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I hate to be the alarmist here, but....


The design has a 15mm narrow tube delivering vapor to a 28mm chamber. That means there's 6.5mm space between the wall of the tubes. A narrow space.
If it pukes you won't find it in the parrot. That narrow space will become effectively blocked. Then you immediately get an over-pressure situation in your rig.
With luck, the obstruction will be blown out forcefully through the takeoff. Without luck (Murphy factor) the puke will be forced even tighter into the tubespace & outlet. The rig becomes a rather large bomb. The bad thing about that is, you may not even notice the blockage, & a minute or two later, you'll probably be dead with a piece of steel keg or copper pipe stuck in your head and a big pile of rubble where that brick wall used to be.

I'm sorry, but it's a bad design safety-wise.

There are some things you can do, like install a large blowout plate or plug in the top of the keg. But you still have the issue of removing the gunk from the closed chamber, and you still have the problem of not being able to see or prevent a potential puke. And it will happen because while you're doing sugar runs now, at some point in the hobby you will try a mash with solids in it. We all do eventually (grains, fruits). But by then (if you're still alive) you will have forgotten that your design isn't suitable for solids. Even molasses wash is prone to puking.

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

But don't take my word for it. Ask any engineer. There's a few here, & lots of groups online where you can ask about vessels and pressurization.

Good luck.

Edit: I fogot to ask...You DO block off the holes in the pipes when you're not using it, don't you? Mudwasps, spiders & lizards like small dark places to live & build things. Those become the unseen, un-thought-about blockages also.

_________________
Slainte!
regards Harry

trial&error wrote:dude thats awesome!! i might have to build one.

any thoughts of adding a valve that returns the liquid for controllable reflux?

can you make some detailed sketches/ plans of your concentric still?

LWTCS wrote:How are you sealing that (slip?) joint John?

Elut wrote: I'd love to go electric, for the temperature control. (Possibly an arduino with the PID soft.)

You do realise that you are not chasing specific temperatures, you are more interested in the pattern of temp change. A PID is probably not of much use here.

On this forum, I've read bad things about Propane, about Butane, about immersion heaters, about electric stoves...
Well, in a word, I've read bad thing about every single heating source...

There are no perfect solutions.

Ideally I'd like to go with an immersion heating element. Any caution about that?

Main concern with any kind of immersion heating element is to make sure the boiler never runs dry and exposes the element when it is on. Easiest way to avoid that is to first fill the still with plain water until the element is fully covered, then add the alcoholic bit of the still charge.

(Obviously you want to mount the element as close to the bottom of the boiler as practically possible.)

We're running on 220 here, what "W" would you all advise me to use?

I would go with the maximum wattage (volts x current) that a standard household power point in your country can handle. Don't know about where you are, but in my country it is 240 v at 10 amps = 2400 watts, which is what I use.

Doing it this way means that there is never any danger of the still over drawing a standard power circuit, and you can plug it in almost anywhere. Downside is that it might take a while longer to heat up. Takes around 75-80 minutes for me to get 40 litres of still charge to boiling, using a 2400 w element (in a well insulated boiler). But I think the advantages outweigh the longer boil up time.