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That is easy. Rounded up 4.2kW will heat 1 litre by 1 degC every second.

So lets say you charge your 55 gallon drum with 40 gallons to leave some headspace. 40 gallons is roughly 152 litres so for ease we will call it 150. And let us say raising the temperature from 20 degC to 100 degC, for use as a steam generator.

150 litres x dT of 80 degC would be 50400kW to flash boil it in 1 second; or 14kW to do it in 1 hour.

Most folks do not have a domestic supply capable of running a 14kW heater, so gas is the preferred option.

I have run bigger boilers in the past. A LOT can go wrong really fast with a setup like that for a hobby scale effort. If you are thinking of moving to legal small batch production you are going to need a more setup than a 55gal. SS drum. and on a hobby scale this is way overkill. I would suggest for the $250-$300 you could have a fab shop make you a more reasonable size boiler out of copper or stainless. this way you would also be assured it never contained anything toxic.

H&H

There are several calculators on the parent site, and also bundled here in the forums, that will allow you to run the "what if's" of various setups... Yesterday I ran the pot calc to see what it would spit out and a full 200 liter wash would take about 3 hours to heat up using a single 5500W internal electric heating element... That's just to get up to temperature and then you'd have another 3 hours of flat out running 5500W to distill down to ~38% ABV... Backing the heat down to 3200W after using 5500W for heat up would result in 5 hours to get down to the same 38% ABV... So that adds up to 6 - 8 hours, and that is most likely on the low side... Both would result in ~10 gallons (40 liters) in total volume of spirits...

For shits and giggles, to toss some real world numbers at that, let's consider that working 8 hours at minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would yield a gross pay of $58 before taxes... And with a gas pump price of $4 per gallon you could afford ~14 gallons... So without even factoring in the added time, effort, and materials involved, it becomes obvious that one would be better off taking on a part time job to cover fueling a vehicle than thinking of ethanol production as a viable alternative... Or cut back on needless squandering... The numbers don't lie when it comes to ethanol production from a personal use scale perspective...

Damn....since I gave up coffee in the morning my brain dosen't wake up till noon. Ignore first part of my last post. missed the part about water. But second part still holds. If you want to distill anything for consumption, even water, you must be cautious about contaminants and toxins. So unless you are absolutely sure what was in the drum consider other options.

H&H

Even though waterman may have decided not to use a 55 gallon drum as a boiler, for whatever purpose, it's still worthwhile to keep this topic active for the benefit of any other new members who may stumble across this while contemplating similar ideas...

It might be worthwhile, at some point, to address the issue of boiler size, which comes around every so often, in the New Distiller Reading Lounge...

yea i no seems pretty interesting and i was surprised no one asked ever. i wonder how much ethanol fuel this can produce and for what price. you would have to buy that special volcanic rock that sucks the water out leaving changing the structure of ethanol making it go to 100%. there should be a picture some were on you tube with a still with the condenser leading straight into a gas tank of a car. i think that would be funny.

Well let's see. This is talking for fuel and not entirely fact. But if you could ferment 45 gal at 20%? That would be 9 gallons of 100% alcohol. Need to run it off at the highest you can 95%ish. So you would get around 9.5 gallons from 45 gallons of 20% wash. How long it would take you to run that off. I don't even want to know? But I would guess around 45 hours going buy a 12ish hour run for a normal rig. But a bigger column and other tricks mite cut that down to around the 12 hr mark. So you have the time to make the wash and ferment it and run time a good two days labor. To make around 9.5 gallon of fuel. That is close to 20% less efficient then gasoline. So it would equal about 7.5 gallons of gasoline.

I would pay the $40 at the pump and be done.

If you are serious about the fuel use, IMO there is only one option that makes viable sense. Buy a diesel and do the conversion to run it on Straight Vegetable Oil. Rape seed oil from the supermarket is probably the cheapest, but in some areas it might be Sunflower Oil.

Just drive into the supermarket, load up a trolley with bottles of vegetable oil, fill the tank and then dump the empty containers in the recycling bin. Job done.

myles wrote:If you are serious about the fuel use, IMO there is only one option that makes viable sense. Buy a diesel and do the conversion to run it on Straight Vegetable Oil. Rape seed oil from the supermarket is probably the cheapest, but in some areas it might be Sunflower Oil.

Just drive into the supermarket, load up a trolley with bottles of vegetable oil, fill the tank and then dump the empty containers in the recycling bin. Job done.

IMO go to your local deep fry resturant and ask to pump out their waste oil from the fryers. They typically pay someone to haul the waste oil away so if you say you are taking it for free they will probably be thankful. It's typically stored outside in an underground or above ground tank.

Then you can smell like a traveling McDonald's.

Trying not to spin too far off topic, you still need a small diesel tank with the vege oil conversion. It runs the motor long enough to heat the vege oil, via cooling system, to proper temps for combustion, also on shutdown the system goes back over to diesel to clear the injectors of the oil, like a turbo timer operates when you turn the key off (it stays running til cool).

Back on topic, I'm glad Waterman brought up the subject of using a 55 gal SS drum. I've been contemplating the use of such for the headroom needed on rum washes and DWWG. I'm still trying to sort through all the ideas and possibilities before I start purchasing supplies. Has anybody seen or heard of a source for the 30 gal SS drums, used? I've found new ones but they're too costly for my budget.

007

Might find something interested here..... I have got a few jewels fom them.

http://www.ullmers-dairyequipment.com/Balance-Tank.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

hellbilly007 wrote:Trying not to spin too far off topic, you still need a small diesel tank with the vege oil conversion. It runs the motor long enough to heat the vege oil, via cooling system, to proper temps for combustion, also on shutdown the system goes back over to diesel to clear the injectors of the oil, like a turbo timer operates when you turn the key off (it stays running til cool).

Back on topic, I'm glad Waterman brought up the subject of using a 55 gal SS drum. I've been contemplating the use of such for the headroom needed on rum washes and DWWG. I'm still trying to sort through all the ideas and possibilities before I start purchasing supplies. Has anybody seen or heard of a source for the 30 gal SS drums, used? I've found new ones but they're too costly for my budget.

I can run a 10 to 12 gallon rum wash in my keg with no problems. So I don't see a point in it. Unless you just want to go big? I'm doing 35 gal ferments and splitting it into 3 runs. At pot still speeds I can do all three runs in a day.

Just saying.