Reflux high for wodka?!

[Odin1989]

I have a 35l and an 80l boiler!
Both are powered by a large shotgun capacitor!

I plan to make vodka (neutral alcohol)!
My stove has 4500w power!
How high can I build the reflux to get the greatest possible purity (neutrality)?!

And which design would you advise me to use?
I could build a maximum height of 2m!
Since my ceiling is 2.80 high and the big pot already has 80cm!
Would that be enough to distill a super neutral alcohol?

[Proof]

Where are you from mate?

[bluc]

Yes, with a 2" reflux still you can pull azeo from 1.2m packing. At 1.5-2l/hr. What design you going with?

[bluc]

And what is your boiler. Pics are good :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Odin1989]

I'm from Germany. I have a 45liter stainless steel pot with extra thick sandwich bottom and a 4 inch connector with tapering to 3inch! And a shotgun condenser. I operate the whole thing with self-made 3 field heating plates with 3500w and adjustable to 7 levels! I will post pictures as soon as everything is ready. I'm not sure which kind I take! I think I'm building an all in one essay. If I take 2 inches I have to get a little smaller with the ghost tube!
Thanks for help!!!

[Odin1989]

Or is there something wrong with using 3 inches? How high would my tower have to be to get 35 theoretical plates?

[RC Al]

Height for purity, width for speed
The 35 plates is a lofty goal and some of them can be replaced by using more reflux (and thereby more power)
Rules of thumb are that anything more than 30 times the diameter in a packed column is into diminishing returns territory ie not worth it, with 20 times diameter being a good place to start for efficiency.
20x 3" = 1.5m, 30x 3" = 2.25m
20x 2" = 1m, 30x 2" 1.5m
Packing performance/efficiency comes into it of course, spp -spiral prismatic packing is said to require (much) less height, but its a bit of a minefield to get the right size and its expensive.
The 3" would be ok with how much power you have, How tall is your roof?
If you're searching for very pure alcohol, count on running it more than once and pay attention to boiler abv, striped product run through at 10% vs run at 40% will be pretty different in flavour.

[RC Al]

Damnit Stig, need more edit time...

The number of plates you achieve isn't the same for each diameter, as you go up in size there is a small drop in height required, the 3" would be a fraction shorter per theoretical plate, so slightly better - but only if you use more power to feed it.

The 1.5m 2" is around 14 plates, 2.25m of 3" is around 22

On actually building and running a 2.25m 3" - its very heavy and tall, consider divorcing the column from the boiler, you may need a ladder and extra hands for set up and a frame or gantry to mount it to.

[howard]

i run a 2" that is 1.1m packed column with good results.
so it's 1.1m column + 200mm deflag + 2 x 90°bends for a total of 1.4m
but like bluc says, it's slow if you want decent neutral.