps were coming up on the column, I had a lightbulb moment, and opened the BOK takeoff valve(remember, my column was my old BOK, and the uppermost plate is the old takeoff), then quickly cut the power down from 4500 watts to 750, and I started seeing drips at about 160°F, and collected a full pint of very vile, strong heads, before the vapors finally reached the condenser! Now I need a controller so I can hold the temps as low as possible to collect all or most of, the heads. What I believe should be happening is only the most volatile compounds will reach the packing above the top plate and condense back to be collected, yet there's not enough power to "push" the lower volatiles(the ethanol and others) past the packing and to the liebig condenser takeoff. Much like a VM, no? With the other plates being below the takeoff, if I can hold the column at, say, 160 for a few minutes with the BOK takeoff nearly shut, I should be able to collect the highest volatiles, while the other plates collect the rest, and when the takeoff slows to nothing, adding a bit more power will again push the next higher volatile up to the collection plate(no religious pun intended ), and so on, until all the crap is out of there and I should be able to go full throttle from there with the hearts, and not have much, if any, heads in even the first of the hearts, and therefor, should collect more, and better, product, without having so much left over to be re-distilled.

To the hardware store!

Barney Fife, I run my LM combo rig the same way... I pull the foeshots and heads off slowly and then run wide open through the hearts, until I hit the tails, then back down my rate again for compressed tails... Works great...

Sure, but you collect them through the condenser, correct? When you do that, you're just slowing things down and while yes, you do compress and collect the heads, you still need to be pushing hard enough that some hearts have to come with them. That's what's different with my what I saw on mine; I didn't have to use enough energy to get the vapors up the full length of the column to the condenser. I'm able to collect the higher volatiles(fores and heads) without ever pushing hard enough to get to the condenser, and with the plates collecting various boiling point volatiles each, I should be able to determine a set amount of power required to push each volatile up to the upper plate for collection, all the while never pushing any harder than necessary to do so, leaving all the good stuff behind, and waiting. The idea came from OldDog's Coffey still picture, I guess. When I saw that there's a specific plate for collecting the spirits, it all came together in my feeble little mind.

And i can assure everyone that there was zero, none, nadda, molasses flavor in the collected heads pint. So no flavor(none that -I- want! That carp is crap!) will be lost, and perhaps the good flavors concentrated. Should have a rum wash ready in a day or two, and hopefully I'll find that old 1500 watt dimmer I used to have... If I can't find it, to the hardware store I go for a router speed controller.

If anyone sees holes in my thinking/theory, please chime-in, but let's take it to my simple 2" plate thread so's we don't mess up OldDog's thread further.

No problem with my thread, I welcome new ideas. It seems that the latest developements now are with Butt Wheats 2" plated column project now.

Ok, did a cleaning run with vinegar and water...
I need to do some more tweaking to it I'm thinking
Here are the results of the cleaning run:
Output is roughly 1oz per minute...meaning almost 2L per hour
The output is sporadic, meaning, a drip a sec for a few secs, then a partial stream for about 3 secs then back to drips more than a sec apart
My liebig is 36" long, the top 12" of it was hot, the bottom 24" was ice cold...
I adjusted the cooling water return to a tiny pencil lead stream, output was still sporadic no matter how I tweaked the cooling water flow
My heat source is a 1500watt element. The charge was 5gal water/vinegar.
Any suggestions on how to make the output less sporadic??

A real wash is going to run a lot differently than water and vinigar. Your output will be much more stable.

You got a 1500 watt element but whats your power input?

Olddog,
Does it take awhile for them twins to settle in during a run? I noticed with all of my "add ons"
that it takes a bit before my unit settles and her behavior sort of predictably cycles...

Know what I mean?

Shore power: 120 volts

aint sure bout them hi teck outfits but on a ole pot still if it lopes mean you got a leak.
it dont take much. could be a vacume

so im tole

Ok, I put a copper scrubber in and that did the trick Steady pencil lead sized stream now