Condenser Help please Liebig -Shotgun ??

[MarkChap]

Hi, I am completely new at this distilling game and trying to build my first still, I am heading towards a CCVM for the easy dual purpose use, reflux and pot.

My biggest hold back at the moment is the product condenser,
I was originally thinking a Lieberg for ease of construction but they seem to need to unwieldly long to be effective
So I looked into a Shotgun for the higher efficiency with not too much extra construction,
That got me thinking, rather than 5 parallel vapour tubes, why not use a coil of 1/2" copper inside the 2" water jacket, some quick maths would suggest that 1/2" tube coiled to an outside diameter of 40mm and length of 450mm would give a total of 2.75mt of tube for the vapour to pass through. Using 5 x 450mm parallel tubes uses 2.25mt

The product condenser is what is really holding me back at the moment

Cost of parts, without labour/time considerations to construct is really starting to add up, maybe I should just buy a FSD Boka

Thanks in advance

[harold01]

Buy the Boka, chuck down a few washes now and you will running it in a couple of weeks

[harold01]

I forgot to mention, then you can cancel your Dan Murphys membership.

[indenial]

You are describing a Graham condenser. I have no experience with them but that might help your searching. Looks like you'd have to mount vertically to avoid pooling in the coil.

[bluess57]

I'm thinking you'll find that coiling of 1/2" copper to fit inside 2" , may be difficult for the length you want.
The 1/2" will likely kink without doing something like filling it with sand.

[RuddyCrazy]

A word against using a coil in in a pipe which as stated is a graham condensor, I used mine and tried to do a reflux run for the first time in my glass still and lucky I was there at the time as that condensor caused a vacuum and the reflux tube launched and hit the shed roof where I was lucky to catch it on the way down :scared-eek:

Now if this is going to be one of the first jobs in copper I would suggest to hard solder in the tube to both plate and make sure the plates are a nice sliding fir in the tube, then make your easy flange and soft solder the plate and easy flange at the same time. Once you get the knack mate it will be an easy job but first up try some easy work in copper to getthe hang of it.

Cheers Bryan

[MarkChap]

Thanks All, I knew I wasn't inventing something new, just hadn't stumbled across it yet

[RC Al]

Long is ok, depends on how much room you have

My 6 foot one tops out at around 15lph when stripping, it's 3/4 over 1/2. I know people with 1" over 3/4 achieving much better results with shorter lengths.

Plumbingsales is much cheaper than green shed if you're buying enough bits

There's also the traditional worm in a bucket that doesn't get much press here in oz