Home Distiller

This whole thing has gotten me thinking. I have some high test heads I can play around with, pour in a pan and see what it takes to put out. Logically if you are taking off at near 100% it seems it would take well over an equal amount of water to bring the alcohol below flammable levels. which is something to consider but maybe I will play around in a few days and see exactly what happens.

Be careful cranky
remember when wild turkey was on fire the creek was burning

The technique used for putting out flammable liquids with water is to spray a mist, using a sweeping back and forth motion, so the water falls on the burning liquid like a gentle rain. That takes away heat and puts out the fire. Like Brutal observed, the results of hitting a liquid fire with a hard stream of water can be spectacular.

cranky wrote:This whole thing has gotten me thinking. I have some high test heads I can play around with, pour in a pan and see what it takes to put out. Logically if you are taking off at near 100% it seems it would take well over an equal amount of water to bring the alcohol below flammable levels. which is something to consider but maybe I will play around in a few days and see exactly what happens.

kinda what i was thinking, a controlled circumstance fire drill. preparedness in the event shit hit the fan. I think i'm going to revisit my whole emergency proceedure set up...since (as i see it) in the event of a fire the last resort is to make the call to the flashing lights.

HDNB wrote: ....the last resort is to make the call to the flashing lights.

whoo boy, be doin some serious dancin tryin to splain away whatcher doin refractionating high test ethyl....

yes, my plan is to place a measured amount in a pan and set it on fire, at night so I can see what's going on, then pour water from a measured container until it goes out, thus extinguishing from the bottom. Then start over and extinguish from the top using a shower setting on a hose. I have several other settings on my water hose and after making sure the yard is nice and wet I may see what happens if I use one of those settings. I think this will give me a good idea of what to expect in the event of an issue.

When I run I am currently using 2 20-25 gallon reservoirs and 2 pumps. The newest pump puts out a lot of volume and I could easily grab the end of the return hose and douse the fire. I've been thinking about adding a shower head on the end which I think might help cool the returning water and double as a fire sprinkler.

Then there are the 8 or so fire extinguishers I have but I like to be prepared

Fire needs
heat, oxygen and fuel. If you remove one of those you will not have a fire or you can put out a fire by removing one or more of the three.
fire extinguisher
if you are using one on a liquid fire never squeeze the lever to open the valve all the way. You don't want to spread the fire. Squeeze the lever slowly and sweep across the fire slowly, don't fan across the flames fast you will run out of extinguisher.
Just try to hit the most important part. I'm retired CG

Here's my dumb ass mistake for the day.
Had a large tapered piece of copper tubing that was very hot on one end, that needed cooled real quit before the end I was holding became too hot to hang on to. Put the hot end into a bucket of water to cool it down. The steam shot up the tube and scorched my hand. Here's the bad part, I'd already burned my hand by picking up the piece while I was annealing it earlier.

It's amazing how heavy hot medal is, I can drop it so fast, and then the people in the next county know I just burned myself

shadylane wrote:Here's my dumb ass mistake for the day.
Had a large tapered piece of copper tubing that was very hot on one end, that needed cooled real quit before the end I was holding became too hot to hang on to. Put the hot end into a bucket of water to cool it down. The steam shot up the tube and scorched my hand.

I did the same thing once

Stripping a smokey malted corn/wheat mash last nite. Cooling water was getting a little warm so I reached over to turn it up a little and shoot my arm with a good dose of hot water.
I have the discharge so I can see and hear the exit water. Guess I gotta change the location.

ShadyLane, I truly empathize !! When 1st starting out as a blacksmith, I quickly learned about making a "steam cannon" while working with a piece of 1" pipe. Betcha we won't be doing that again!!!

A few days ago I was doing a stripping run like this: See that 2' riser just above the boiler cap? I made that with a pipe, two ferrules, and silver solder. Saved a few bucks rather than buy a welded spool. Well, during the strip the top ferrule solder joint failed, the whole top and condenser side fell to the right, and broke my collection jar. I was standing right there and caught the still parts, but a chunk of glass fell on my foot and popped a ½" hole in it. I filled up my sandal with blood while turning the still power and water off.
I cleaned up, reorganized the still, finished the strip, and ordered a proper welded 2' spool.

Moral: silver solder is strong, but it has limits. Thin-pipe-to-ferrule butt joints, sanded smooth, can't take heat and torque.

Badmotivator wrote:Moral: silver solder is strong, but it has limits. Thin-pipe-to-ferrule butt joints, sanded smooth, can't take heat and torque.

I once tested ss ferules with o-rings, which contained a thin ring of silver solder so that only flux and heat needed to be applied, to connect ss tubing with hydraulic metric couplings. Holding ok at 300 bar until I hit the tube with a wrench. ferrule popped right of the pipe

Badmotivator wrote: I filled up my sandal with blood while turning the still power and water off.

the open toe is very elegant. looks like the sandals cleaned up nice.

really...sorry to hear of the misfortune. glad you were right handy to keep things under control, it's always difficult to maintain composure when leaking.

HDNB wrote:
the open toe is very elegant. looks like the sandals cleaned up nice.

really...sorry to hear of the misfortune. glad you were right handy to keep things under control, it's always difficult to maintain composure when leaking.

Those are my wife's unbloodied feet, actually. My sandals were a gooey mess, and I had to buy a new pair.

It's funny, actually. My wife and kids were there, and very alarmed at the blood, but I just wanted to get everything switched off before I addressed the medical issue. My wife says, "well, it looks like you're done for the day." I replied, "au contraire, butthair." And finished the run.

cranky wrote:yes, my plan is to place a measured amount in a pan and set it on fire, at night so I can see what's going on, then pour water from a measured container until it goes out, thus extinguishing from the bottom. Then start over and extinguish from the top using a shower setting on a hose. I have several other settings on my water hose and after making sure the yard is nice and wet I may see what happens if I use one of those settings. I think this will give me a good idea of what to expect in the event of an issue.

When I run I am currently using 2 20-25 gallon reservoirs and 2 pumps. The newest pump puts out a lot of volume and I could easily grab the end of the return hose and douse the fire. I've been thinking about adding a shower head on the end which I think might help cool the returning water and double as a fire sprinkler.

Then there are the 8 or so fire extinguishers I have but I like to be prepared

Cranky- et al:
Look up: Alcohol-resistant aqueous film-forming foams (AR-AFFF) are foams resistant to the action of alcohols, able to form a protective film when they are present. The standard for firefighting is a 2.5 gallon pressurized pump can with water and a couple ounces of foam concentrate. you can find these extinguishers used cheap. These fire extinguishers can put out a lot of fire and you can refill them by unscrewing the top, adding water and and then pressurizing it with compressed air.

Here is a youtube video of what the foam does to e85: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMFkwovkWH8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Link to extinguisher: http://www.amazon.com/Amerex-Gallons-Wa ... B00F5CJEZU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

MedStiller

Dang bad motivator. Lucky you didn't lose a toe.

This evening I was finally able to conduct my little unscientific alcohol flame study. Here's how it went.

First I took 50ml of 92% heads to try to replicate scows issue.
I poured the alcohol into a 12 inch frying pan
I then lit the alcohol on fire. 92% alcohol burns pretty damn good, but we already knew that.
I then rather quickly poured in water into the flaming pan from the edge of the pan.
100ml of water failed to put the flames out, in fact if anything the flames actually got hotter.
I then poured in 100ml of more water bringing the total to 200ml also poured from the side of the pan which instantly extinguished the fire.

I then emptied and dried the pan and once again poured 50ml of alcohol into it and set it on fire.
This time I poured the water in a bit more slowly
Once again 100ml failed to extinguish the fire and definitely seemed to make it hotter.
I then poured in more water fairly slowly to see when exactly the fire extinguished.
It took an additional 75ml.
So a total of 175ml poured into the pan slowly at the edge extinguish the fire.

Last I took a garden hose with the spray nozzle set to shower.
I once again started with 50ml of alcohol and once again set it on fire.
A quick pull of the trigger instantaneously extinguished the fire within a fraction of a second and with much less water.

I personally don't think these results are surprising except maybe the amount of water it took to extinguish it poured in slowly from the side but it does take time for alcohol to properly mix.

Cranky, thanks for going to the trouble of experimenting for little ol' me. So apparently extinguishing an alcohol fire with water isn't about dilution after all.

What mechanism do you credit for putting out the fire with the shower spray? Did it blow the oxygen away? Cool it below combustion temp?

skol,
sKow

It could have been dilution, the shower spray likely delivered over 200ml In a split second, and more spread out to mix faster.

You better have a good grip on that hose that delivered 7 ounces in a split second.

It might work even better if you try a finer spray. Mist systems apparently work better than spray or deluge because the small droplet size lets the water evaporate quicker giving quicker cooling and starving the fire of oxygen.

I'm thinking along the lines of NZChris but what I believe happened was because the the water was sprayed directly on top in an even spray it not only displaced the oxygen it also diluted the upper layer of alcohol, because it takes time to mix the water displaced and capped the alcohol extinguishing the fire. Then the water was able to mix with the alcohol much faster and watered it down to the point it was no longer flammable. I didn't measure how much water actually was used in the last experiment but it was significantly less than 200ml, I would guess 100ml at the most but it really was just a quick spray. I can't say this would work in all situations but I personally feel pretty comfortable with my setup and my ability to extinguish a fire.

If you don't add enough water to cool the burning alcohol it can still vaporize and burn... Misting cools the entire surface, knocking down the flames... Hot alcohol will float on top of cold water slowly poured into the burning pan and continue burning until enough water is added to cool the alcohol beyond the flash point... Alcohol and water aren't as miscible at vastly disparate temperatures...

Made the last solder joint on my new Boka head, and let it cool down in the vise.
Went in the house to use the washroom, and those of you who have been here before know what I found in the shop when I got back
Damned thing fell out of the vise as it cooled, landed right on the thermometer tube and kinked it in half

Well..i found out lazyness doesn't pay off...i found out the hard way.
Had 16 L of wash and made a strippingrun yesterday.
My lid seals to the boiler with flourpaste.
So today i decided i had some time to do the spiritrun.
The flourpaste was really baked to the boiler, so i thought..well what the heck..you just let it stay there and do a spiritrun.
Checked it for leaks with a flashlight and tried blowing into the ferrule...everything was fine.
So i crancked up the heat and started collecting.
I had around 3 L of spirits and the ABV was falling to 40%, i knew the run was going towards the end.
Suddently i could smell a very disgusting smell from the distillate..almost like burned rubber.
I didn't know what the hell was going on and shut the still down immidiately, as i feared my element had burned out...!
No...element was fine..but a piece of flourpaste had come loose and dumped down on the element.
As there wasn't much liquid left, it had taken some heat...hmmm..
As it was at the end of the run, i didn't waste it all together (lucky me).
Lesson learned...next time i will put on some new paste before i do a spiritrun.

To hell with making biscuit. PTFE all the way.

I agree Pfshine..
Only problem is, my boilerlid is to big for a PTFE gasket...unless i make a "everlasting" one..
Flourpaste never let me down.
It was my own fault..so i put that on the "learn to run a still account"..

Danespirit, I have to ask, what kind of flour paste are you using that would allow you to empty and refill your boiler without changing it?? Sounds like some "super" flour to me....