stilly_bugger wrote:Good opening question. I was thinking the same myself: I don't see too many coil-in-bin-of-water type condensors being used.
Thought I might make one. I've got a nice length of 15mm pliable copper tube and an old 50lt keg that I was using for a boiler. The keg has a big hole in the top that I put an upturned stainless bowl on to connect my still heads to. I'm changing to triclamp fittings on a new uncut keg, so now the old boiler is spare. I thought I'd use that for my vessel.
On vessel size, I was just thinking ... Obviously the calculations about how much water you need in your cooling vessel are based on heat put into the boiler and the amount of charge/wash. Pretty much the question being answered is "How much heat's going into the boiler for how long, and how much water do I need in my cooling vessel to keep the water cold enough that it's going to knock down all of the vapour produced?" Anyway, it seems to me that you could get away with a smaller cooling vessel, maybe a 50lt keg, if you added those reusable esky ice blocks to your cooling water throughout the run.
I've always got a few of those ice packs sitting in the freezer. The freezer's always running. Why not make use of it to cool my still. You know, use some of the temperature in my freezer to cool the still. With enough of them I might be able to get away with only having used 50lt of water to cool a whole run. And then I could use that again too. Might give it a try.
stilly_bugger wrote:Might give it a pretty up.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 75 guests