Home Distiller

My gas burner was a camp stove and I thought I’d upgrade. The boiler is a stainless 5 gal milk churn.
Flames coming up the sides is not ideal and that’s only turned on about 3/4
Burner too big or pot too small?

I'm going to guess you cant control the amount of gas going to your burner very well, you really don't need much flame from propane to make a run. I have a 58,000 BTU burner which I never even had to use half its power for to heat up the still. heats it up in a half hour then I run it really low. Low enough that the flame gets rather bright instead of large.

When it’s low it’s very yellow rather than blue and is easy to control.
The best lab is to compare against the “wee” one.
I’ll also keep an eye out for a larger diameter boiler, Something like a 55us/44uk gal drum is a tad big
Thanks for the prompt help

whats the max BTU range for your burner? just curious

Dunno what you mean by the large drum capacity but I suggest you embellish it to mach the forum rules, My keg still had a diameter of 4 inches and its plenty big enough for a turkey fryer burner

Those electric cables look pretty close to that conflagration!

Geoff

Thanks for all the help and yes I’ve just moved the electric cables.
The btu is around 27500 / 8kw.
What I meant by the size of the boiler keep it around 5gal but change it’s shape to be shorter and fatter. No ideas how to manage 55gal....

More photos to follow with a bit more data.

Mea culpa. User error
There is a silver metal ring with the specs and approvals just at the gas control that blocks the airflow
By blocking the airflow the flames are yellow and all over the place
When unblocked have a hot blue flame at the same rate of gas flow
Perfect !

The burner is ideal

Was just typing up reply to say you should adjust fresh air flow. I was trying to find the user manual for your viper gas cooker online to see where it was.

Looks like you solved it, though. It looks perfect once adjusted correctly.

The new gas ring has more halved my warmup time.
I think the burners with three gas controls rather than one offer more control when you’re at temp
This is a stripping run and the photos shows the temps
89.9 is top of column started at 70% 50ml/min
91.6 is top of boiler not the liquid but the gas at the bottom of the column
21.8 is ambient.

Thanks again for the comments, advice and help

The Baker wrote:Those electric cables look pretty close to that conflagration!

Geoff

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to move away from the walls as well.

thanks

You also should have a gas valve at the end of the burner , so you can turn the wick down , you may need to readjust the metal sleeve to get less air into the mix .Make sure you have good ventilation , leave a door and window open .My burner says should not be run indoors ,( produces a lot of CO2) , which can be deadly in a confined space ... just sayin ! esxman

esxman wrote:...My burner says should not be run indoors...(produces a lot of CO2) , which can be deadly in a confined space ... just sayin ! esxman

Gotta’ correct you here, for safety’s sake...incomplete combustion, from running a burner inside, can produce carbon “mon”oxide (CO), which is odorless and colorless and quite lethal. If it is complete combustion, that is with adequate oxygen like outdoors, it produces carbon “di”oxide (CO2), also colorless and odorless, but not near as lethal because we expire CO2 with every breath.

So, it’s CO you’ve got to worry about, not CO2.

Stay safe.
ss