Water jacket CM reflux condensor.

[aircarbonarc]

Last year I built and ran a VM reflux still with a cooling coil slid into the top of the 3"× 48" column. Well it worked well, seemed slow, had an abv of 93%. I ended up dismantling it so I'd make a plated still which still hasn't happened. Today as I was going through my box of parts and i got a great idea. I was thinking of building a water jacket as a reflux condensor out of a section on 3" copper pipe, with either a 2 1/2"- 1 1/2" tube inside held in by end caps which would be copper sheet cut into rings. I would stuff the inner tube with copper mesh for maximized surface area. Also there would a cooling water inlets on the top and bottom also. I'll draw a picture to better describe my design and please give input . Thank you

[acfixer69]

Sounds like it will work much like old dog did in the first generation flute builds.

AC

[pfshine]

The mesh helps some but it's not really active cooling surface area. It will work if it's long enough. If you went with 1-1/2" inside of the 3" that is a hell of a lot of wasted potential. 3" pipe is four times bigger than 1-1/2" so you would have alot of unused space. A simple coil would be way more efficient. But by all means don't let me stop you, it has been done and worked. Just make it extra long.

Writing as acfixer posted.

[zapata]

Are you trying to achieve something the coil didn't? Do you think the CM principle will help you in some way the previous VM and coil didn't?

And it wasn't clear, is this new condenser to be used back on the packed column, or as the dephlag on the plated column to be built?

VM seems perfect to me for a packed column because it maintains a steady reflux rate thus increasing column equilibrium. CM stills can vary RR with water pressure, termperature, and steadily dropping RR throughout the run. NOT saying CM is innappropriate, a skilled distiller can make any management system work, but you will be working around those issues when using CM on a packed column. Plated stills seem inherently less susceptible to some of these issues which is probably why we don't hear much about them being problems on flutes.

[Bushman]

Are you trying to achieve something the coil didn't? Do you think the CM principle will help you in some way the previous VM and coil didn't?

And it wasn't clear, is this new condenser to be used back on the packed column, or as the dephlag on the plated column to be built?

VM seems perfect to me for a packed column because it maintains a steady reflux rate thus increasing column equilibrium. CM stills can vary RR with water pressure, termperature, and steadily dropping RR throughout the run. NOT saying CM is innappropriate, a skilled distiller can make any management system work, but you will be working around those issues when using CM on a packed column. Plated stills seem inherently less susceptible to some of these issues which is probably why we don't hear much about them being problems on flutes.

I ran my packed CM side by side with Mash Rookies flute we both felt that my product was slightly better. I think learning to run any new still takes some experimenting but with my experience running both I personally don't think running a CM packed column is all that difficult. With my CM I can get 100% reflux and feel with small adjustments, waiting for a few minutes before making another adjustment it's not that hard to maintain a steady reflux. But like I said every still runs a bit differently.

[googe]

Think i know what you mean. I did similar years back. worked ok.

[aircarbonarc]

Ok thanks. I might be going in another direction as I found a bunch of thick walled 3/4 copper tube and will make a shotgun style dephlamator. Still maybe going bigger with 1" tube stuffed loose with packing.