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I was recently reading about how a person might computer control the distillation process and came across something that I don't think has been posted here.
It seems to be a different process including both continuous fermentation and distillation and also very modular with lots of glass and stainless porn. I thought the process might be of interest to everyone here so I'm posting it. If I am out of line for posting links, my apologies.
Industry City Distillery - Making Industry Standard
After Cooper: Industry City Distillery
Brooklyn Distillery Packs DIY Distillation Equipment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXD0_Gjptvs
The great Brooklyn vodka experiment
How the Yeast/Alginate Beads are made:
Ever wonder how we make the yeast beads for our... at Vodka Science
Comments
I remember when that video first came out. The whole concept of doing away with batch fermentation is mind blowing IMO.
Great video, it was worth another watch.
24 mins of spank. All the skill there revolves around marketing as far as I'm concerned.
Large fuel ethanol plants do continuous fermentation all the time. They use pervaporation memberanes that extracts the ethanol from fermentation tanks which are consistently feed with a supply of wash and new yeast while discharging spent solids/yeast.
Essentially what these guys have made is a plug flow reactor.
Still interesting... but is it necessary?
Plug flow reactor is something new for me but here is a good overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOxqN18sA04&t=20
Article about yeast using beads and other media:
Continuous ethanol production using immobilized yeast cells entrapped in loofa-reinforced alginate carriers
So physical plugs, using pigs to create a continuous batch system? Or is that just how the guy in the vid is explaining it.
More like a septic tank?
It sounds like they're having heaps of fun farting around but I think these guys have just been watching too much Heston or el bulli.
Using spherification to encapsulate yeast sounds impressive but I'd bet a nut that most of their fermentation happens outside those spheres.
I think I'll trial a new type of packing material made out of stem cells. I'm pretty sure it'll cure AIDS and ADHD but I don't want to make too many promises at this stage.
Not sure what real benefits continuous fermentation offers when done on a small scale., especially when the end-to-end process is not executed in a similar manner. I know little about the process, but I'll wager a guess that it comes with some real-world negatives that need to be weighed against the potential positives. Also, what scale is necessary to realize the benefits on a material scale? I'll wager a second guess there that the scale needs to be somewhat large, and I'm not talking craft large.