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Hello friends. I've been doing a lot of reading on the board and I'm thinking I'll build a boro column to use scrubbies or spp. Preferably scrubbies due to cost. Does anyone know where I would find a 4 or 5 inch borosilicate column

You might want to say roughly where you are.
Edit :

squar_root_pharms wrote:Howdy y'all. Texas expat relocated to Maine here. ......

Yes sorry I'm located in Maine. Thanks

Here’s a place I found online: http://www.fdglass.com/product/simax-glass-tubes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Northeast USA. Hope it helps.
ss

I don't know how big your boiler and heaters are, so how much vapor you can expect to be pushing up that column or how fast, but 4" or 5" is kind of wide for most packed columns that people build to put on a 15 gallon keg, for instance.

Also borosilicate is cool and would let you see everything, but I bet it's way more expensive than buying a few foot long piece of stainless steel "spool" with flanges already attached from Glacier Tanks or somewhere like that and filling it with scrubbies.

Not to say you're doing it wrong, just to say you might be doing it the expensive way.

For educational purposes
I've always wanted a big glass column.

I don't know about a 5" column
A 4" column on a 16ish gallon boiler, works pretty good

I have many different needs for this setup. Firstly I am discussing with a lawyer friend into acquiring our dsp permit. I am thinking of going with a larger than 30g boiler so I won't get detailed here with 2x 5kw heater elements. We only have 7'10" cielings in our shop so ideally I'd like to be able to produce clean 95% or better. We use ethanol for solvent in our hemp CBD production so being able to produce solvent for our sop would drastically cut costs. Also the still will work to reproof our solvent after a few hemp extractions and we pick up h2o and other lower bp terpenes. Essentially would like to go from 10% wash to azeo in a single pass and also take ethanol under 190 proof and reproof it. I am wondering is a 4" 24 to 36" packed spool and a bubble plate or two would work good here?

When you are ready, contact me for helical SS packing

It’s going to be tough to get 95+% with a single column in a 8 ft space. You might be able to do it with spp. Regular scrubbiest won’t. I had a 12 foot ceiling and ran an 8ft packed section in 4” and later 6”. The 6” would do it, but only over a single plate. Since you want to go commercial, I would go with 6” or 8”, 4” will be a bit slow for what you want.

The other option is a split column to deal with the height issues. That is probably cheaper than a short column with spp as larger columns use a lot of packing.

Should I be looking at downsizing to a smaller boiler? I was thinking a packed column above a plate or two would help. Does the hetp go up as diameter increases?

Could you explained what a split column is

richard1 wrote:When you are ready, contact me for helical SS packing

How does that stuff compare to prismatic?

My view point, SPP as is currently sold, is good for 1" and 1.5" columns. It gets crushed with weight on top, is way too light. What I have done is ideal for 4" - 6" columns.

A split column is where the top of column 1 is piped to the bottom of column 2. It works best if there is a pump at the bottom of column 2 to pump to the top of column 1, but you can also plumb a drain from the bottom of column 2 to the boiler. It loses some efficiency so the two will need to be taller than one single column.

Hetp is theoretically independent of diameter. What does get effected is the weight of the packing and how it crushes. I started to look at raching rings and structured packing for my 6”. The rings were stupidly expensive, one quote for ss rings was over $2000. I tried structured packing aka stainless steel wire pucks 700 mesh which were reasonable ($300). The hetp was too tall for my setup and 8’ of 6” would not get to azeo. I went back to scrubbies and was able to get to azeo over a single plate using low wines. Scrubbies alone did not hit azeo, so the plate did make a difference.

It was harder to get the 6” to run than the 4”. I could get azeo with 6’ packed 4” over a plate. I went to 8’ as it ran faster. Taller is faster. I would have gone higher if I could have fit it in the building. Based on what Odin has posted you need 15 plates to hit azeo and the column will work better up to 40 plates. From my testing I think those are good numbers. I would aim for a minimum of 20 plates and 25 to 30 would be better.

richard1 wrote:My view point, SPP as is currently sold, is good for 1" and 1.5" columns. It gets crushed with weight on top, is way too light. What I have done is ideal for 4" - 6" columns.

What is the hetp and what would be the cost to fill a 4’ section of 4”?

My still with 5" (NW125) and packed 1.2m deep is shortly about to be brought into service. So actual performance in the near future can be better commented on then. But from a packing point of view and quantities required, you can work on 870,488 pieces per metre cubed. Costs are not that much and in honesty have not yet looked at the resale factor, certainly not until I have gone through the proven stage.

bluefish_dist wrote:A split column is where the top of column 1 is piped to the bottom of column 2. It works best if there is a pump at the bottom of column 2 to pump to the top of column 1, but you can also plumb a drain from the bottom of column 2 to the boiler. It loses some efficiency so the two will need to be taller than one single column.

Hetp is theoretically independent of diameter. What does get effected is the weight of the packing and how it crushes. I started to look at raching rings and structured packing for my 6”. The rings were stupidly expensive, one quote for ss rings was over $2000. I tried structured packing aka stainless steel wire pucks 700 mesh which were reasonable ($300). The hetp was too tall for my setup and 8’ of 6” would not get to azeo. I went back to scrubbies and was able to get to azeo over a single plate using low wines. Scrubbies alone did not hit azeo, so the plate did make a difference.

It was harder to get the 6” to run than the 4”. I could get azeo with 6’ packed 4” over a plate. I went to 8’ as it ran faster. Taller is faster. I would have gone higher if I could have fit it in the building. Based on what Odin has posted you need 15 plates to hit azeo and the column will work better up to 40 plates. From my testing I think those are good numbers. I would aim for a minimum of 20 plates and 25 to 30 would be better.

Now you've got me thinking... What about running a 6" split column... First column is 4 or 5 bubble plates, second column is maybe 5 or 6 feet worth or packed column... This might keep me under my 7'10" cieling and give me decent throughput on a 200L boiler.

That would work fine. If you don’t do a pump, make sure the drain for the second column has a return to the boiler with a liquid trap. There is a thread on the adi forums right now about drains.

The second column need to have its bottom above the liquid in the boiler if you don’t run a pump. That might mean you need third column to get enough height as you ceiling is low.

I'd make the column as tall as possible and redistill.
A 5' tall column run twice, will make as clean, if not cleaner neutral than a single run through a 10' column

squar_root_pharms wrote:Hello friends. I've been doing a lot of reading on the board and I'm thinking I'll build a boro column to use scrubbies or spp. Preferably scrubbies due to cost. Does anyone know where I would find a 4 or 5 inch borosilicate column

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