Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

What are everyone's thoughts on the use of cupronickel for still components?

Our local scrapyard has a small selection of 2" up to 8" diameters of various lengths available at good prices, so was wondering if it is usable. This lot came off the seawater coolant pipes from a salvaged ship so contamination should be no problem.

A quick bit of reading suggests it is normally around 75% copper 25% nickel, with trace manganese/iron for strength. It looks a bit darker than copper so might not shine up to that nice golden colour, but that's a minor trade off.

I'm guessing it would be alright to use,but not totally sure,but I do know the it is incredible poisonous to weld and most of my fellow pipe welders these days refuse to weld it :-B

Australian coins are made of cupro-nickel. So Im guessing it will not be toxic. But it will be extremely hard to work with

Cheers Phil

I work in a nickel mine and we treat the concentrate as a carcinogen.
Without pulling out the chemistry book, I'm guessing exposing it to sulfur compounds at high temperature would surely create nickel sulfides/sulfates which is what we work with. Probably better off sticking with tried and true materials.

warramungas wrote:I work in a nickel mine and we treat the concentrate as a carcinogen.
Without pulling out the chemistry book, I'm guessing exposing it to sulfur compounds at high temperature would surely create nickel sulfides/sulfates which is what we work with. Probably better off sticking with tried and true materials.

Yep nickel is poisonous especially when pure but you will find that is in most stainless steel's in various amounts.
I would also stick with tried and true materials to be safe :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Yep, enough said. I'll give it a miss. I happen to really enjoy being alive.

Thanks everyone. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

stilllearning wrote:I happen to really enjoy being alive.

:laughing-rolling:

if it was for coolant it would be ok but not for vapour or spirit contact. Given that its hard to work with and you would want breathing protection I think I would tend to agree scrap the idea altogether