Home Distiller

Good morning! got an issue and want to see if there is anything i can do today to get around it.

I have a regular bokakob 4ft. column sitting on a keg. I did a stripping run yesterday and got my 30 gallons of bourbon wash down to 8 gallons of low wines. during operation yesterday I blew my triac that I used to control the 5500w element. So, not easily deterred, i removed it and wire-nutted the lines together so it runs at 100%, 100% of the time. had puking issues as i always do with all grain runs, didn't care because i knew i was going to do a spirit run with low wines. today, i filled up with my low wines and added water to about 12 gallons total. fired it up and let the column equalize. I took all of my copper mesh out. my column started flooding. out the top, over the corrugated SS condenser. so i figured i could slow down everything by putting packing back in, that didn't work. it is still flooding. normally i would take the power down to 50% and then slowly bring it up to about 70-75%. but since I'm at 100% I'm not sure what to do to not waste this stuff that took about a month to ferment. and all day to strip. I don't have another power controller readily available. unless i can get it from lowes or home depot.

anyone got any ideas. if you need pics and stuff, i can provide that. everything is off and im on standby right now. doing some research in the mean time.

You are going to need a new power controller. If things are stripped, they will last till a new one comes in.

Another option, heat up on 220V/5500W and then switch to 110V/1375W for the pot run. Might be a bit slow.. but insulate your keg and column to make the most out of the lower power.

B

ok, so I took that as "You are going to need to reduce power". I happened to have another project in the works that gave me extra parts. so i made a controller. based off an esp8266 and using an SSR. I whipped together a WiFi enabled "voltage regulator". it cuts power over a 10 second period. 50% percent power would equal 5 seconds on and 5 seconds off. 70% equals 7 on 3 off.

I change the power by going to http://192.168.1.123/level?params=60" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

i change 60 to anything between 0 and 100

theskaz wrote:ok, so...I whipped together a WiFi enabled "voltage regulator". it cuts power over a 10 second period. 50% percent power would equal 5 seconds on and 5 seconds off. 70% equals 7 on 3 off.

So, I'm not sure how well a 10-second duty cycle will work. That's synonomous with the way a thermostatic controlled electric stove works. It may be unstable and cause surging, or pulsing of the vapor. I guess, you should try it. But don't be surprised if it doesn't give you the stream you're looking for.
ss

That is going to surge... and not be ideal for our purpose.. One the reasons we dont recommend most electric stoves.. They surge

that was a starting point. i can change the duty cycle down to about 100 milliseconds. will that be low enough, or are we talking microseconds?

i took it down to 1 second duty cycle. that is low as i can go without running into stability issues in the code. i might be able to get to 750ms, maybe even 500 but running a risk of locking up.

theskaz wrote:i took it down to 1 second duty cycle. that is low as i can go without running into stability issues in the code. i might be able to get to 750ms, maybe even 500 but running a risk of locking up.

Well, good luck. The SSR runs on a 16.7 millisecond cycle (1/60).

right now it is on 500ms, off 500ms (50%). and everything seems to be stable so far. watching it like a hawk

went to 75% and finishing up the tails now.
Checking the proof:

All this is going into a 3gal barrel