Home Distiller

With recent events of a distillery being leveled, I'd like to propose a safety challenge.

There are available, adjustable, ethanol vapor detection chips on ebay. That's just one version!

Some of these are sensitive enough to be used in breathalyzers!

I would buy, in a heartbeat, a small battery powered ethanol vapor detector (think household fire or co2 detector). Better yet, how about a kit or instructions to add the ethanol vapor detector to an existing CO (carbon Dioxide) detector?

I occasionally poke fun of the "lab rats" here, but I know there are people here with the expertise to make such a device.

There are hand held units that HVAC Pros use, but they are $100 on up and have short battery times.

I have also read that a common CO detector will in fact be set off by Ethanol vapors, but none of the manufacturers admit or advertise that.

I think it has to be-
1. battery powered
2. cheap enough for the hobbyist
3. ability to test it, say putting it in a tub with a cup of 60% ethanol.

If I had such a thing, I'd put it in the cabinet where I store and age.

Ideas?

Good idea. No skills in that area here. Maybe some testing with the CO detector would be a good start. I would think a good application would be to place one down low somewhere in the work area near the still.

I've had vapor leaks before and it was fairly easy to detect just by sense of smell. But, you can't be too careful.

Your favourite lab rat checking in.

Here is a schematic and parts list. The sensor you have shown has four pins: +5VDC, Ground, Analogue out, and Digital out. The digital out might be able to drive a piezo buzzer directly, but if not, a relay can be interposed (or a transistor if you want to try real electronics). You can search for cheaper parts, of course. If you go to DigiKey and type in the part numbers, you can get full specifications.

I've included a circuit board to wire stuff on.

Using a battery would not work. The ethanol sensor draws a heavy current.

That wire going to 5V on the sensor somehow didn't get connected. It is supposed to connect to the sensor.

I think a wand type detector would be very useful around the still to check for leaks. I use one at work for cng leaks when working
on natural gas engines. Very handy.

Wow, those sensors are cheap. I'm in.

Im gonna have to play with the combustion analyzer in the work truck..

Many LEL detectors will respond to Ethanol. If you're looking for leaking/ not leaking response, a cheap household natural gas detector (tested with some hootch before every use) would work. The detectors do wear out eventually, but they're not expensive.

Those MQ3 sensors are fun to play with but they're highly variable and prone to drift, as we found one year when we used them in breathalyzer badges for DEFCON. If someone wants to build a detector out of these, I'd suggest enclosing in a case and drawing air across it with a small fan. Need to come up with a good calibration procedure too.

I've had CO detectors in aircraft, but never thought of that design.

I like where your all going.

This is designed to work with arduino which is a simple micro controller board. The digital 5v out will likely not power a buzzer that's very loud, but I bet one could be procured that has a separate power source with a few more amps. Lots of sources for arduino parts and boards. Calibration for the digital side is done with that screw you can see in blue on the board and would be simple I think. Simply (in the absence of alc. Vapour) turn it till it trips the circuit and then go back a tad. We just want to know if the concentration is greater than zero right.

This would be a good arduino project. Adding in arduino will do a few things. First it will give you a power supply to run your buzzer. Second it will allow you to set up a sampling rate. I agree that a fan would be good, again power source. I would have it set up with a hose so you could "sniff" particular areas of your rig. Now, once you had this, the sky is the limit for what you could use arduino for if you have a mind to. It can control your cooling pump based on output temp. It can control electric or gas burners based on profiles. It can log data. It could be configured to shut down your still if the ethanol sensor trips. See what I'm saying? Boards are cheap and its fairly easy to program.....

Sounds like a great idea. I'm surprised they don't already sell them in NZ for all the home distillers over there...

if someone wanted to modify instead of building from scratch, I've seen personal breath testers for alcohol under $40 at Costco. Not sure how well they would work for this and would still need a fan to draw in air. Just throwing out ideas.