The Red Door Distillery and the tale of the 8" Crystal Dragon.....

Law_Of_Ohms

bugger!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfAYnCxkK0

Myles

Sorry but thanks for trying. I can think of 2 possible options.

1. Build your dephlegmator completely from copper, including the outer shell

2. As a possible copper / stainless solution, use a calandria.

Build a copper shelled multi tube condenser small enough to fit inside your stainless shell, so that the only copper to stainless joint would be the 2 coolant tubes passing through the stainless wall.

Poor drawing but just enough to give the ides.

spud1700

Mate, I have a bit of experience with the whole copper to stainless thing, if you have a leak you can not fix clean it right back, flux then braze it with higher silver content rods but use your TIG as the heat source. It will flow and you can push it around with the gas from the TIG torch if that makes sense?

RedDoorDistillery

Thanks everyone. It has been about the most frustrating project I have ever worked on. @spud1700 I already gave up on it. I cut out the entire copper core last night so I could reclaim the 8" copper shell seeing at it alone was $250 for just the 1foot long pipe with the 2 ends on it. I am going to get the new stainless endplates laser cut this week hopefully. I still plan on using 40x pipes 1/2" diameter. This should still be about a 300% improvement over the original unit that only had 8x 1" tubes and was only 8" tall.

emptyglass

I'm sure you'll get it sorted. It will be easier to get it sealed in all stainless. just a shame you couldn't get the copper tubes selaed, I feel they would have perfomed well

RedDoorDistillery

The new stainless ends plates have been ordered and will be done in a few days. Thanks to @Law_Of_Ohms for the quick turn around on the engineering drawing. I will be picking up the stainless tube for this on Thursday. Just hoping the laser cutting guy can squeeze the end plates in for me this week.

Smaug

WTG LoO

harley

How is it going for you! have you start to weld this 8" super reflux cooler together yet.

Cheers

Law_Of_Ohms

yea.... updates!!

RedDoorDistillery

Demanding aren't you.... :D Picked up the new stainless end plates just last night from the laser cutter guy. Tonight I cut down the 33 stainless tubes. Ready to start getting this welded up over the next few days after work. And hope for no leaks this time.

RedDoorDistillery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leoehySJ698

I had never tried to cut stainless tube with a tube cutter for copper. Decided to give it a try tonight. The tube cutter is auto tension for cutting copper tube. I chucked the other end of the 8' stainless tube into a cordless drill and knocked out 33 pipes in about 40mins.

Thought I would share as other may have not thought to use a copper cube cutter for stainless. Made quick work of it. And gave nice clean cuts with not burrs to sand off later. >:)

cooperville

Good to know. Thats awesome would never have attempted it with stainless

Law_Of_Ohms

yep, use my $7 bunnings pipe cutter for stainless, cheap if I break it

FullySilenced

I have been thinking of the 8" condenser issue and came up with a concept for a new style condenser coil... I am calling it a pancake condenser... I made up this simple concept coil to show how easy it was to make.... took less than 4 minutes to bend with my fingers...the coil length is 72" of corrugated ss tubing 1/2" od its coiled to about 7" diameter.

If i soldered spacers or flatteners on the coil itself i could have made it much more compact.... with longer tubing multiple layers could be formed with much more surface than could be produced with tubes in a conventional deflagmator

OK guys let me know what your thoughts are or just go tell me to screw myself with this idea...

FS

the ruler is 1 1/4 inches wide... as per the mark just above my fingers

BTW water goes through the coil or coils.... mostly full flow of vapor through a deflagmator made in this fashion... no increase in vapor speed would equal more effiency.... :-?

I flared copper tubing to fit the inside of the corrugated pipe and silver brazed the copper to the stainless steel ...

punkin

It's a great idea FS, as you say full vapour flow. The most challenging bit would be making it inefficient enough to draw product :))

RedDoorDistillery

Good concept. You could also make this a continuous tube. with multiple layers of coils. Drop down from the outside and coil back around to the inside of the next spiral then drop down and coil back outward, repeat....

Just 1 water in and out thru the outer shell.

FullySilenced

@punkin needle valves are required i know i am using this type of tubing in my deflagmator now... and also for the sliding condenser in my column.

@RedDoorDistillery it bends so easily you could make as many levels to this as you so desired by going outside to center then center to outside and repeat as many times as needed... there would need to be a cage or a coil stabilizer added at some point... all completely doable...

FS

FullySilenced

@RedDoorDistillery you have 33 feet of cooling in you new deflagmator this one coil has 6 feet in it.... was just using this as a comparison. this tubing is available from 3/8" up to 1" from various suppliers and maybe something to revisit at some point in the future...

Lloyd not sure it his sparks any interest for you, but it is a concept that could be cost effective and more efficient... for the larger size configurations.

FS

Fluxed

Awesome!

Plus, the fact that it's horizontal will disrupt the vapor path and create even more reflux.

Very cool. It's much like a Coil Condenser, or an Inverted Graham Condenser.

RedDoorDistillery

OK. The new Stainless Dephlem is done. Tested it tonight and no leaks this time. This weekend I will test it to the max and see how much power it can knock down. 8" Diameter 12" Tall and 33x 1/2" OD tubes. Inlet and Outlet on opposite sides to force cross flow.

punkin

very nice work mate.

Law_Of_Ohms

Can you tell me about construction method?

I'm guessing you used filler rod for the plate to 8in pipe? Did you fusion weld the stainless tubes? It looks like you might left 1mm to 1.5mm of the tube sticking out passed the plate as the join does not look undercut.

RedDoorDistillery

Correct. Filler Rod on the outside rim plate to pipe. Left about 3mm of pipe sticking out and used the excess pipe as the filler material. No filler wire needed for the tubes to plates as it is a fusion weld.

bentstick

:)>- very nice!

Lloyd

And just exactly where did you find that extra 4" for your super dephlegmator? Throughout the entire build you and I squeezed and trimmed every possible mm :>
Looks great.

RedDoorDistillery

@Lloyd I had to take a 4" lift block out from under my boiler to gain the the 4" on top for the dephlem... Now I have less clearance under the boiler for hooking up 2" Hose for pumping out to the drain ...

Lloyd

Ah Ha! We never talked about sawing off the legs of the boiler :))

harley

RedDoorDistillery, make a tower on the roof so you can have more plate on yours glasscolumn ;-) yes am little crasy but a have been in the buildning faktory for about 30 years, so there a have no limits, everything can be change ;-)

RedDoorDistillery

OK Here We Go..... Ran the new Dephlem today. Kind of a success. First I realized that my watt measurements from before were not accurate. I was basing my numbers off a full 5500 watts for each element. What I realized today is that I am not getting the full 5500w out of each element I am only getting 5262watts due to voltage drop, and the 1 element that I have on the controller is adjusting the amps and volts therefore at 50% setting I am really only pulling 1498watts.

So here are the corrected numbers from before. 12,022 watts Max Original Dephlem Knockdown 100% Reflux 19,139 watts needed to stop the plates from dumping 26,310 watts to fully stabilize all 11 plates.

Now the Data and Results from today with the NEW Dephlem. 22,549 watts Max New Dephlem Knockdown 100% Reflux 21,249 watts needed to stop the plates from dumping 31,572 watts to fully stabilize all 11 plates.

So the good news is that I can now run enough power for the plates to not dump and also be able to knockdown 100% for full reflux. I got a clean heads cut in 1 gallon where before I was having to take 4 gallons to get all the heads due to smearing.

Bad news is that it took more power to run the column. Due to increase back pressure on the plates.

I am going to pull out 1 plate and reduce the stack to only 10 plates vs 11. This should reduce the power needed and get everything into alignment within the capabilities of the new Dephlem. I hope.

I was pulling 5gallons an hour at 175 Proof thru the run from a 10% wash.

You may notice that the outside of the new Dephlem is dark. I have not fully cleaned up the outer shell and passivated it yet. It will look better once I clean and polish it.

Video of New Dephlem. 26,213 watts. Top plate not stabilized. Flooded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ktIpoqChnk

Video of New Dephlem. 31,572 watts to fully stabilize all 11 plates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o47D8Nr0rTw

Video of Shutdown. 30seconds after shutting off all the power the entire column collapses and dumps everything back into the still.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuCmnLDfwBQ

RedDoorDistillery

Also spent time today starting to work on the automated dephlem cooling control box. Still waiting for a few parts to show up. But I got the Power In, Cooling Fan, and all the Temp Sensors and valve control connection ports installed. As well as the 24v DC Power Supply.