Vapor Management Centering Plates

Rocky_Creek

I am in the process of construction a 3 inch VM still. I have four 13" / 330 mm sections in the column packed with stainless steel wool and stainless steal mesh. Dephlegmator on top of 3x3x2 tee. The column is very well insulated. I will be running 2.5 kW. It would be easy to add in centering rings at each joint. I have blank copper plates. What I don't know is will the centering rings accomplish anything on a 3" rig, and what percentage of the plate should be open for vapor/liquid passage. Any help appreciated. Thanks.

punkin

It will work fine without them, i'd recommend trying it as is and then you have a baseline to play with mods later.

Myles

Have to agree with punkin about try it first. Can I also add that the centring rings work most in a specific set of circumstances. These are if you are trying to push the vapour speed to the absolute maximum potential of the column. In these circumstances you are probably also using pH modification techniques. If you do decide to use them, I would say to try flow drilling the plates to make distributor plates instead of basic centring rings.

TheMechWarrior

I only have a 2" VM with a 1200mm packed section consisting of around 9 SS scrubbers and a similar number of copper scrubbers on top. Half way up the column I use a centering ring (on top of the stainless scrubbers) and at the very top I have another.

Initially I only had the one at the top but after installing the second one I swear it improved performance and cuts. I did this after re-reading Riku's book.

I just used a 2" to 1.5" concentric reducer as shown on the right hand side of the image below and cut the top off it so that it fits comfortably inside the column, sitting on the column packing.

punkin

The middle one will do a lot more good than the top one. Snuffy did a lot of exacting research on a glass VM a few years ago and posted it all on Artisan Distiller. Pretty groundbreaking stuff at the time.

TheMechWarrior

Yup, that middle one made a world of difference