Air cooled condenser. I'll NEVER go back to water cooling!
Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:51 pm
I have been using a liebig condenser on my stills for several years now because
it was so easy to build and it's very effective. However it does require quite a
bit of water and it's a hassle to set it up, what with all the cooling water
buckets, the re-circ pump, water pipes, etc. Plus I live in an area that's been
under a drought for quite a while so I would like to cut down my water consumption.
Given all that, I wanted to try an air cooled condenser. I searched through the
HD forums and found quite a few threads that mentioned air cooled condensers.
I was hoping to find some examples to model my new condenser after but it seems
that not too many people like air cooling. Some have even gone so far as to say
it's a waste of time and that air cooling, especially if you use a gas/propane burner,
just won't work very well.
Not to be discouraged, I kept looking. I found a few threads that mentioned
"baseboard heaters". These are simply a long straight copper pipe with a *lot*
of aluminum fins pressed onto the outside which are normally used for steam
heating systems. Several people seemed to think that these might work but I
couldn't find any examples where someone had used one for a condenser build.
Now, I don't know much about thermodynamics, but it seemed to me that if these
things work well for a heating system then they should be able to dissipate
the heat from my alcohol vapor fairly well too. Besides, you can't get much
simpler than a straight pipe and I wanted something simple to build.
I found several places on the internet that sell these things (the proper name
is actually "hydronic heating element") so I ordered a five foot element. Here's
what it looks like:
I needed some fans to blow across the fins to cool it down, so I bought nine of
those little black fans like you might find in a computer and mounted them on the
bottom of the wooden cradle so that they would blow air up across the fins. The
fans are 120mm, 120V AC units rated at 100 cubic feet per minute, so they blow
quite a bit of air for such little fans.
Since the heating elements fins are a little fragile, I wanted to make something
that would keep it enclosed. Plus I wanted to have something to act as an air duct
to force the air from the fans over the fins. I built a simple wooden "cradle" to
hold the element along with the fans. The whole assembly ended up being heavier
than I had expected so I also built some legs to hold it up because it's too heavy
to just hang off the still riser like my old (very light) liebig could. Here
are some pics of the whole assembly:
Well I'm at my attachment limit, so more in the next post...
it was so easy to build and it's very effective. However it does require quite a
bit of water and it's a hassle to set it up, what with all the cooling water
buckets, the re-circ pump, water pipes, etc. Plus I live in an area that's been
under a drought for quite a while so I would like to cut down my water consumption.
Given all that, I wanted to try an air cooled condenser. I searched through the
HD forums and found quite a few threads that mentioned air cooled condensers.
I was hoping to find some examples to model my new condenser after but it seems
that not too many people like air cooling. Some have even gone so far as to say
it's a waste of time and that air cooling, especially if you use a gas/propane burner,
just won't work very well.
Not to be discouraged, I kept looking. I found a few threads that mentioned
"baseboard heaters". These are simply a long straight copper pipe with a *lot*
of aluminum fins pressed onto the outside which are normally used for steam
heating systems. Several people seemed to think that these might work but I
couldn't find any examples where someone had used one for a condenser build.
Now, I don't know much about thermodynamics, but it seemed to me that if these
things work well for a heating system then they should be able to dissipate
the heat from my alcohol vapor fairly well too. Besides, you can't get much
simpler than a straight pipe and I wanted something simple to build.
I found several places on the internet that sell these things (the proper name
is actually "hydronic heating element") so I ordered a five foot element. Here's
what it looks like:
those little black fans like you might find in a computer and mounted them on the
bottom of the wooden cradle so that they would blow air up across the fins. The
fans are 120mm, 120V AC units rated at 100 cubic feet per minute, so they blow
quite a bit of air for such little fans.
that would keep it enclosed. Plus I wanted to have something to act as an air duct
to force the air from the fans over the fins. I built a simple wooden "cradle" to
hold the element along with the fans. The whole assembly ended up being heavier
than I had expected so I also built some legs to hold it up because it's too heavy
to just hang off the still riser like my old (very light) liebig could. Here
are some pics of the whole assembly:
- Side view
- Top view
- Top view close up
- Bottom view
Wow, that felt good to say. 