Shotgun Condenser Design

[spamisnotham]

I am considering my options for a shotgun condenser. I have 400mm of 4” copper tube and I have 20mm inner tube.

My question is 4 x 20mm copper tube sufficient for the shotgun or should I aim to stuff 5 into the 4” tube.

My concern is that I need to fit the in / out ports for the water and a space for a thermometer probe therefor four 20mm inner tubes will be easiest to fabricate.

My boiler is 60 litre with two 2400 watt elements.

[woodduck]

I would personally go for 5x 1/2" tubes. I think that would work better.

[spamisnotham]

Maybe I do not understand but would 5 tubes at 20mm not have more surface area then 5 tubes at 12mm?

Thereby increasing the cooling of vapour as if passes through the condenser.

[woodduck]

Maybe? I don't understand science but I guess the chance of vapor passing through without touching the sides would be greater in 20mm?

I would work on the fact that 99.99998% of pc shotties here are made with 1/2". Must be for a reason? Not saying 20mm wont work but we know 1/2" will.

Let us know how it goes :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[bluc]

I did 5x 3/4 100mm long pipes. Holds full reflux up to 2800w approx.. :-B

[woodduck]

My bad guys :angry-banghead: I miss read the 4" bit. Your doing an rc not a pc? I got confused when I read 400mm long. For an rc yes go 5x 3/4" tubes. Pc go 5 x1/2" tubes. Sorry about the confusion.

[spamisnotham]

Sorry but what is RC and PC?

[Mr Tinker]

More of either size would be better than just 4 x ¾”. If you are going to the trouble of building a 4” shotgun condenser you want to be certain you can get full reflux out of it.

It all has to do with surface area and volume. Higher surface area to volume ratio will give you more cooling, the same volume of ½” tube will have much more surface area than ¾” tube (there will just be more of them).
Don’t worry about how much water is in the condenser, water has excellent heat exchanging properties (as does copper) so you don’t actually need a massive volume in there, just good flow.

You need to consider your cooling water temperature also, if you are from the north and are using an IBC or similar your cooling capacity is going to be limited.

You may not want to go the the lengths of this http://aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=11458#p199048 but I strongly recommend going a bit further than you propose.

I also suggest a lot more research about the type of still you are intending to build before you go much further. There is a lot of work in one of these things, you’d hate for it not to work the way you intend it to :handgestures-thumbupleft:

RC is Reflux Condenser
PC is Product Condenser


Cheers,

[spamisnotham]

Thanks I will get some 1/2” tubes and fit in as many as I can.

I have two friends who are pro distillers who I bounce ideas off.

But they are not used to such small scale (they work on a 5000litre system) as I am working on a baby scale so I come here to fill in the blanks.

I am building my still so it can be upgraded. With condenser, Lyne arm, helmet and boiler are all connected with flanges and tri clover clamps, so in time I can replace as my needs change.

[woodduck]

Just remember the longer/taller the rc is and the more pipes in there the better the cooling but also the slower the response time when adjusting the water flow for your spirit output. I am still convinced that you don't need to hold 100% reflux for any real period of time. I let my fores drip out over half hour or so which to me is enough time to stack the fractions but that's only my opinion. My 4", 75mm long, 5x 3/4" internals with baffle plate will hold 2800w full reflux and will drip fores at around 3000w. Seems to work ok for me. On my 6" I put alot more pipes in and to be honest it's a real pain in the ass. It takes several minutes to respond and is touchy as hell trying to get the right output. I'm going to block a few tubes off or shorten it and see if that helps.

I agree that you probably need to do some more research before building. If you don't know what an rc or pc is you haven't read enough threads. I'm not trying to be nasty just trying to help you out. No point building something that doesn't work the way you want it to.

[bluc]

Dang it woody sorry I read wrong not you He is building a shotty not an rc.. :laughing-rolling: op for a shotty 2" shell is plenty unless you are doing a 6 or 8" still...4 inch shotty would knock down heck of a lot of vapour....

[woodduck]

Too be honest I'm not 100% sure what spam is building? I keep confusing myself :laughing-rolling:

Can you elaborate a bit please Spamisnotham? What sort of still are you wanting to build? A bubbler, pot or reflux? I have probably jumped the gun and assumed and not asked to right questions. Hit us with some plans mate and we'll see what we can come up with :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[coffe addict]

In order to know the answer to your question we'd need to know what it will be used for and the amount of power it needs to knock down.
My pc is 3in x 600mm long with 7 (either 1/2in or 3/4in) pipes it'll knock down a stupid amount of power. With 4.8kW only the first 150mm has any warmth to it so I think it'd knock down around 15kW.
Most people find 5x 1/2in 400mm long adequate for the standard 2x2400w elements in a 50L keg.

Edit written same time as woodduck

[Mr Tinker]

With a 60l boiler and 4800 Watts heating, I assumed that at 4” this condenser would be an RC.
A 4” PC on this setup would be massive overkill.
If it is a PC, you want a narrower, longer shell with as many small diameter tubes (⅜” or ½”) in the shell as you can comfortably fit. It really doesn’t matter if you overkill your PC a bit, but 4” is probably too far.

Really though there are heaps of very successful build threads on here. You should read as many of them as you can. There is so much to learn from them all, about all aspects of building your own still.

Cheers

[spamisnotham]

This is what I am planing to do at the moment.

I plan on a pot still.

I am planing to use off the shelf copper pluming components. Tomorrow I can take some photos of the components I have collected to date.

I will be using 58 litre kegmenter that comes with a 4” tri clover connector. This will allow me to use a 40 litre wash. Also it will make the installation of heating elements easy As you can stick your hand in it. The vessel is also pressure rated.

The Lyne arm connects to the kegmenter with a tri clover.

I want to use 4” lighter style lyne arm (about 1.25 meters long)

Then I want to connect the 4” Lyne arm to the condenser (500mm long and 4” diameter) connect via tri clover I am not married to a shotgun. Only that shotgun design seems to be very popular and effective. My friend originally suggested that I should simple use a leibig something that I would consider. Because it would be easier to construct.

In the future I want to built a helmet that goes from 4” and opens up to say 8” then slowly narrows back to 4”. This is to increase reflux.

[coffe addict]

Ok, so for what your building 4in shotty is massive overkill.
The most commonly used size is 2in for the boiler size and anything up to 2x3600w elements.
That doesn't mean you can't use 4in but it definitely isn't needed

[spamisnotham]

I just stuck with 4” because it was simple to stick 4” from beginning to end.

Plus it looks bad ass.

If a 4” shotty is overkill then would a leibig condenser be more then functional?

It would be easier to built.

[bluc]

Is it a bubbler?

[spamisnotham]

This is what I wish to be emulate- what would you call it?

[RC Al]

This is what I wish to be emulate- what would you call it?

Copper porn!

For a small home still, you would have a more versatile rig if the angle of the lyne arm/product condenser is adjustable from 45° up to 45° down, this plays with the reflux and flavour output