Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi again,

Hope this is the right location for this question, but will it help when building a Liebig condenser to solder baffles inside the water jacket to create turbulence in the coolant or is it a waste of time? The condenser is 700mm long, 12mm copper tube with 25mm outer tube.

It will either be run directly off a gas heated 50l keg pot with 2in column, or after a 19l thumper keg.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Cheers

Some people me included crimp the inner pipe :handgestures-thumbupleft: heres m u build here http://aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9239&hilit=First+build

More expensive laboratory glass condensers have baffles in them to improve efficiency, as you said for turbulent flow, which is better than laminar flow.

I've got baffles in my RC and PC... They're the extra bits of solder that dribbled down the tubes due to my dodgy soldering skills. :doh:

Whether or not you get laminar flow will depend on the smoothness of the surfaces inside the condenser and the flow rate. Faster flow rates cause turbulent flow.

Great. Thanks. Didn't think about crimping, but I have got offcuts that will be easy enough to solder onto the inner tube. Can't hurt I guess. Thanks for the input guys.

I have mine crimped in a spiral pattern to add turbulence, buggered if i know if it actually works better or worse!

db1979 wrote:More expensive laboratory glass condensers have baffles in them to improve efficiency, as you said for turbulent flow, which is better than laminar flow.

I've got baffles in my RC and PC... They're the extra bits of solder that dribbled down the tubes due to my dodgy soldering skills. :doh:

Whether or not you get laminar flow will depend on the smoothness of the surfaces inside the condenser and the flow rate. Faster flow rates cause turbulent flow.

I also have employed this precision design of solder blobs in my condensers :laughing-rolling:
The first one I made also has loose bits that didn't stick to anything when they fell thru which I like to think adds some turbulence. When you turn it upside down it sounds like a rain stick :laughing-rolling:

Seriously though the other thing you can do is have your inlet and outlet on opposite sides