Home Distiller

Just some photos of my new (and first) pot still.

Done a couple of low wines runs, and it works okay, except the distillate doesn't come out completely smoothly. At the start of the run it spurts (surges) a little bit, and toward the end it is spurting quite a bit. Any ideas why?

What kind of condencer are you using?I used to run a 1/4 copper takeoff line,and mine was doing that.I changed it to a 3/8 in line,and it stopped.
I think thst the distillate was pooling up in the line,and building up a small amount of pressure,causing the surging.Running your still too hard can sometimes cause this too.
wineo

Thanks wineo.

Going through my Liebig, which is 3/4" inside 1", so there is plenty of room in there.

Running flat out at 2400 w. I'll try backing the power off a bit and see what happens.

Cheers.

It sounds like my leibeg.Mines 30 inches long.I put a stretched out piece of ss scrubber in my condencer{the full length} and it works much better.
I take it out after every run and clean it.If you dont have alot of headspace in your boiler,it will surge pretty easy.It sounds like you were just using too much heat.If your condencer is removable,try the packing.You will have to use a long rod to get the scrubber in,and out,but it will increase the cooling surface,and work better.
wineo

I was planning on putting some copper mesh in the column, so maybe that will do the trick. But I will also try some in the condenser only to see what effect that has.

BTW, my Liebig is 31 inches long.

Thanks again.

Great job nice work.. on the surging it does sound like ya driving it a little hard.. think slow ..nice and easy

How tall is that column?The one that I run is shorter,but mine has no reflux cooling like yours.It works real good.I think your design will work great,once you get the hang of running it.You will get quite a bit of reflux if you fill it with packing,and if you put some loose packing in the condencer,it will condence better.Insulating the column will help with the reflux.You should be able to run it with no packing,and it will be like a potstill with a little more%.Just turn down the heat quite a bit once you get it heated up,and it will do better.
wineo

Thanks for that, NM.

wineo
It is 400 mm (16") tall, and 50 mm diameter. It is mostly for low wines runs so I don't have to set up my ceiling scraping fractionating column just for that job. Though I will try a bit of rum and some fruit mashes with it later on (we get plenty of mangoes around here, starting in about 6 weeks, yum). I am mostly after neutral spirits, boring I know, but....

I was going to throw in the copper packing for cleaning up the sulfur compounds, not so much for reflux, but I will experiment and see if a bit of condenser packing works with the surging.

Cheers

As always - constructions looks great on your latest. Did you get the surging problem solved? I'd assume that you are probably too busy stripping (washes) quickly to post up. Did the scrubber do the trick, or did you have to tweak the input power also?

I also agree that 2400w is probably way too much.
How big is your boiler?

Thanks p_su.

Yup, I forgot to post the results. Sorry.

Putting six inches of loosely rolled up copper mesh in the output end of the Liebig completely fixed the surging problem, even flat out at 2400 w.

My boiler is a 50 litre stainless beer keg.