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In this Discussion
- AZZA1984 September 2019
- brewsmith February 2015
- dellae March 2015
- Fiji_Spirits October 2019
- grim March 2015
- jacksonbrown June 2015
- Mickiboi March 2015
- Moonshine March 2015
- Myles March 2015
- punkin June 2015
- Telluride June 2015
- TheMechWarrior October 2019
- Unsensibel March 2015
Comments
Just out of curiosity is the steam generator producing steam under pressure in a closed system or is it producing steam to atmospheric pressure like a kettle?
Its a nice concept. Have you had a look at one of the earliest variations, the Pistorius still?
There is a topic on AD but I am on a tablet and don't know how to put in the link. If you search with Punkins eye, it will find it.
Decoy was going to play with flow drilled baffle plates, but I can't remember if it went anywhere.
Seems fairly reasonable. I'm assuming installation and plumbing would probably double that cost?
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
@punkin , did you mean the Pistorius? You are correct, it would be expensive. The flow drilled plate might be an option though. My understanding is not so much perforated plates, more stacked evapouration trays.
No i was replying to TMW's post on the previous page.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
@Myles I do love ideas!
I looked it up and the principle of operation is close enough to the side by side...I'll say that now since I've already ordered the copper sheet and the M3 stainless rods and nuts arrived yesterday.
Stand out differences to me are the Pistorius has alternating high and low vapour flow sections while the side by side maintains a consistent vapour speed throughout. With that in mind I'd expect the Pistorius would need to be taller?
I just need to complete the CNC drawings today and hopefully I'll have the column assembled next week.
@punkin, yeah at $5k I was tempted just so I could focus on other tasks but having committed so much time and energy in to the engineering of a stripper I refuse to stop now when I'm so close to the end.
You've got a bit of competition TMW, a guy rang me from NZ yesterday and wants to try and wring 25l an hour out of a 4" Dash in a continous setup.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
That sounds doable, I hope he has tall ceilings and a lot of power available!
Stainless threaded rods, washers and nuts arrived. Just waiting on the copper sheet and then the CNC work and we are ready to rumble.
Ordered 3 x 415V 6kW elements so I can upgrade the boiler.
We are talking fairly serious condensors when pumping 125l an hour of wash into the column.
This is his mockup of 4" condensors.
Gunna dub it "The Shit Just Got Serious" :))
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
That's a lot of energy to throw at the rig, it's also a lot of heat that needs to be removed, ie a lot of cooling water.
I assume he's done the sums and sized everything accordingly? At 125L/h you'd want to know what you're doing...otherwise the potential for trouble is huge.
Call me soft but that's why I'm starting with a 2" rig, even though I have the numbers to build a larger unit I simply don't have the control system sorted. I figured I'd bed it down on the 2" and with my lessons learnt I can then confidently go up to a larger size.
I just don't know mate. I'm a supplier of equipment rather than an engineer, so i just send what is ordered.
You're standpoint seems sound to me.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
I suspect anyone throwing that much money at a problem must have done their homework.
Hopefully the buyer posts a completed picture along with the success story to go with it.
A 4" stainless stripper is going to look mighty pretty.
Don't you believe it.
There are people that have bought SD gear with grand plans and then lean on their automation suppliers to dig them out of the hole they created.
Some good news for the chap buying the 4" rig...he only needs 12kW of heating and a 3" column to strip 125L/h. He'll do it easy with the 4" gear.
It shipped to NZ today, so i hope to get some updates as we go.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
Saw this today and thought it might be of interest to others:
All I managed to get done was to mark out the discs ready to be cut tomorrow.
Here's my efforts:
TMW, in terms of column diameter, what sort of vertical separation are you planning between the rings and the donuts? Are you thinking of this more as evapouration plates or as falling curtains of reflux?
I had in mind to run a side to side tray arrangment as the primary purpose of the stripper is for whisky.
Something like this:
I ordered all my parts last night, I dropped the pressure control loop and replaced it with a temperature control loop. I'm not too fussed by this control loop to be honest.
Parts list:
18kW steam generator being ordered today to take the place of the steam control loop in the above trial unit.
Cheers for now,
Mech.
Can anyone here draw up the electrical diagram for the control box for this? I'm not electrical engineering savvy.
I have a sparky who can do the work for me but he needs to know what I want him to do, since he has no idea what this is or what its trying to do.
Initially I'll plug 2 x 15A 220V 3600W (7.2kW total) elements to drive this.
All going well at that level I'd like the flexibility to switch to a single 415V 3 phase 18kW element.
I still need to buy a suitably sized control box and I'll need plugs/adapters for the control box to suit the items below.
Open to suggestions for the best/convenient plug/connection types.
I dropped the pressure control loop and replaced it with a temperature control loop.
Parts list:
Cheers,
Mech.
Are you just after this drawing but without the Russian? Needs labels or a legend.
So this is using bottoms temp to control the feed rate? What's the thing just upstream from the injection point? It looks like your boiling in the preheater and that jigger removes gas from the feed line. What is it?
Are there rectifying plates with no reflux? (Is that what the jigger is doing?)
Why are they bringing hot and cold condensate together? I would point both condensers down and have all the condensate travel the full length to cool it properly (minus a bit for reflux)
What temp are you controlling the element PID with? It looks like it's still on pressure in the sketch. Maybe it should just be manual and the pump will look after itself to maintain the bottoms temp for that power level. Up the power to 80% and the wait for the pump to control the feed accordingly??
How do you control foaming in this system.?
I'm not building it like that, I just need that control system converted into an electrical drawing for a control box, inlcudind power on/off, fuses if needed etc.
@jacksonbrown and @TheMechWarrior the best way to control foam is to add a degassing chamber. The one I added to mine works perfectly and I would highly recommend adding one to your setup. I really like the design so far on this thing. I am thinking about converting my system to a steam style setup as I had in the past, but was thinking the bottom plate could easily just be a 4" plate with only bubble caps and no downcomers, pull spent mash off the side, right above the plate with a 4x4x2 tee. My only problem that I am having is figuring out a higher powered element. With my foaming issue fixed I think I could run about 22kw and push well over a gallon a minute, which could put me at an 8 hour day to run one of my fermenters. I am kinda thinking you could weld 4 x 2" triclamps to an 8" end cap and just throw 4 x 5.5kw elements in there.
Maybe talk to @Smaug, the element supplier that sent us those sample has some interesting elements in their catalougue.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
Telluride, is your degassing chamber just a reduction in pressure?
Playing with pressure adds a whole other level of complexity, do think injecting the wash as a spray might work to knock back foam.
I've used a sprayball in a foam knockout pot in a major brewery here. That was on a CO2 recovery system.
It work well in that instance but a straight molasses wash foams a LOT when brought up to temp.
I got my system to work quite well on testing 5% low wines but real wash was to thick and foamy for the packing I was using.
Honestly, I am not sure you will be able to release enough gases with just a spray ball and you would def get a clogged spray ball with a grain in wash, which is what I think TMW wants to do with this. The degassing chamber was super simple to build and not that complex at all. Its consists of a chamber, a vacuum pump, a level switch, and a solenoid valve. The vacuum itself pulls the mash from the fermenter, I use a peristaltic pump to pump the degassed mash into the stripping still. I have the vacuum running at about 20"hg. Now when I was running the vacuum in my column, that def added a whole level of complexity, but as a degassing chamber only, it was super simple.
I'm too busy!!!
I need a man/woman Friday to pick up all my parts and actually build this sucker for me!
can I ask what program you used to plane your still it looks nice
I used Excel I use it for home design, piping, P&ID, packaging design, database, etc.
I won 4 golds for packaging design in SF, 2 in London including worlds best limited edition design. Excel is only limited by your imagination.