Hi stillers,
Building a thumper for my still and wanting to see if I'm on the right track. Feel free to throw your 2c in.
It holds approx 24-25L total volume. Spent weeks trying to find an appropriately sized pipe off cut or vessel to build it from but ended up shortening up a 50L keg. Over sizing it for the eventual boiler upgrade down the track.
The thumper isn't finished yet, still need to put a sight glass port into it and sort out the internals.
At the moment I have it mocked up to see how it works for clearances etc. The 140mm 4" spacer tube on top of thumper normally sits between the boiler and thumper however my PC makes contact with the thumper and needs a little extra clearance for the parrot to fit on. I don't mind having the spacer where it now sits, however I'd feel better having an extra spacer between the boiler and thumper in case of puking which has happened a few times mainly due to me running things on the red line in regards to capacity (hence the need/want for a larger boiler down the track).
At present I'm planning on making a thumper plate up with a riser height that will accommodate up to a maximum of 20L volume, then use interchangeable down comers of different lengths to control the actual working volume of the thumper depending on the wash charge. Or should I just set the whole thing up for a rigid 20L?
Riser I'm thinking 2" to 2.5" then an slightly larger pipe for the outer. Downcomer will be 3/4" to 1".
Not 100% on how I plan to drain the thumper yet, was thinking along the lines of using a weep hole much like on my bubble cap plates, however with cleaning the still out thats gonna take a long time with just a little 1mm hole draining liquid off. Perhaps if I put a small 1/2" external drain near the bottom of the thumper. Drain the majority of left over thump charge then let the weep hole deal with the rest?
Another issue I can see is if using a downcomer with a cup on the end, I'd need to size the volume it will hold to compensate for the extra liquid head pressure the gas will have to overcome in the thumper so that it doesn't bypass up the downcomer instead of the riser. Does this sound about right?