Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

RC Al wrote:Perf can run up to 20% faster than a bubbler, but not cleaner

What? I can run as hard as I can but it will be a stripping run :wtf:

Where are you pulling that figure from?

Sam The 20% figure I have seen a couple of times, today I cant find it on a link im allowed to post though - pretty sure I have seen it on a white paper too, but i have searched for so many different terms in the last few months that i have little hope of finding it.
The figure seems high to me too, there are plenty of published texts by professionals and anecdotal evidence out there on various forums that plates do run faster, this is pretty hard to quantify at the hobby level of course.
I put it down to being able to design/make a plate that will only run in a narrow range of input, there's no caps taking up bath space and no 180 & then 90 degree turn as in the path of the internals of a cap, its much easier to increase hole density than make more caps fit in a finite area.
Good point on smearing, but any large increase of output capability -should- translate back to faster performance without smearing at slower speed vs a "slower" design pushed to the upper end of its capability

Bluc, you may run into issues trying to run a 4" packed section with your single cap set up - you would have roughly 3/4 the flow of a 5 cap plate, maybe a single plate and a reflux section of 2 or 2 1/2", reducers would eat into height, but you would get more "theoretical plates" by reducing the diameter, so higher purity at less speed

How much neutral do you want to make? Just build a short boka that uses your PC?

Why wven have plates if you are chasing neutral?
Take you plates out and fill the column with scrubbers and have a 4"boka....
Have a gap in the scrubbers that line up with your sight glasses so you can see if its flooding.

That’s not such a silly idea scythe, couldn’t you even leave your plates in and chuck a scrubber on top of each plate?
Wouldn’t that give more surface area and more “theoretical” plates?
Not so easy with a glasser like mine but easy for someone with sight glasses

scythe wrote:Why wven have plates if you are chasing neutral?
Take you plates out and fill the column with scrubbers and have a 4"boka....
Have a gap in the scrubbers that line up with your sight glasses so you can see if its flooding.

I was told packed section works better above plates :think:

Doubleuj wrote:That’s not such a silly idea scythe, couldn’t you even leave your plates in and chuck a scrubber on top of each plate?
Wouldn’t that give more surface area and more “theoretical” plates?
Not so easy with a glasser like mine but easy for someone with sight glasses

Thought about doing this too..

scythe wrote:Why wven have plates if you are chasing neutral?
Take you plates out and fill the column with scrubbers and have a 4"boka....
Have a gap in the scrubbers that line up with your sight glasses so you can see if its flooding.

This is they way I now run neutral.
5plates as a stripping run followed by a slow run with 1.375m scoria packed section.

What would the collection rates on a 4" boka be :think: would it be worth wipping up a modular 4" boka head with shotgun pc connection to replace rc/blockhead? Remove plates add packing wack on boka head walla 4" boka? I am a fan of gin so I will prob burn through a bit of neutral...

Mine runs fine with the same rc, the power is the limiting factor for me with only 3.6kW available. With 6kW my take off could be heaps faster.
I'm only taking off at about 1.8L/hr

You could flip your blockhead and add a valve to the PC for a VM set up

Are your plates removable?

Two inch ball valve in series to pc? What sort power do you need for a 4" reflux? I have absolute max 3600w.. :-B
I dont know about reflux still I am a pot stiller with handful of bubbler runs so far. By vm
"Vapour management" works by holding back vapor with valve majority vapour then gets turned back into liquid back down colum, cooling vapour in process increasing abv? For safety top open, Shotgun rc acts as safety blowoff any pressure build up blows out top :-B do I have it sussed?

Sounds about right
There is a bit of sticker shock involved with a 2" valve though... a smaller one will just increase your reflux ratio (prob need higher RR anyway with the lack of height) and reduce your take off rate.
5-6000w at max for a 4" reflux, you should be fine with 3600, plenty on here with that or less on 4" attached to bubblers, have a cruise through these and see if you can pick anything up
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4425 - Mac advises a 3" max on a keg
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4252 - ok there is at least one 4" VM - 5 year old post
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4164 and an actual boka on a keg
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1864 another boka

Dam output on that thing is looks about three times what my plates do... I wonder how neutral that is :laughing-rolling:

Yeah I don't think 10l/hour @92% counts as a win for what looks like 6ft of packing, they did say it was leaking...

So is there a point power input wise that should not be passed to avoid smearing? On a 4" plated still.
My setup chugs away at approx 2700w but any harder and I get sone flooding from bottom up.
I gues its just my downcommer design letting me down but is there any point to going to macs style of straight pipe with a cap.
Or am I just going to run into smearing issues if I run faster with better downcommers :think:
Currently takes approx 3hrs from cold to switch off with 3600w heat up and 2700w run speed.. input appreciated.. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

605mm long packed section whipped it up today tada!!

Nicely done mate.

Just a tip, wood isn't a great thing to solder on. The wood burns and the smoke comes up through the joint and the ash can cause the solder to not run right. Try a peice of steel instead or even a thin piece of sheet metal over the wood :handgestures-thumbupleft:

bluc wrote:So is there a point power input wise that should not be passed to avoid smearing? On a 4" plated still.
My setup chugs away at approx 2700w but any harder and I get sone flooding from bottom up.
I gues its just my downcommer design letting me down but is there any point to going to macs style of straight pipe with a cap.
Or am I just going to run into smearing issues if I run faster with better downcommers :think:
Currently takes approx 3hrs from cold to switch off with 3600w heat up and 2700w run speed.. input appreciated.. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

2700 should be fine mate, I probably wouldn't push it much more than that. I guess your cuts will tell you if your smearing. 3 hour run time sounds about the same as me with the same element power :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cool and thanks for the soldering tip :handgestures-thumbupleft:

What made you choose that particular down-comber design?

Just curious.