Another StillDragon Continuous Design

CothermanDistilling

only the plates below the feed... the top ones could dry out

grim

Dunno, do you think 5 plates under with no RC would do it?

jacksonbrown

I did something similar to your first pic grim.
It worked OK. You just need to check the bottoms temp. 99.8° - 99.9° means a full strip. Anything lower that this and you need to change something as you're loosing product. Either reduce the feed rate or get some more plates in there. I was just using a vertical RIMS tube but the way I had the overflow it was a bit different and caused a few burn outs. Foamy rum washes was where I hit a brick wall.
I'm not sure about that second pic though. One big benefit to higher ABV strips is you can halve your storage requirements.

Kill_Devil_Spirit_Co

Is anyone trying to do this on grain? My concerns are scorching on the preheater and cleaning the thing out. I'm hoping I'm missing something because cleaning those things must suck.

grim

Nah rum

Kill_Devil_Spirit_Co

found this Vendome bourbon column... I only see 3 plates above the intake

jbierling

What are the thoughts on foam control? As @jacksonbrown mentioned, I can see the whole thing filling up with foam.

An experiment I tried a while ago was a sort of silicone anti foam injector in the column. It didn't work well for a reason I didn't quite understand as it never really seemed to knock down the foam that was already in the column, but perhaps a better distribution system would help.

Also, I'd still like to see something that could deal with grain in.

grim

Why antifoam in the column? Why not add it prior to fermentation? This, in concert with mechanical agitation prior to feeding the column, would result in quite a bit of gas being removed. We agitate our fermenter before pumping over to the still (to homogenize the contents for pumping, and to not leave a pile of solids behind) - and it releases a significant amount of gas. When antifoam is added, this process results in zero foam at the top. That said, we never seem to have foaming problems in the still, antifoam or not, so don't bother using it anymore.

I could see using a degassing tank using a tangental injection under higher pressure - imagine a taller tank, injector at the top, feed off the bottom, open to atmosphere at top. Create a whirlpool to degas, and gravity feed into the column off the bottom. However, this could create a huge amount of foam and be entirely counterproductive. Also keep in mind that hotter liquids will give off dissolved gasses more easily than cold liquids.

So going down the path of what makes the foam stable? Protein.

So, another approach might be to use a protease, since we know a number of our proteins can cause these foams. Likewise in brewing, high protease activity is detrimental to head stability. Break down some of these proteins, and foam will have a harder time staying stable. Just like in brewing, an accidental extra long protein rest will give you poor body and poor head - exactly what I think we want.

Or possibly, starches (or other carbohydrates) that had not fully converted (like when your pasta boils over), that needs to be addressed in mashing.

But another option - like when you make pasta, what about adding a fat to the column? A small amount of fat/oil will absolutely destroy the liquid's ability to foam. Perhaps as simple as adding some to the wash prior to running through the column - as long as some of it will stay in suspension long enough to get carried into the column and not separate out on top. Using the injector approach might work here, but again, adds complexity. Maybe it's just a matter of having enough residual oil on the plates and the column walls to break down foam as it comes in contact.

Last option might be a higher reflux ratio to aid in "washing" of the column, but you'll pay dearly for this in energy and water usage.

CothermanDistilling

Oh, looky that, Vendome in running the 'beer heater' condenser inside out! SCORE!

grim

Interesting that they have two condensers though - beer heater followed by a product condenser.

Unsensibel

It's a deph that's powered by beer. Reflux is fed back on top of column

Unsensibel

@CothermanDistilling said: Oh, looky that, Vendome in running the 'beer heater' condenser inside out! SCORE!

I'd be concerned running through the current SD condenser for cleaning concerns

jacksonbrown

I did it. The one I built had the feed going through the PC then the other side of the feed preheat so no cooling water was used at all.
The pic has the beer on the tube side not the shell side so it's not quite so bad.
I was only arsing about though. Your right that shell side isn't very cleanable.

In the field I've only seen product regen on plate heat exchanges. Shell and Tube aren't often used in hygienic apps with out a good reason.

Kill_Devil_Spirit_Co

I figured the beer preheater in the vendome spec is a charente style where the vapor is preheating the beer. Fully relying on steam to initially heat up and a separate PC

@Unsensibel if you flipped the preheater horizontally it could totally act as an RC, this column spec is a for a bourbon stripper so no real reflux past the 3 passive plates wanted is how I understand it.

grim

The potential for shell side fouling of the beer heater seem pretty small here, especially since the Vendome design is somewhat self-cleaning. Vapor coming in the top of the shell, will wash down the shell sides and outer tubes, and fall back into the column. Since with a continuous design, everything is always contaminated with fusels, I'm sure you could argue that cleaning the column isn't critical to product quality.

I would imagine the biggest potential for energy recovery is the bottoms drain. If you are going to try to recover, recover from vapor first, and the last pass of the beer before injection is through the bottoms energy recovery. This will ensure maximum heat going into the column, since you'll have the highest delta-t and injection temperature (which I imagine is critical here).

Anyone ever come across any documentation on the ideal beer feed temperature?

Smaug

Yeah beer feed temps......... I don't know what the optimal temp is but with some trial runs I bet it wouldn't take long to dial in.

I assume as hot as possible but below boiling?

CothermanDistilling

I like the lower takeoff on the beer heater that functions as enough of a RC to keep the top still plates loaded...

I think I may try to get my 4" Dash system set up for this... anyone want to trade my 4" 4-plate CD (and possibly) some cash for some 4" Dash sections? ( I do not have permission to 'buy' more stuff at the moment, but i can 'trade' ;-)

bachman

@cotherman, I have a few four inchers you could play with if you want to pay postage there and back. I don't want to sell them or trade them

grim

@Smaug said: I assume as hot as possible but below boiling?

That's what I was thinking as well, going cooler means increasing the parasitic drag on the column, so if the beer temp is lower, you are going to need to run the column harder (more power, more vapor speed) to compensate. Also, if you go too low, and you could presumably run into flooding problems at the injection plate, where the upward moving vapor condenses entirely in the cold beer. Just like when you accidentally subcool reflux and flood the top plates.

My guess is that with active preheat, and injecting at nearly boiling (or even at boiling), you'll maximize the throughput of the column and get a faster strip speed for a given diameter.

You could do this with a packed column too, in fact if we're talking solids handling, we're going to need trade off some height and use a less efficient packing, or less efficient tray (disc and donut) to get solids handling.

Smaug

If you go to boiling at the feed (at least on the SD video example) the pressure change will become a slightly different animal within the beer feed chamber/resivoir.

Additional planning for pressure relief should be included.

grim

Reason I bring it up is that it is very difficult to determine whether or not a liquid is boiling unless you can see it. Temp alone, a standard temp controller will not be able to manage it. The option is to set the control temp somewhat lower, but still likely much hotter than a preheater will provide.

Say, if your max anticipated was is 10%, you set it for ~92-93c.

The other approach (and I have no idea if this is more or less correct) - is to set it to a temperature corresponding to your expected take-off %. So if you were stripping at 50% - perhaps you want the beer feed closer to 82-83c.

grim

I did manage to find this the other day, and I thought it gave some good insight.

AE-117 - ALCOHOL DISTILLATION: BASIC PRINCIPLES, EQUIPMENT, PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIPS, AND SAFETY

Assumptions for this table are 50 gallons per minute beer feed:

grim

And for the beer feed temperature:

CothermanDistilling

a tall column above the beer pre-heater for foam will also increase pressure a bit and raise the boiling point slightly, it could be open on the top or have a u-tube to stop vapor escaping...

CothermanDistilling

just saw on ADIforums, "22' Dehner Continuous Still":

Smaug

Condenser looks.........like a step backward.

Unsensibel

Condenser and beer preheater in one. Might need an additional water condenser just in case

Smaug

Seems to me the beer feed is going to have to be very slow in order to bring to temp? Those are some pretty big shells for such a small inner tube it seems? Is there an ancillary heating system as well?

Just thinking out loud is all. No offense to Joe.

grim

Is it missing plumbing?

This is a stripping still, not a traditional continuous design?

With 14-15 plates, I'm not sure this could be anything but.

Joe is a really good guy - I've spoken to him a few times on the phone.

Gotta say, that teeter totter condenser design reminds me of that old kids game mousetrap. I'm sure there is good reason for it - I know he has been working on refining his continuous designs for a few years now.

Unsensibel

On second thought... looks like the bottom two condensers are for water and the top for beer pre-heat

I'm definitively thinking that there's some plumbing missing... heat in... slop out... parrot...

Looks like a good stripping still though