Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi all i am just checking i have looked everywhere for a maximum temp your cooling tank can get to before it affects your offtake!. i just did a strip run at 480 watts ,100 litre boiler and checked the water temp it was 37 degrees so i was hopeing not to have to add more equipment (ie condenser fan setup) buy looks like i may.
Anyway what is the max yo can stretch your cooling water

How bigs your tank? I use a 44gal drum and it works a treat

The point at which the cooling rate becomes inadequate is the point at which the alcohol is evaporated at.
Of course not taking into account your alcometer readings will be way off.

Now this is purely hypertheticle and shouldn't be run at these temps. :-B

Personaly my thoughts are if your cooling system temp is over 30ish deg, you need to something about it. :-B

sorry tank size is 1000 litre

rumdidlydum wrote:The point at which the cooling rate becomes inadequate is the point at which the alcohol is evaporated at.
Of course not taking into account your alcometer readings will be way off.

Now this is purely hypertheticle and shouldn't be run at these temps. :-B

Personaly my thoughts are if your cooling system temp is over 30ish deg, you need to something about it. :-B

thanks rum! though during summer ambient would be close to that eh...

1000L and it still gets that high damn.

I only have a 25L boiler so I would've thought that would cover the difference. I do recirculate the water back into a bigger tank myself 1000L I would guess maybe 600L then top up my drum from there but my water temp changes by maybe a couple of degrees throughout the day and alot of that would be from the temperature rising throughout the day as well as my tanks in the sun.

Be interested to see what size other people use on here and how it effects it

mine is 1000 litres it also gets afternoon sun it was a stripping run (100 litre wash) cooling water was turned on at 230 switched off at 6pm, i was surprised it got that hot, the neutralizer is stripped down to pot mode with 300ml 4" section (no packing) fitted then elbow to PC. the ambient temp herehas been about 26 deg with 15 deg overnight?

with stripping runs the temp doesnt matter as long as it's condensing all the vapour, with a reflux as the temp rises you will need to increase the water flow to maintain the same take off rate/reflux ratio. the limiting factor is always the ability to knock the vapour down.

I have a 1000L cooling tank and it's often over 50degrees when doing back to back. it's never been below 30 since i had it lol

coffe addict wrote:with stripping runs the temp doesnt matter as long as it's condensing all the vapour, with a reflux as the temp rises you will need to increase the water flow to maintain the same take off rate/reflux ratio. the limiting factor is always the ability to knock the vapour down.

I have a 1000L cooling tank and it's often over 50degrees when doing back to back. it's never been below 30 since i had it lol

So your suggesting "50 deg on a bubbler cooling supply is ok" i am only trying to get a benchmark to work off so we know a general limit to work towards
thanks for your input coffe.

You want your product to come off as cold as you can get it for safety reasons.

Also anything over 20°c will throw your alcometer off as well.

scythe wrote:You want your product to come off as cold as you can get it for safety reasons.

Also anything over 20°c will throw your alcometer off as well.

thanks sythe i forgot that important safety point so the limiting factoris once your product is over say? 30 deg that may be the limit correct the numbers if i am wrong

Yeah 50 doesn't cause any major issues in a well ventilated area. ambient temp round these parts has kept my ibc above 30deg even on days it's not being run and I'm sure not refrigerating my cooling water.

with controlling the reflux as the water gets hotter you need to flow more through to stop it running away from you. so limiting factors would be water pump flow rate and size of your rc and water temp. it's a case of having all three in balance. you absolutely must be knocking all vapour down.

as mentioned the cooler the more accurate your alchometer will read but a quick online abv temp correction calculator will let you know what your getting.

would I run if my temp got any hotter probably not as my still would become hard to balance

My ibc stays around the 25 degree mark, much lower in winter. Just remember that 70% alcohol will flash ignite at 16.6 degrees Celsius, it also self ignites at 363 degrees Celsius.
So be safe when selecting your cuts and running your still, no smoking that's for sure and keep a fire extinguisher handy.

unless your ambient is heaps up, n say a red hot day.... a 25 lit wash uses aprox 300 lit per run..(a T500 is my bench mark) I have found that with a 1000lit recycle tank the temps stay pretty stable, well under 30C, (usually low 20s) and work quite well as the cooler water is taken from the bottom of the tank and the return is coming into the top without big mixing turbulence.Maybe throw a (blanket/cover) over it before it warms up early morning before a run.

If the cooling tank is heating up in hot weather could look at putting used water into 200 liter drums and not straight back into supply tank.

wynnum1 wrote:If the cooling tank is heating up in hot weather could look at putting used water into 200 liter drums and not straight back into supply tank.

thanks wynnum i might put that into practise i will leave turning the water on as long as i can, and i will once in full working mode direct hot water to a holding tank once that is full divert back to the main tank whilst keeping main tank topped up with fresh tap water.

the only limiting facto is how much water( LPM ) a neutralizer will use i havent done a flow calculation but i think it wont take long to fill a 200 litre drum?

That's a pretty good idea, you could just direct the water from the RC to a separate drum as this will be the hottest

Get an old car radiator. Run the hot water through that with the radiator fan on connected up to a car battery. Comes out cold. Could run all day on a 25L bucket of water.