Home Distiller

I have changed over from an old cooling Managment type column with the water line's going through the column at the bottom and top to a VM type column.
What do you go buy on equlizing the column Temp Or Time or Both?
I dont know if this is corect or not but from my reading on this site it seems to me that you fire up your pot and then turn on the water to the coil, keep the valve closed until around 180 DEG and then start slowely opening the valve until you get your distillet coming out about 500 Ml a minute and try and maintaine the temp at 180.

Is this correct?
Thanks in advance

Actually there has been some discussion on another forum regarding an azeotrope of ethyl acetate which forms at 72C. In order to achieve that azeotrope it must be refluxed at extremely low energy input but the results are very impressive indeed. On my last run I was not able to achieve the azeotrope (I have other problems) but I was able to get my heat input low enough to get down to 75C. This allowed an extremely sharp heads cut with total volume of just over 8%! My previous efforts have averaged around 10% heads. The heads cut was so clear it could have been done entirely by temperature.

The point is it is not the length of time spent equalizing but is the low energy input that allows the azeotrope to form and not be smeared or contaminated with ethanol. Snuffy is the member pioneering this idea and he has been achieving extraordinary results with as low as 80 watts of power being input.

Minime can you please say that in plain english. I don't know exactley what you are talking about.

thats pretty interesting minime and makes sense when you think about it.

just like when you run all the ethnol out of the boiler and the heavier stuff equalizes within the column and never makes it out the product condenser.

so basically when equalizing you want to put in just enough energy to get the nasty heads up and out over the top but have the god ethanol equilize low do so it dosent even hit the condensor!
really interesting on how little energy snuffy is using there

pro65 wrote:Minime can you please say that in plain english. I don't know exactley what you are talking about.

If ya don't want to get into the heavy theory or the quest for perfection, you acn turn your power down a little and try equalising for at least half an hour, squeeze it out to an hour if ya like...