StillDragon® Community Forum

Welcome!

Be part of our community & join our international next generation forum now!

In this Discussion

[SOLD] High Performance Random Packing - Saddle RIngs

13»

Comments

  • @grim said: I'm getting some quotes from Sulzer for loose packing, and structured melpak to fit spool.

    Smaug - one of the sales engineers might give you a ring - just a heads up.

    Sure. Thanks. That structured Melpak is the cats ass. Er,,,,or maybe the ducks nuts? Well, one of those.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • With a price to match, I suspect...

  • Melpak has a minimum flow rate of 200l per hour. What size column would be required for 1 gallon per minute feed rate?

  • Well, I'm not making any progress in selling my saddle rings, LOL....but at least we have a good discussion here ;)

  • @Fiji_Spirits said: Melpak has a minimum flow rate of 200l per hour. What size column would be required for 1 gallon per minute feed rate?

    Do you know the basis for the 200l/hr?

  • @Mtr_Distiller said: Do you know the basis for the 200l/hr?

    That’s just from mfr spec sheet

  • @grim said: I'm getting some quotes from Sulzer for loose packing, and structured melpak to fit spool.

    Smaug - one of the sales engineers might give you a ring - just a heads up.

    @grim what ever happened with that quote? I’m working on a rsrm quote from China for a “sample size” large enough to fill a test 4” column.

  • Not sure what to think myself. My quote from China turned out to be. Week long waste of time. They didn’t have what I wanted and apparently either could not or would not suggest a suitable alternative. Weird a random packing manufacturer can’t suggest a product for a customer. Lol

    Friggin China.

  • So buy it from Fiji if the whole of China is so useless.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • @punkin said: So buy it from Fiji if the whole of China is so useless.

    Lol. The worst part about it is that I know they made something that would have worked but couldn’t get their head around it.

    Honestly I tire of the belabored quote process half the companies of the world use. In China its almost all of them. It takes me a full week to get prices and another few days to work up an invoice so I could pay. Imagine repeating that process for 15-20 different items simultaneously to work up an upgrade plan then sourcing 5-8 new items a month for operational needs.

    This is one of the reasons i use still dragon and that sites like eBay, Amazon, AliExpress are so popular. People can just look for what they need, see other options, compare them all and see how it fits into their budget. You’d think that would be a standard for people selling things.

    Too many companies are still following that old paradigm of letting the salesmen pull customers when they could be taking the load off Sales with a website that was informative and gave basic technical and price info. Then “all” sales has to do is answer questions from fully developed customers. As a vendor I hate doing price quotes for folks who are years away from buying. Why would an organization not use their website to do that work for them.

    StillDragon has its website sorted out.

    But, we almost have to do business with China. The price differentials are significant usually and they have almost everything. God knows I had a factory filled with equipment sourced from China.

  • If it’s worth anything, the American company never got me anything resembling a price.

  • edited June 2019

    That's why you need a sourcing agent when dealing with sourcing in China.
    A lot of the companies don't have people that speak English well, and if the do have an English speaking sales girl it doesn't mean that she can communicate well with the engineering dept etc.

    If you have a local, Chinese speaking agent the process is simpler, but more expensive. Then they can also often weed the chaff factories.

    There is also the problem that it is difficult to tell the difference between a real factory or an operator who sets up an office and advertises as a factory when all they do is resell, so have no technical expertise.

    I love doing business with China, but it's not like picking up the phone and calling a retailer here in the land of Aus.

    “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

    ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • A single, simple, basic question can turn into a two week long email chain...

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • I have almost the same issues with US and Oz and NZ firms.

    I’ve never used a sourcing agent. That might be a solution. I am aware of the “paper” factory syndrome as those have almost exclusively been my problem interactions. When I do find a good manufacturer they are often brilliant at service and offer quite good products.

    My primary indicator of a good vendor has been communication/service and knowledge of product. If they can’t pass those basic tests it’s been a big indicator of end quality and post sale service.

    Care to share some of your sourcing agents who are good? I know you have extensive experience dealing that side so I weight your advice heavily.

  • Probably not mate. We have put many hours into building relationships with both agents and the factories we use. Including multiple trips to China to shake hands and reinforce our expectations while doing our best to understand the needs of the companies we are dealing with. Significant investment.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • The Chinese are an ancient society and history shows they have many engineering accomplishments under their belt to be sure. The Great Wall being very likely the most notable.

    But it is a challenge to find a factory with a qualified engineer that also understands the intended purpose of the equipment they are building. Not just replicating an approximated aesthetic.

    It's like learning to play the piano on a flat, wood, single octave, practice keyboard where the only real benefit is memorizing the position of the keys. The real playing occurs when the practitioner understands the space between the notes.

    Sometimes I feel like they know exactly where the piano keys are, but they don't quite get the timing and space between the notes,,,,,,when it comes to vetting factories....

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Stuff like that makes me less worried about the eventual war between the east and the west.

  • yet some of them are so good they can slip a spy chip in between layers of fiberglass on a printed circuit board... baffling...

  • edited October 2020

    Hello All,

    Did anyone ever do any testing on any of the packing materials discussed?

    I have inherited 20 foot lengths of 4" 6" and 8" diameter tri-clamp columns that could use the packing material described here. I have a friend who is a great stainless steel welder of many sized projects that has supplied me. I want to compare to my 4 inch ProCap plate column with a structured packing column. Ideally, I need to use these columns to make a continuous stripping still. I would love to run some trials if any one has some input to give it some direction from the start.

  • edited October 2020

    After much research and many months of quotes from Chinese manufacturers and others I came to the following conclusion...

    • It’s pretty difficult to exceed the rectifying ability of ProCaps with the same height of column packing and still maintain flow rates.

    • There are maybe only a few types of packing that would be useful for craft/hobby distillers. Those seem to be Richards/iStill style of 10mm spiral and copper or stainless mesh and neither will handle solids.

    • If you use a packing that gets more rectification per inch of column height then you appear to lose your flow rates.

    So I just settled my mind on using plates with ProCaps.

    Hope that helps

  • edited October 2020

    @DeltaArtisan - if you are interested in selling an 8" segment, let me know.

    Packed rectification column is my goal, not stripping.

    You can't really strip on structured packing, you need to use disc/donut or large perf.

  • Well this has been a fun read.

    @grim What would you plan to use for packing at that 8" size?

  • edited October 2020

    Imtp/Intalox style packing.

    The Sulzer sales guy for the region lives in my town, but their prices are crazy for the structured packing that Vendome uses.

    This would be a side column, after 4 plates on my 12".

    I had a line on a nice piece of 8"x20' Triclamp, but it disappeared, probably to the scrap pile.

  • Has anyone tried the Ceramic "bio filter" rings from Fish tank supply stores? That would be the equivalent of Scoria, would it not, and they are available in the sizes that are appropriate for our column sizes. Since I have the tubing already I am trying to find the inexpensive packing material.

  • Just fill it with a bunch of old stainless hardware. Nuts, bolts, screws, washers, some chain, nails, whatever.

  • Shouldn't you use equipment that is proven to produce the spirit you want to make instead of "experimenting"? Time is money. How do you know that cheap column packing is going to give you the quality spirit you want anyway? This approach seems backward to me for a business. Spend the money you need to make a quality product the first time without undo experimentation.

    First impressions are important especially in the social media age. Make and sell a crap or even mediocre product early on and you may not get the chance to change the public's mind. There are too many other options available in the market.

  • I have a temporary volume problem. It is taking me two and a half years to get open. I have 4500 gallons of wine to distill and a 100 gallon still. I also have have a lot of column with no packing. Trying to figure out what my options are

  • @DeltaArtisan said: I have a temporary volume problem. It is taking me two and a half years to get open. I have 4500 gallons of wine to distill and a 100 gallon still. I also have have a lot of column with no packing. Trying to figure out what my options are

    If you have low wines already then just use good old copper or stainless mesh scrubbies. You could fill the bulk of the column with stainless then have a top section with copper “just in case” and it’s well proven and cheap. Word to the wise tho. Make sure what you get is real 100% stainless or copper and not copper coated steel.

    As for “experimenting” with stainless bits... it’s far from an experiment. Maybe if you don’t understand the concepts behind column packing and column reflux it would seem silly, but in reality it’s just another surface for ethanol to condense and re-evaporate on. No big deal.

    You would want to properly clean the stainless bits tho.

    I did try some ceramic 10mm rashig rings previously. I hated them. They felt slow to me and I didn’t like what came out as much as the mesh or plates. They were also quite heavy in the column.

  • I sold these saddle rings a couple of months ago. I've tried most every kind of packing my first couple years, marbles, Raschig Rings, steel mesh, scrubbies, pro packing, etc. IMO nothing beats the consistency of good old bubble plates/caps, with ProCaps being better than standard plates/caps.

This discussion has been closed.