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In this Discussion
- Ak49er September 2015
- bachman September 2015
- brewsmith June 2015
- CothermanDistilling August 2015
- DonMateo December 2016
- Fiji_Spirits December 2016
- FloridaCracker January 2017
- grim April 2017
- Harry June 2015
- jacksonbrown August 2015
- Johnboy September 2015
- Jung September 2015
- Kapea September 2015
- LocalGoat June 2015
- Mickiboi August 2015
- Moonshine June 2015
- punkin August 2015
- razerhawg August 2015
- Schiefe4 March 2017
- Smaug September 2015
- solarpowerscott July 2015
- Telluride August 2015
- TheMechWarrior June 2015
- Unsensibel August 2015
Comments
I think a tiny flow through tube with a transducer on it and a peristaltic pump... let it run all night transferring from one container to the next...
I was thinking the same thing. Or maybe two a couple of Ts attached to a couple of sections of pipe and you glue on transducers to blank rounds at the either end of the pipe section and set it recirculating over a couple of hours you will have the equivalent of a couple of passes of a full container and the ultrasound equipment will only cost a couple of hundred bucks and some standard SS sections of SD connection pipe. Leave it run and recirculate over a couple of hours and you have your treatment system for less than the cost of a bath.
Assuming you have the pump it would be a cheap way for a US treatment system and it could be modularised for large volumes. For large volumes you could just keep it flowing at a slow rate over night as you suggest.
I have been working on mine for about 2 months now. I have taken delivery of the ultrasonic systems from BJ ultrasonics and will start assembling today. All the welding is done and the peristaltic pumps are all mounted on the panel with the PLC. I will be attaching the transducers to the 4 inch end caps. I had to mill out the centres down to 0.75mm as they wont work through the total thickness of end cap. There are 2 frequencies that I intend to use and one I will experiment with. We decided after a small amount of batch testing to do 2 treatments, one at 40khz and one at 132khz. They both do completely different things to the spirit being treated. We will experiment with 20khz on a separate idea.
It will be a small continuous batch flow system controlled by a PLC. For rums and whiskeys we wont put it through the carbon filter. The cost of a large treatment system is totally ridiculous, small continuous batch is the only way to do this.
The small driver screw in the transducer must be tig welded to the end cap and then the transducer must be epoxy bonded afterwards. You really shouldn'tgo any thicker than about 1mm plate when using 50-60 watts. I have milled out the internal area of the end cap just in case I need to take out another 0.25mm for tuning without having to remove the transducer which would be a total bloody nightmare.
Our small batch test results have all been put through a HPLC before we decided on using these 2 frequencies.
The pumps are all medical grade with no flow outputs on them. You can get pumps for as little as $12 from ebay but I'm not sure if I would be using them.
Wowww, Great work @mickboi. I want to be like you when I grow up. Hey what did the 132khz ultrasound do the spirits ?? Good or bad. Almost all of the work you and research here and elsewhere only talk about 20 and 40 khz.
I have to ask how did the test batches turn out ? Improoved the hooch a lot ??
Thanks for the comments this is great stuff.
Does the US need to be open to atmosphere to work?
The flow-through reactor is the clear winner, by far. Small PTFE diaphragm pump, sealed containers, and vents the exterior really seem like the smart way to do it. Why outlay a fortune in big power transducers when you can just trade time instead, especially at our batch volumes. 100w into 1-2l is serious power.
My only recommendation is to lose the float switches, only use 1 pump, and gravity cascade the vessels.
You guys might want to some sort of cooling to the systems too. It'll heat up a bit.
Grim, I was thinking the same thing. But with two ultrasounds in sequence and higher flow rates to stop it heating up a lot.
There are some decent peristaltic pumps out there now as well. Great conversation happening here.
Run it with a little 1/4" Teflon air diaphragm pump pressurized with co2, less explosion risk.
I am not certain why I am getting excited about this as I am about 4 months from starting to order gear for my distillery and probably 9 months from setting it up properly. Depends on the $$$ really. I dont know what it is but corporate life is the complete opposite of being creative after a while. Here people are trying new things.
Don't worry you'll burn through money like crazy
The spirit is going to get warm so there is going to be some slight pressure. I don't want to heat a volatile liquid and contain its pressure and i don't want the untreated spirit pushing back through either of the feed pumps. There will be impurities released from the ultrasonic process that will continually be released from the spirit. In particular sulphur and hydrogen are released from the imploding gas bubble and they are best released here.
The treatment times for 40khz and 132khz are different. The 40khz breaks the sulphur and hydrogen bonds and the 132khz drives out those gases that haven't already escaped from the 40khz chamber. The 132khz also for whatever reason tames the ethanol somehow. There was no difference on the HPLC but in tasting there was a marked improvement. So the float switches tell me when the chambers are full and to start the particular transducer. 40khz for 16 minutes and 12 minutes for 132khz. The float switches also tell me that there is 2 litres in each chamber and this is my treatment size. The ultrasonic treated storage tank allows me to push the spirit through the GAC at whatever rate i choose independent of the ultrasonic treatment process.
There are going to be many different designs coming out of this thread. This design is simply a reflection of the work done by a couple of chemical engineers and pharmaceutical chemists.
Mickiboi. I love your work. Great job mate.
@Mickiboi - If I understand you correctly, then you PLC control the batches with simple logic:
Fill tank - Treat - Empty Tank - Repeat
Each one with a "do" loop until feeding container is empty?
Yes, with some safeties built in. The pumps have a no flow output on them. I use the no flow on the 40khz feed pump to halt the process.
Impressive!
I'm really itching to get PLC stuff started as well but need to have equipment in place first ;)
Would there be any problem with just running in continious cycle until you have calculated you are circulated your whole volume a couple of times through the process ??? I am a construction guy so I am thinking of the caveman type of approach. Turn on with timer and come back in an hour type of thing.
You would be relying on the feed pumps pumping exactly the same rate, probably not going to happen. If the 132khz feed pump ran slower than the 40khz feed pump, eventually the 40khz treatment chamber will fill up, overflow and shit will happen. If the 132khz feed pump ran faster than the 40khz then eventually the 40khz treatment chamber would empty. You can try that if you like, this is just my design and i feel safe that i have a bit of failsafe included in the design. It also ensures that each batch is identically treated.
That's why I thought gravity overflows would make sense.
An overflow would only happen when the overflow level was reached. It would also mean that you will be letting out spirit that would not have been exposed to the full treatment time due to mixing. Unless i am not understanding what you are saying. Maybe you can draw it up and post it.
Is your operating mode sequential batch or continuous? I was thinking this was running continuous.
Sequential but it is running continuously until the untreated tank is empty. Exactly what @Unsensibel said. Continuous is not really batch processing. Continuous means there will be mixing of untreated and treated spirit. I will work out what this level would be over a 50 litre run using my run and feed times, but at a guess right now i would say it would be about 3-5% of spirit escaping the full treatment exposre time. But this mixing was the very reason i went for batch processing. Equal treatment time for the entire quantity.
Yeah got you now
Oooooo pretty bubbles
Ok, double blind with differentiation is on. Broke out the powerhouse US machine. The degassing is crazy. You might want to turn off the audio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pO1MenOh4Y
Need to get a sleeve of sample cups. Random commercial whiskey. Transfer into nondescript bottles. 2 treated, 2 untreated.
Was going to pour it in but after seeing the action in glass I ran it that way. 1hr, 40khz. It did that for a full hour.
Michiboi, you were right about the bubbles. Do that in a closed loop without a vent and you will have a big bang pretty quickly.
Helloooo sexy:
HIELSCHER ULTRASONIC PROCESSOR 2000 WATTS - NEW !!!
Was googling ultrasonic processors, came across this image, which looks similar to the Hielscher processor on eBay. Looks like a small processing chamber, with a flow-through continuous setup.
I got another quote for the barbell horn type of transducer for 2000. The truth is the way Michiboi has the design it will work just as well for about 20 % of the price.
Crystal dragon ultrasound processor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wPb-RTYHLA