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I am interested in design of columns for distillation of alcohol. Can anyone point me in the right direction for design criteria literature, book, etc...

thank you!

Start with the Google Search bar as well as the Forum's wiki!

dzul wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 10:22 am I am interested in design of columns for distillation of alcohol. Can anyone point me in the right direction for design criteria literature, book, etc...

thank you!

There is a book called 'The Complete Distiller' that you can find for free in PDF. There's a section there that shows most basic still designs, lists their pros and cons. Under the category Column Builds here on the forum there's a lot of pinned topics for different still designs, comparisons, etc...

I found that a VM (Vapor Management) still with a gate valve to be ideal for me for making the cleanest neutrals. The thing just runs itself. They run extremely stable, repeatable, consistent and once you see the vapor takeoff temp start to rise in 1/10th degrees F, you know it's about to hit tails, it practically shuts itself down (product slows down significantly) and you're into stinky, foggy tails. VM stills are not critically affected by fluctuating water flow or temp in comparison to other designs. I find it just a pleasure to operate. I highly recommend going electric 240V with a good controller.

I am looking for engineering equations/specifics, math, design parameters. etc. I understand the basic of the different type of stills and currently run a 3" 5 plate column. I want to know, for ex. If i am to build a 10" plated column with 10 bubble plates, how far away is each plater from eachother, how many bubble caps and size, size of down comer all that stuff.

IMO this site is going to be the most comprehensive collection of construction designs and literature that you’re going to find. As you may well know the construction section would be a reasonable place to start. If you search around enough you’ll find that a few commercially available setups were engineered within the HD.
You can always private message any member and ask to pick their brains. They may or may not choose to help you but most guys are pretty reasonable I think

dzul,
You aren’t the first to want the magic calculator . It may seem that we are a bunch if amateurs pissing in the wind and making substandard stills that could be optimised if only we had punched in numbers and followed the results .

I think Larry will know more about this , but as far as I know , the engineering stuff that you are looking fir is available , but its for large style industrial stills and not directly scalable down to hobby size.

Which brings me back to what we make here.
One thing to to understand is that we are bound through practicalities to certain sizes .
IE , the downcomer sizes we use are influences by the pipe sizes available . But as many of us have tried various combinations , we have found what works best . Originally , folk tried 1/2” downcomers in 4” plates but found them ti flood . So the next available size of 3/4” was used and found to fix the flooding issues . However , going to the next size of 1” had no further advantage and only served to reduce available plate area .

The same things have been honed in on regarding plate spacing . Again I’ll use the 4” as an example . We found that 4” spacing is the minimum one should use due to entrainment issues if one wanted to push a bit more power . So around 5” seems to be a good number . Going much above that serves no purpose and simply uses mire material unnecessarily.

Hole size and spacing has also been thrashed out as has downcomer height.
The key thing is that the answers are all here in the build sections . The latest designs are pretty sure to be as perfect as you can get .

Having said that , the first stills such as Olddogs and Saltbushbills built around 10years ago still pumped out first class booze despite a few tweaks being added since .

The trick is learning your still and running it .

thank you for all the responses. Having an engineering background (structures) my mind always asks why and where did they find that information. I agree that this vast community has tried and tested a lot of combinations and within those trials lies the answer i seek, i still imagine them as variables and to solve variables you need equations. In structures if you want to design a wood structure, i know a couple books that will tell you exactly what to do, same with steel and concrete. I was just wondering if the same thing existed for still design

dzul wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 1:17 pm In structures if you want to design a wood structure, i know a couple books that will tell you exactly what to do, same with steel and concrete.

That's the exact point, there are books that tell you what to do in terms of the required strength and bracing. How you achieve those is up to you as long as you stay within the parameters of the design process. Most people here work to a similar design spec and then make that design work. There is a heap of good info in the build threads, I feel that if you gave the exact same ingredients and still to a group of people and they mashed and distilled, the results will vary from rubbish to superb and that's what I love about this process

There probably wouldn’t be much info on building wood structures if it were illegal…unfortunately there’s no legal market for building hobby stills. Most people shy away from writing in depth books about how to break the law. Hopefully it will change some day soon though.

Maybe you could be the innovator and create such a book.

thank you all for the replies

Sporacle wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 3:31 pm That's the exact point, there are books that tell you what to do in terms of the required strength and bracing. How you achieve those is up to you as long as you stay within the parameters of the design process.

+1 Sporacle
Growth amongst (junior) engineers...I'm borrowing this for my padawan lessons. Sounds better than "impress me"

dzul wrote: ↑Wed Feb 16, 2022 11:22 am I am looking for engineering equations/specifics, math, design parameters. etc. I understand the basic of the different type of stills and currently run a 3" 5 plate column. I want to know, for ex. If i am to build a 10" plated column with 10 bubble plates, how far away is each plater from eachother, how many bubble caps and size, size of down comer all that stuff.

How far apart the plates are doesn't matter. The more efficient plates the less energy to get higher proof.

I do not know, but I'd guess if you add plates you will change flavor.

As a general rule plate design affects how much watts/btus the column will handle. For a given plate design, if you double the column diameter you will quadruple the flow rate as it is sort of the AREA of the column that limits flow. In theory that means 4 times the watts at the bottom, but it does not scale directly.

I'm only any good at 95 percent neutral so I did a LOT of testing and research and I settled on 13 mm marbles as my packing.

Others have had very poor success with marbles.

drmiller100 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 17, 2022 8:22 pm
How far apart the plates are doesn't matter. The more efficient plates the less energy to get higher proof.

Umm
Not true .plate spacing has a minimum before entrainment becomes an issue .

Just my 2 cents worth

For hobby size, We have no formulas nor Column design literature.
All we have are folks that have shared "rules of thumb" based on prior failures and partial successes.

Mixing spirits and math has never quite worked out for me....

Mixing spirits, math and possibilities is easy.
It's the morning after with no more spirits, that reality overcomes mathematical possibilities.