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Loony bin and crazy ideas

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  • @Drunkas said: I got to question how well every one things a barcode scaner would work in a aplication like what you all are talking about. I dont know how many times you guys have wached the young chicks at the supermarket trying to scan the grocerys. It seems to me all you would need is a small drop of liquied on the glarss bar code and you would be up shit creek.

    Its not really a bar code reader in the traditional sense like the supermarket style that is a wide multi-beam setup designed to read several bar code formats as a number then software converts that into a item code/number, and pass it to the register as if it was manually keyed in to process as part of the sale.

    The readers that most seem to be talking about are to read just the amount of lines sitting at a certain point then convert that to our abv. My alc meter bobs up and down a fair bit when pushing hard, so it has to be a average read.

    Personally I reckon the "read the line" wont work without a shit load of cash and electronics.

    The measuring of force or distance appears slightly simpler as the meter travels up or down, again averaged or with a good buffer/stabilizer system in-place.

    I have a hard time reading the bloody thing now, and my eyesight is 20/40, its the friken bouncing and lines with liquid clinging to the glass. As long as I can roughly see the 60-70-80-85-90-95 lines I'm happy.

    fadge

  • @fadge said: fadge

    I agree with you on that to make it work it will probly take a shit load of electronics and cash.
    I been sitting scraching my head thinking that there has to be a better way to do this thats ezyer for the every day user. There has to be someone els that has done this befor in a simple way. All your trying to do is measure the density of booze.

  • The distance to the top of the hydrometer (ultrasonic/laser) seems like an easier option. Although, you need to mount something larger to the top to give a better reading.

    The programming behind it would have to allow for calibration to suit the particular hydrometer being used. Maybe have 2 modes for 2 different hydrometers. eg 20-50% ABV & 50-100% ABV?

    Could you use a standard "laser" measure/stud finder and feed the data into an Arduino with an LCD display?

    Just throwing some ideas around :-?

  • edited March 2014

    You know what would be really stellar this morning ... if you guys made a mini spray ball or spray ball adapter for the larger bubble cap tees. Who wants to break down columns?

    I can imagine something like a 8x8x2tc that would accept a thru-the-wall rotating mini or regular size spray ball.

    Or, even something like the standard 8" tees that had an additional 2" tc ferrule welded on so you could install spray balls between the sections like some of the larger commercial stills.

    Probably wouldn't make much sense for the small ones though, simply from a space perspective.

  • You are asking for a short 8" x 2" Tee? I have that.
    I have 2 that were made many months ago that never sold.
    For your 8" Crystal Dragon a spray ball in every glass section would be very hard to do.
    But putting a simple 1/2" fitting above the dephlegmator to pump very hot water through would be easy to do. After the first plate, a spray ball or simple hot water fitting would have the same effect, yes?

  • simplest way is an accurate thermometer above the reflux condenser.... :-p

  • Different point of view..unless someone has mentioned/tried it; When checking antifreeze in a car some use a hydrometer, others use a more precise ohm meter. I forget the numbers but water is .0001 ohms resistance for example and methol alcohol (a/f) is 2.5 ohms resistance. Most vehicles we do we set for -40 which is about 50-50 or 60-40 a/f to water ratio. (say 1.2 ohms?)

    So, take an ohm meter and put the leads in the liquid and depending on the resistance, would give you the abv. (once it was calibrated of course) The only issue I see is how fast your ohmmeter can correct, lag time if you will.

    Any help??

  • edited March 2014

    Like this, it's all we use at the shop.

  • @CothermanDistilling said: simplest way is an accurate thermometer above the reflux condenser.... :-p

    No doubt about it. No temperature correction required.

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

  • Anyone ever find a conversion program to translate vapor temperature to ABV? I know there is a graph but LoO, RDD and I tried to find that calculator before and failed.

  • Pure water has a resistance of 18.2 million ohms per cm. For comparison city water is between 1,000 and 10,000 ohm/ cm and sea water is between 20 and 100 ohms/ cm.

    Ethanol does not ionize so it will have a resistance value close to the value for water, in both ethanol and water the resistance will be determined by dissolved ions (salts, acids and bases) in the solution.

    (Purity of water is frequently measured in conductance, which is the inverse of resistance. )

  • Help us make practical use with that information Ed.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • He said there's too many variables.

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

  • I am saying that I don't think measuring resistance can be used to determine alcohol content. Since pure water and pure ethanol will both have a very high resistance, any mixture of pure water and pure ethanol will also have a very high resistance. In practice the resistance measurement will be measuring the other trace components which can be ionized.

  • Thanks @cunnyfunt. Thats very interesting, so we are looking at about 5 grams between 100% (methylayted spirit) and zero (distilled water). I haven't given up on this idea but a 10 gram strain gauge is a lot more expensive than a 100 gram. Don't worry about the output versus purity, since the result of the weight will be fed into a microprocessor, I will either use an algorythm or a lookup table to give the correct output. I am not to sure how accurate we can get it, the repeatability of the gauge and the temperature of the fluid will determine this.

    @fadge. Those ErwinSick sensors are very expensive but they are extremely good. I was thinking about something along those lines but I will build it myself if you look at the previous drawings I posted. The ultrasonic one is around 2000, I would hate to think what they want for the laser.

    @Goinbroke2. I haven't looked into this but if it was as easy as that then someone would have done this before. I have a milliohm meter worth about $4000, its full scale reading is 5 ohms, I will see what happens in metho and distilled water in the next few days. But you are right, we need impurities to measure what's in the fluid and the very fact that distilling is designed to remove them, well it's not going to work using a conventional meter.

    Right now I have to catch a plane to Melbourne as my brother has had a heart attack.

  • Im more than happy to be a beta tester if it is viable:) Sorry to hear about your brother. I really hope he is ok.

  • Family first @Mickiboi , hope the brother recovers well.

  • @Mickiboi our thouhts are with you brother...The Hooch family

  • Hope he recovers OK. All the conductivity experiments I could find used the solubility of other salts in the ethanol. I don't think it is do-able with straght ethanol/water. It can be done by weight - but not easily mid run. How about the surface tension? Is there a variation in droplet size at differing ABV.

  • I reckon the lazer measurement to the top of the alco is the easiest suggestion yet.

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

  • Thank you all for your wishes, I really appreciate it guys, honestly. Turns out he needs a mitral valve and a bypass. They say he will be ok though. Royal Melbourne Hospital staff are absolutely fantastic.

    I have found out that strain gauges wont work pushing up against gravity, they only work with weight bearing down on top of them. The alco meter pushing up on the gauge wont do anything as it has to overcome the weight of the gauge. They often increase the sensitivity of the gauge by placing a weight on top of the gauge and pre-loading it. Unless we have some mechanical contraption on the top of the alco to convert the upwards motion to a downward pressure this one is in the bin.

    So it looks like the laser or ultrasonic is the go.

  • or some type of magnetic sensor reader....... just thinkin if you don't like it throw a rock at me

  • Don't fret it micki. Just been in and had a zipper put in. The staff are absolutely proffesional, and just wait till you see all the ninety year olds up and walking the same day as the surgery. B-)

    ToughCuntsPunkin

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

  • edited March 2014

    Hey @punkin, I had a double bypass 3 years ago this month so he knows what he is in for. Can I just let everyone here know how much a heart attack hurts and to try and avoid one at all costs if you can. Thanks.

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  • optical character recognition type programming and a camera would be a different way... 20 years ago, college kids were writing programs that could use a robot arm to assemble childrens alphabet blocks into words... not rocket science...

    @Lloyd - I am sure we can get a formula for % alcohol to temp, as an example, in my controller, I currently use a much simpler formula to display watts of power applied to the boiler:

    var BK_PWRw = BK_PWR * 55;
    ... ctx.fillText(BK_PWRw + " watts", loc_X, loc_Y);

    ^^^ this means if 100% power, the display shows 5500 watts

  • edited March 2014

    This vapor temp vs %ABV graph is all I can find:

    image

    If anyone knows of another please tell.
    According to the graph, the vapor temperature between 78C to 79C is 95+% to 89% AVB.
    With only 4 plates my entire spirit run will happen within that one degree, as I don't usually collect tails.

    distillation_temp_and_concentration_relationship.jpg
    1046 x 661 - 124K
  • ok, I had a minor in math, but that was 20 years ago... there has to be a formula for the curve, one of those Ax^2 + By +C quadratic thingys....

  • Fuck me if we got to start using graphs and needing a minor in math I think Im going to have to stick with me old pot =))

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