Another StillDragon Continuous Design

yurgle

David Vitale from New World would have been in a good mood after getting his $10M cash injection from Diageo!

Johnnie Walker's owner just bought into an Australian whisky distillery @ Business Insider Australia

ElectricEd

I've just heard that Woollies and Coles are fighting to get control of the wine industry from wine field to bottle and are taking no prisoners. This will effect the distilling industry that are making brandy like spirits from wine. Watch this space.

Unsensibel

@smaug - nice vid on the continuous distiller. Can you post a pic on how you did the drain on the kettle?

Smaug

Sorta like manometer style. I'll mock it up as soon as I get to the shop tomorrow.

CothermanDistilling

I think I could insert 8"x2" tee between plates 8 and 9 of my 24 plates and I could rock that setup... now automatic control.... of power and feed rate... that has my head spinning....

Kapea

Cool video! Spotted it on your FB page.
Larry - did you notice that your camera's exposure was keying off of your beard?

Separating the alcohol from the beer that way can be called scrubbing.

Smaug

Say again Kapea. My beard?

Smaug

Dustin over at Citrus mocked up a similar type of feed and it worked quite well.

Was no trouble at all managing the flow rate and he didn't even have a sight glass to monitor the feed.

grim

Toying around with the idea of a rum stripper. Got a line on a 1250 gallon tank that would make a nice fermenter. At 8% beer, 40% strip, would line up perfect with the still. Would need to be handle a feed rate of at least 100 gallons an hour.

Not sure what's realistic on the fast strip side. Wouldn't really need any better than 40% output.

CothermanDistilling

love 12.5 hour days, huh?

my math - 100g/hr ~400L/hr --> 5:1 strip ratio --> 80L/hr perfect for 8-12" column with a 6-8: condenser..

grim

I figured people were think I was nutty if I said I wanted to strip 1200 gallons in 8 hours, in and out...

In a low-wines strip scenario, would you really need any plates over the beer feed? 1 maybe? I suppose like anything else, more plates means faster throughput, even at a lower abv.

Smaug

I think one would be fine. As long as there were enough plates below the feed to insure that you were getting all of your alcohol.

CothermanDistilling

dunno... guessing 2-3 above and 4-5 below might be a good starting point... But hey, that is what we are here for, to show everyone else what they need, then they can ask us over and over if they can do the same thing for $50 with duct tape and bailing wire to make TPW into pappy van winkle...

Smaug

@Unsensibel said: smaug - nice vid on the continuous distiller. Can you post a pic on how you did the drain on the kettle?

I set this up on the 120L because clearly the milk can doesn't have enough weight to hold/support the column.

I utilized one of the three available element ports. With some additional pipe sections it would be no problem to use the actual drain port.

FullySilenced

That last photo suxs ... but you can at least see the things you mention... fuzzy wuzzy as they are...

grim

StillDragon elephant?

Smaug

@FullySilenced said: That last photo suxs ... but you can at least see the things you mention... fuzzy wuzzy as they are...

Yeah sorry.

Kapea

The automatic light exposure on the camera you recorded the continuous still video on was reacting to the brightness of your beard as you turned your head while you spoke.

Unsensibel

@smaug - thanks! Kinda what I was thinking about. I would go smaller though as there's no need for that much flow...

Smaug

@Unsensibel said: smaug - thanks! Kinda what I was thinking about. I would go smaller though as there's no need for that much flow...

Yep. I totally get that.

Just the parts I had in front of me is what I used.

grim

Looking forward to the Hoochie Van Pinkle in 7 days DIY thread.

What's the downside of using such a large reboiler? I would have to imagine it's going to be a negative in some aspect (energy efficiency?), but I understand it makes the rig easier - otherwise you need to weld up a custom frame or bolt it to the wall, etc.

I've been going through the lit, and many of the continuous stripping rigs seem to be focused on taking off at a higher level of purity - 70, 80, 90%. That's why I asked the question about plates above the beer feed. Really, why would you need any more than 1? Do you even need one? Can you feed at the top plate (with low reflux) if you are only interested in 30-40% take off? Injection at the top plate would absolutely need to be near the boiling point of the wash, or actually at boiling.

Essentially, the top plate acting as a parasitic pot still, with the subsequent lower plates adding additional stripping to keep the losses low. Small reboiler in the column base.

Even being able to take an 8% wash to 24% (3x) I think would have some big benefits for folks looking to move more throughput through their existing rigs. How simple can you make this thing if your two design goals are lower % take off and low losses (not energy efficiency).

Why not even scrap the preheaters, they are adding enormous complexity in sizing and balancing flow and temperature. Why bother? Are we really that concerned about energy efficiency? I'd imagine simplicity, speed, and cost are more important to us. Nothing we do is even remotely energy efficient.

grim

grim

Injecting the beer just ever so slightly under boiling point will reduce the parasitic losses to heat the beer in the column - or perhaps just inject the beer as vapor (or a mix of both, really).

Managing losses would be as easy as monitoring the reboiler (boiling point) temperature and adjusting the input feed speed as necessary.

RC temp setting is a little questionable, I would imagine you would want the minimum reflux ratio necessary to maintain efficient stripping at the desired input speed, you would need to balance the RC reflux ratio with the power input into the reboiler.

No idea if it would work as expected, but sure seems much more simple to eliminate the beer preheaters, heat the beer input with heating element to be able to eliminate the dependencies between preheat and input speed (decouple all the variables).

The beer heater and reboiler will both foul, but building this in TC makes it easy to break down and clean, which shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes all said and done.

Smaug

Using both heat exchangers to preheat was definitely a "feel good" option for the sake of illustrating the multiple options. Citrus was not preheating and the system worked fine though he was definitely losing alcohol as bottoms due to a loose packed column rather than plates.

For faster take off rates I would bet that the preheated beer would barely preheat at all. But for those without a chiller and looking to minimize water consumption, it may be a decent entry level approach.

I think that diagramed illustration there would work just fine.

grim

Or, lets just go completely nutso.

LM heads on the secondary and tertiary strippers. LM feeds to the prior column. Vapor connections from the LM heads to the vapor take off are only for safety reasons, both LM heads should run full out - 100% reflux. I don't know if 3 stages is sufficient.

grim

Mulling over this, it really wouldn't hurt to add a plate to the primary and secondary columns either, but not sure it's 100% necessary.

Smaug

The LM heads do take us further away from an SD off the shelf solution. At least for the immediate future.

grim

You can, the LM heads don't need to be controllable in this scenario, you need need to offset the RC with a tee and an elbow.

I wish I was local to your shop, and you let me play with legos.

Still have no idea if this would work.

CothermanDistilling

I think a beer preheater is a no brainer in the product condenser, especially if you are using a 4" or larger PC... and you are using a glycol chiller... I would add a large vertical extension above it, several feet tall for foam to collapse... may even run the PC inside out, with vapor collecting on the outside of the shotgun tubes(yes, clean it good first) and beer going up the middle to preheat...

punkin

Why would you need an RC? Wouldn't the wash being injected provide enough liquid to keep the plates working?