Mr P's Bubble Bumper experiment.

[Prairiepiss]

I want to add. You mite consider external drains? Like LWTCS has in his thumper setup. This would give you more room on your plate for bigger bubblecaps. Or one big bubblecap. Just a thought.

[Prairiepiss]

Ok here is a short vid of the alcohol cleaning run. Not the best. But you van see the reflux clearly falling from the column right into the drain. My thinking is if I can get it redirected away from the drain. I will get much better performance out of it. As it is now most of my reflux is just going down the drain. I think if I can get this fixed. I should be able to pull 95% with the short column no problem. I'm losing a lot of good alcohol as it sits.

I have a few ideas I'm going to test to solve this problem. Take a look and see what you all think.

http://youtu.be/wdLW2n97REg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[LWTCS]

Almost like you aimed it at the thing,,,,,,,,Prolly couldn't do that if ya tried .

I'm thinking a simple cap or perhaps a tee or elbow?

[heartcut]

That drip is a dead center. Damn. Looks good, though.

[Prairiepiss]

Almost like you aimed it at the thing,,,,,,,,Prolly couldn't do that if ya tried .

I'm thinking a simple cap or perhaps a tee or elbow?

I know right? There's no way I could get it to drip right into that drain if I wanted to.
I thought I would get a little here and there. And I was fine with that but damn not all of it. I'm going to do some tests with scrubby rolling positioning to see if I can get it to flow out to the walls of the column. Also thinking about a simple little something to place under the packing to try to redirect it out. If those done work. I will make a cap to go over the drain. I didn't want to do the cap. So it would be easier to recharge it before a run. But what ever it takes.

[Frosteecat]

Nice aim...bullseye! Maybe a little convex cap with some holes around the outer edge...?

[Expat]

Great vid P!

That reflux flow is the damdest thing!

[Oxbo Rene]

Awesome stuff ! ! !

[myles]

Possibly the easiest option would be to just fit a T on top of the drain, I wouldnt even solder it - just put it in through one of the sight glasses and push it over the top of the exposed bit of drain tube.

What sort of seam did you use round the circumference of that ball to join the top and bottom together?

[Prairiepiss]

I can't put another fitting over it. Because it is a fitting not a pipe.

The first one I cut apart. I took the lip that was still soldered into the one half. I removed it with a torch and pliers. I straightened it out. And reused it.

1339385350-picsay.jpg

[myles]

Oh thats easy then. Take a T and solder a short bit of tube into the branch, and then plug that into the fitting that is your drain. Unless you wish to mainatain the same liquid height?

[Prairiepiss]

I kinda wanted to keep the height for now. And a t was going to he my last ditch effort. I have been playing with the packing and flipped it over so its not bunched up with a low spot in the center. I now have the low spot being the around the outside walls. So it now drips around the outside. And hopefully around the drain. I'm also going to use some copper wire and place it up in the packing to direct it out at the bottom. We will see how this works.

[fullhouse]

could just split a T all the way across the bottom from side to side and srping it open a bit to fit over the pipe would maintain the height then just keep drips out...my 2 cent on something i know nothing about

edit: caused by fat fingers

[LWTCS]

Street el

[Prairiepiss]

Street el

Duh! That would work. Didn't even think about a street fitting. I have a street 90 I could use quick and easy.

[Prairiepiss]

WTH? Got the still all setup to do a run. Fired it up. An hour into heat up. I get called out on a service call. You got to be kidding me?

[heartcut]

Murphy was an optimist.

[LWTCS]

Quit cher bitchin,,,,its payin fer yer next up grade

[Prairiepiss]

Quit cher bitchin,,,,its payin fer yer next up grade

No it ain't. Got half way there got a call that they got it running. This shite ain't right.

Headed back to fire it up again.

[LWTCS]

Quit cher bitchin,,,runnin yer likker aint cha

Cheers dude

[Prairiepiss]

Told the boss that was my one call for tonight. I had something to finish up.

And its been back on for 10 min.

I am going to try to get some better videos for you guys. It's only an 8 gal charge around 10% ABV wash? And it just started bubbling.

[rumbuff]

Wow mr P! this is a fun build to watch! So many ideas to try, so little time/money.... Thanks for sharing!

[NcHooch]

that's some mighty fancy copper-work there Mr Piss ....keep up the good work.

[Prairiepiss]

Thanks guys.

Well learning to drive this thing is a little more difficult then I was expecting. And I'm not really sure about this wash. I figured about 7 gallons is what I put in the boiler. I looked back at my notes and I used 10 lbs of sugar and 6 gallons of water on already wet grains from an AG batch. Bad thing is its been sitting since early December.

So I'm thinking 7 gallons around 9%ish? That would be 2384 ml of 100% alcohol.

Fire in at 6:20
Shut off at 6:53
Fired back up at 7:30
First drips at 7:50 kicked it to 100% reflux
Started collecting fores at 8:20 collected 400ml
Went back to 100% Refluxed at 8:28
Started take off again at 8:35
Collected another 100ml
500 ml @ 94% ABV that's 470ml of 100% will be tossed for fores.
Shut fores valve at 8:36
400ml @ 94% ABV that's 376ml of 100%
8:48
400ml @ 91% ABV that's 364ml of 100%
9:03
400ml @ 93% ABV that's 372ml of 100%
9:26
400ml @ 94% ABV that's 376ml of 100%
Missed this time?
400ml @ 93% ABV that's 372ml of 100%
10:00
ABV dropping. And flow dropped to a drip Shut off the coolant to reflux condenser.
500ml @ 49% ABV that's 245ml of 100%
Shut down at 10:15 parrot was at 20% ABV.

Total 3000ml collected. In about two hours. So 1.5 lt an hour.

That's a total of 2575ml of 100%. My figuring on the wash must have been off. More like 7 gallons at 10%? That would be 2649ml of 100%.

I'm getting the hang of it. I could have done better. If I hadn't pushed it so hard at first. ABV was a little lower then I wanted. I still think I can get it higher. Well I know I can. I just don't want to see drips. I want to see a stream.

This one ran a lot different then the cleaning run with feints diluted to 10%.

But its a hell of a lot better then just the packed column. I would still be going for a few 3 or 4 hours.

Next few runs I will be trying for somewhere around 80%ish. I have the Tapioca wash and 35 gal of rum. We will se how it does with flavors and lower ABV.

And I need to make up some All Bran so I can work on that 95% mark. That can be the next 35 gal batch.

[Frosteecat]

That is impressive! I've got my sites set on you as I tinker in my lab, PP!! Thank you for the motivation! Dumb question but when you say "of 100%" what does that mean? I was thinking reflux but it must be the plate valve?? I'm a little slow tonight...busy night in retail hell...

[Prairiepiss]

That is impressive! I've got my sites set on you as I tinker in my lab, PP!! Thank you for the motivation! Dumb question but when you say "of 100%" what does that mean? I was thinking reflux but it must be the plate valve?? I'm a little slow tonight...busy night in retail hell...

I was being weird. I broke each jar down to how much 100% alcohol was in each one. Just was trying to figure out what my wash really was. And how much I actually collected.
So it means of 100% alcohol. Volume times ABV%=volume of 100% alcohol.
Example.
400ml @ 50% ABV has 200ml of 100% alcohol in it.
400X.50=200

[Prairiepiss]

Oh and by rearranging the packing. The reflux now runs down the back wall and or drips outside the drain. It didn't give me the bump I thought it would. But then again. I still don't know what to expect out of this thing. I hot a few vids. I will edit them and get them posted.

I also found some vapor leaks on the plate itself. Around the upcomers and drain. And one of my solder points on one of the bubblecaps. They just bubble more so they ain't hurting anything. And they only bubble when alcohol is on the plate and in the vapors. I should say higher amounts. They didn't show up till I started getting some good reflux. I precharged the plate with water. And they also went away at the end of the run. As the alcohol was deplenished.

Another note I found interesting. When there is more water on the plate. The bubbles tend to use the puke gap. As the alcohol % rises the bubbles start using the slots in the bubblecap. I thought it mite be a temp thing. But towards the end of the run I could notice more of the bubble using the puke gap instead of the slots. I haven't seen this noted before? Anyone else ever noticed this before? I think this could be usefull? Anyone else?

If that was confusing? By me saying the bubble uses the puke gap. I am saying the vapor bubble doesn't come through the slots. It waits and comes out from around the bottom of the cap. You can see it through the slots as it pushes down to the bottom of the cap. Then out.

When the bubbles are coming out the slots. I very seldom seen a bubble make it to the bottom of the cap. There was some. But not many. Most come out through the slots.

I still need more power Scotty. Need more plasma to the warp coils.

[Frosteecat]

Could it be that the bubble's pressure is lower at high ABV and can't make the trip all the way?

Re-route your power to the forward shields...that should boost your nacells and boost tachyon power to the rear thrusters.

[myles]

That is a surface tension phenomenon. The bubble is "ignoring" the slot and waiting until it gets to a larger gap to squeeze through.

This actually correlates with something else that has been mentioned previously - how towards the end of the run the reflux tends to channel at the base of the packing and does not "wick" into the packing. This is because depleting the alcohol content of the liquid increases the surface tension of the liquid, and decreases its ability to "wet" the packing. You would also expect to see the size of the bubbles themselves decreasing as the alcohol content of the liquid they are traveling through increases.

Even a few % alcohol can reduce the surface tension, so it could be cost effective to precharge the plates with a dilute alcohol solution instead of just plain water.

[skow69]

Also the saturated vapor pressure is lower when there is less alcohol in the mixture, right? And pressure is force per area, like pounds per square inch, so how 'bout if the slots don't provide enough area for the vapor to push the liquid out of the way, but when it gets down to the puke gaps there's more square inches, so it can exert more pounds of force and muscle its way through? Is this another way of describing the surface tension phenomenon or is that something different? It sure does seem like something we should be able to exploit.

Either way, it is the coolest lookin three-eyed spherical ethanol cleanser I've ever seen! Beautiful work Mr.P!

I got lotsa dumb questions, but mostly I just wanna learn to beat copper into a perfectly round ball. That is just freakin cool.