Yet Another Another Continuous Stripper - No Boiler

Jon_o

Hi All,

There has been a lot of great discussions about continuous strippers. I've been itching to start work on my own. The misses was out of town today so I was finally able to piece one together.

@grim said: I would say skip the bottoms tank and instead replace it with a longer section of 4" or 6" triclamp spool/pipe, and have the element vertical. This is considerably cheaper than having to use any kind of "tank" at the bottom. Also much easier to trial without fabrication. I think there is a sweet spot with regards to reboiler volume. Also much easier to just use pipe clamps to attach this thing to a wall or frame, as opposed to trying to get it to be freestanding.

Proof of Concept Continuous Stripper

I have a lot more of fixturing and plumbing to do, but I was able to finish the proof of concept. I didn't have a wash ready so, today ran it with straight water. Tomorrow I'll start a big batch of UJSSM or similar for testing and I'll work to clean up the setup.

I tried to annotate the picture as much as I could to help explain the setup.

Any constructive feedback would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Jon_o

grim

Damn clever use of one of those all-in-one packed column heads.

I could see another 24-48" packed section in the middle, possibly, if that doesn't give you a decent output - to give you a much larger packed section.

I would also think from a wash feed perspective, the last thing you want to do before you inject at the top is go through the bottoms heat recovery exchanger. This assumes ideal heat exchange though, which probably isn't the case with that small recovery exchanger.

Fiji_Spirits

How hot was your product off the PC?

You wash feed thru product condenser won't be enough to cool it I don't think. Try it, but I suspect you overfeed the column or underfed the cooler. You may have to insert a second condenser with cooling water flow to compensate OR get the wash to re-circulate thru it faster than actual column feed rate.

Also you'll wanna change your feed control valve to a 1/2" or 3/8" GATE valve for finer adjustments.

I like the heat recovery setup. It's simple and gives an easy return for small expense. Great implementation.

Looks cool so far!! Great work!!

Unsensibel

Loving it! KISS! Looking forward to the result as my concerns as similar to @Fiji_Spirits

CothermanDistilling

1. a temp probe right above element, if it gets to 120C/250F, your element is dry.. (or a pressuse switch that works at low psi, like used in hot tub heaters)
2. you want discharge of both pc and overflow to be at room temp, so might want to research putting the was going through them in parallel, not series... but what you have should work for proof of concept...