Easy valved plates for solids - untested

[stillness]

Maybe this has been done or talked about, but I've not seen it. So, thanks for your kind patience.

Also, I'm not building this anytime soon. At least not before the basement remodel and I'm done excavating the back yard, and finishing my steam generator. So.. like, maybe when the kids go to college (that's happening, right? Stay on topic, damnit!). Anyways, knock yourself out and have a go at it.

OK, one of sieve plate's compelling features, in a continuous stripping column, is that they can handle solids - grain in the mash. But they need a certain speed to keep the liquid bed at a happy level. They have a limited range of stability. Too fast and it floods, too slow and it crashes. That's my understanding, anyhow. So, you end up seeing tall stripping columns with loads of plates, cause they need to flash all the alcohol before the wash falls thru the column. I think there's added speed in the height as well. But you gotta punch a hole in the ceiling, and build a dozen plates.

Bubble plates can't run solids, but have a wide operating range. Run full reflux if you want. So, you can flash all the alcohol with a short column. Just a couple of plates if you've got the time.

Up for review is a plate idea to run solids slowly, if desired.

Tada:

Pretty much the same thing twice. The idea is a copper float valve, made out of 1" or 3/4" pipe. It doesn't need to seal completely (better for cleaning if it drains a little). It just needs to flood when the liquid level is low and drop the liquid level when it's too high. Need to crunch some numbers on sizing and experiment a little. But that's the idea. The one on the bottom looks dead easy to build. The pointy part could probably even be a reducer of some sort, so you don't have to mess with soldiering a cone. Needs at least 3 for stability, but doesn't need a guide.

Anyway.. ya, that's all. Point me to why this doesn't work, where it's already been done, etc (did you even use the Google search?! go read cranky's spoon feeding, you newb!!). Ok, jk. I'm out!

Ps, I usually don't post after this many, but it had to be done!

[LWTCS]

So there are no wiers/downcomers then?
The valve does all the draining?

What ensures the float remains properly aligned?
If 3 floats per plate (for example) are they all connected? Is that what that drawing illustrates?

[Setsumi]

why do you want valves on a continious still? and why would you want to run slow? i do not know anything about continious cept what i read here. looks like plates with large openings for dirty and quite fast with a stripper and rectifier tied into one. i would think the stripper will handel the solids...

but to contribute, DAD300 posted a while back in the thread, plates plates plates about loose packing atop the plates, mabey a look worth. though solids may trap the packing on the plates?
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... &start=120

edit. and now that i have posted it, another q. how will you ensure that the solids does not jamm the floats in the open position?

[stillness]

Ya, no down comers. When the float valve is up it's like a sieve plate with too big of holes. The hope is that the solids can make it down. Maybe that's a mistake, but it's easy to make and seems like it might work to me. Down comer can always be added after the failed experiment. But, makes plate fabrication easier if you don't need a down comer - especially if you need to make it for a specific plate height.

Ya the bottom design has 3 or more floats hooked together, with thin rods going down thru the holes. That keeps them aligned, and from tipping over.

Setsumi,
Ya, I only know what I read here. That was a great thread. I hadn't seen dad's addition. Pretty cool. But also a different solution than this. This is for grain in stripping in a column that doesn't need to go thru the roof.

This would be the beer stripping column, before the rectifier. Most stripping continuous columns that are designed to handle grain in, need to use sieve plates so they don't clog up. But they also need to get all the alcohol out before the bottom of the column. Because sieve plates need a certain speed (and because efficiency), these columns are tall with lots of plates.

If we can find a way to make a shorter stripping column that can handle grain, we sacrifice some efficiency, but save on cost and size of the build. The key is longer liquid dwell time per plate - like bubble caps.

By slower, I don't mean less steam or heat, I mean less beer feed. Let each plate hang out and reflux for awhile, like a bubble cap, so we can get all the alcohol out in 4 or 5 plates.

I'm sure there's things I've overlooked. But it's a thought.

[stillness]

Oh ya, not too concerned about solids jamming the valves. They don't need to work like valves - more like variable diameter sieves.

[Butch27]

I am just wondering what a hobbyist distiller would need a continuous still for? Cool, maybe. Maybe you just want to see if you can do it, so a challenge. I get that. But I do a 12 hour run on old faithful and I have enough booze for a whole year for me, my old lady and still able to give some to friends. I do not see a continuous still being practical for the hobbyist.

[stillness]

Butch, it's ironic that the guy doing a 12 hour run is asking why I want a continuous still.

So, here's a few reasons.
1. Startup time is fast. Fast enough that shutting down and coming back to finish later is practical. Not so with a big boiler. You're pretty committed to that 12 hour session after heat up of 29.9 gallons.

2. Efficiency. I don't care much about energy usage at this scale, but it is more energy efficient - which means it's faster. Given the same power input a continuous stripper is faster than a boiler.

3. No boiler investment. Kegs not a big deal. But larger is. Especially for fledgling micro distillery.

4. Prototype for larger legal rig. Seems like this forum has experimented, proof of concept, on things that end up in real production facilities. So, small scale continuous as a learning platform.

Nothing about this hobby is that practical. I mostly like designing things. Building is ok.. running, mixing, drinking.. they're all great. But dreaming up the next still is probably my favorite part. So, that's where I'm coming from. If we find a way to make building a contiguous rig more approachable, (like a boka) they've got a lot going for them. I'll make this someday if I get time, but just thought I'd throw it out for others to poke at it and see it as an option.

[Butch27]

I was not criticizing, I was just wondering why. I thought perhaps it was the challenge or maybe you had aspirations of a legal distillery. I'm not so sure about a continuous still being more efficient though, especially when it comes to hobby sized outfits.

[Yummyrum]

1. Startup time is fast. Fast enough that shutting down and coming back to finish later is practical. Not so with a big boiler. You're pretty committed to that 12 hour session after heat up of 29.9 gallons.

Thats been the main draw card for me .

I'm not so sure about a continuous still being more efficient though, especially when it comes to hobby sized outfits.

I have limited cooling water so the Continuous stripper is certainly efficient when it comes to that . I found that fir the most part , the wash was able to do the bulk of the cooling and I used a very small amount of water depending on initial wash temp .

[LWTCS]

Definitely is more efficient than not.
Up to 45% savings on utility and about a 135% savings on man (or lady) hours if the system is designed accordingly. By that I mean a system that strips and does finished spirit.
But the numbers are still very favorable for just stripping.

I'd post some comparisons but would have to extrapolate from commercial sized systems,,,and I'm already into the whiskey so just not going to diagram that out at the moment.

If yew feller's hold my feet to the fire I'll do it tomorrow.

[Butch27]

...By that I mean a system that strips and does finished spirit.
But the numbers are still very favorable for just stripping.
......

How would cuts be done when producing finished spirit?

[LWTCS]

...By that I mean a system that strips and does finished spirit.
But the numbers are still very favorable for just stripping.
......

How would cuts be done when producing finished spirit?

With a LM styled take off port at one (or more) of the plates.
You have to pull liquid off of the plate and send to the PC rather than send vapor to the PC.
Doing so allows low boiling point constituents to remain (mostly) in suspension and vent off toward the top of the spirit column.
Take off ports have to have a trap to prevent vapor from escaping.

[shadylane]

Dish and donut plates

https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... 09&t=77453

[Butch27]

Definitely is more efficient than not.
Up to 45% savings on utility and about a 135% savings on man (or lady) hours if the system is designed accordingly. By that I mean a system that strips and does finished spirit.
But the numbers are still very favorable for just stripping. ....

I suppose it could be more efficient but I am planning on doing my stillin with virtually no energy input costs and whether a traditional still or continuous still you can not get much more efficient than that. The intent will be to do my stillin in the winter when I have more spare time. We have built a new garage that has in floor heat. The intent is to only heat it to somewhere between 5 and 8 degrees Celsius which should be the approximate floor temp. Any heat that is lost from the fermenter will help keep the building warm. Discharge water from the condensers will be passed through a heat exchanger to transfer the heat to the floor and therefore all the energy used during fermentation and distillation will be recycled to warm the building which we were heating anyway. All of the energy used to keep the ferment warm and to distill with will essentially be "free".

[Butch27]

With a LM styled take off port at one (or more) of the plates.
You have to pull liquid off of the plate and send to the PC rather than send vapor to the PC.
Doing so allows low boiling point constituents to remain (mostly) in suspension and vent off toward the top of the spirit column.
Take off ports have to have a trap to prevent vapor from escaping.

So essentially making cuts by temperature then, rather than taste and smell?

[Butch27]

Sorry to the OP if i have taken the thread off topic. I am truly interested even if I don't really plan on building one.

[stillness]

No worries from me. I wanted some conversation.

I think the big distilleries pull and blend from a variety of ports in real time. I don't think it necessitates cutting/blending based on abv / temp any more than on taste.

Ya, the donut tray is interesting. Won't clog, but really short dwell time. Seems difficult to flash all the alcohol out with it.

[LWTCS]

With a LM styled take off port at one (or more) of the plates.
You have to pull liquid off of the plate and send to the PC rather than send vapor to the PC.
Doing so allows low boiling point constituents to remain (mostly) in suspension and vent off toward the top of the spirit column.
Take off ports have to have a trap to prevent vapor from escaping.

So essentially making cuts by temperature then, rather than taste and smell?

Well,,not so much by temps Butch. Though the operator does technically pull from a place on the gradient. And temps are easier to manage on the continuous system by the very nature of it being continuous feed rather than batch.

On my design, a temp adjusted dephlegmator at the reboiler holds tails in the reboiler kettle. When the liquid level gets too high a float switch triggers a pump down and sends the resulting alcohol back to the beer well to be recycled through the system again.

A dephlegmator at the top of the apparatus is used to bleed off heads to a dedicated heads condenser.
The reflux sent back down to the lower plate is drawn off as product LM style.
On the Bourbon still, each plate level has a take off port. This allows the operator to draw product from the plate that best fits their interpretation.

It's not really possible to isolate and capture all of the heads and tails, but the system does do a good job. The thing is that the continuous feed does not at all concentrate stinky heads and tails in the same way that a batch still does.

[LWTCS]

Definitely is more efficient than not.
Up to 45% savings on utility and about a 135% savings on man (or lady) hours if the system is designed accordingly. By that I mean a system that strips and does finished spirit.
But the numbers are still very favorable for just stripping. ....

I suppose it could be more efficient but I am planning on doing my stillin with virtually no energy input costs and whether a traditional still or continuous still you can not get much more efficient than that. The intent will be to do my stillin in the winter when I have more spare time. We have built a new garage that has in floor heat. The intent is to only heat it to somewhere between 5 and 8 degrees Celsius which should be the approximate floor temp. Any heat that is lost from the fermenter will help keep the building warm. Discharge water from the condensers will be passed through a heat exchanger to transfer the heat to the floor and therefore all the energy used during fermentation and distillation will be recycled to warm the building which we were heating anyway. All of the energy used to keep the ferment warm and to distill with will essentially be "free".

That's a good direction.
No matter how you slice it, distilling for spirits is a resource suck. It's costly based on yeild.
Anything you can do to get more efficient is a move in the right direction.

[Butch27]

Well,,not so much by temps Butch. ......

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain that. Prompted me to do a little searching and reading on the topic. I still do not think that I would go this direction but I am a curious person who likes to know how things work.