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In this Discussion
- albtraum October 2014
- CothermanDistilling June 2014
- dwhuff May 2014
- Fiji_Spirits June 2014
- Finespirit June 2014
- FullySilenced June 2014
- grim June 2014
- Law_Of_Ohms June 2014
- Lloyd June 2014
- Mickiboi June 2014
- Moonshine May 2014
- Myles June 2014
- punkin June 2014
- RedDoorDistillery June 2014
- Smaug June 2014
- Sunshine May 2014
12" Column Stuff
Developing the 12" bubble column.
The picture shows ferrule ends but the next prototype will be made with bolt ends instead.
The factory sent the picture today and I'll get this in a couple of days.
The glass appears to be taller than we need but that's OK, we can get it any length.
Next step is to design the plates using the measurements of the ferrules to get the new plate OD.
Then working out the bolt flanges instead of the ferrule ends. Get all the custom gaskets made.
Then proceed to the dephlegmator. Figure out what reducers to produce. Get a few SS bolt bubble tees made...
Probably about 3 months and someone will be running one of these. Three more months after then and a couple of dozen SD 12" stills should be producing alcohol :)
Comments
That's going to need some input power....yes????
More than I can possibly give it. I'll wait for the early adapters to provide info about power needed and production volume. I recon it needs and produces about twice as much as an 8"er. Probably much more since it will sport the new plate system.
I can run a 5" and I'm maxed out at 7.2Kw and wishing I had another Kw to play with. But I run a hobby still. A 12"er is a tad bigger than hobby :)
Going to need some serious condensers, too.
Probably going to need about 30Kw of boiler power but that's just a guess.
For scale, to the right in the picture is a 3x2 reducer and a 2" ferrule. More pics in a few days when I get to manhandle/fondle that monster. Can't even venture a guess at the weight yet but will know soon enough.
Planning to make a sweetheart deal with someone that can run the first one hard and give hard data and feedback.
After doing all the calcs on running costs the other day, I think this one needs gas.
I'd go nuclear. Fusion reactor. Sit it on a live volcano.
Others will use a steam generator connected to a 2000L boiler but they are wimps (and don't have an active lavafield in their backyards).
Dear god, keep building, no time for pix. Smaug will have our deposit check next week.
The 50hp boiler is just begging to run this baby.
WOOD FIRED! :-bd
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A 12" column would be a welcomed addition to those of us who are legal and trying to produce enough product to satisfy the market. If we could get something out of copper I'm sure you would sell them like hotcakes! Stainless will work but copper would be in high demand
where do you need copper there? the column is made of glass, bubblesection is made of copper - the rest has to be stainless steel. (and cleaning would be a nightmare with copper parts on the crystall dragon.)
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copper not going to have the strength for the CD... I will say that the stainless CD ends would look more impressive it they looked more like a formula 1 part and less like a tractor part... basically remove any unstressed metal... a lot of expensive machining and polishing to get them to that point, but I would pay 3x the price to have it look like something that SpaceX or an art studio made.. make it look better than copper...
Oh, and I look forward to putting one of theses on a 1000/2000L boiler powered by a 20HP/200kw steam generator.... as soon as we get some cash flow to justify my hobby-turned-business spending such capital...
The first 12" bubble tee will arrive in 2 or 3 days. This one will be ferrule end until I can get the bolt flange worked out.
Got them sooner than expected.
Shown with the updated 4" dephlegmator, 8" bubble tee... The 12" Sight Tower with a 12" Bubble Tee clamped to it.
The 12" Tee is about 12" tall because I wanted to try a 6" Sight Glass Union. Maybe not a good idea because it made the section taller than necessary. Best to step it back down to a 4" SGU so the height can be a more modest 8".
Shown again with the new 6" dephlegmator and something that @CothermanDistilling inspired... a 2" 135 degree bend.
My god those 4" parts look so small against that 12" stuff which looks positively awesome.
And heavy too.
So what is the purpose of the 2" side ferrule on the 8" and 12" Bubble T?
I like those 135's, Same price as the 180's? That would be a handy piece for someone who wants to get their collection point away. Saves a triclamp joint.
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Sprayball!!
I had hoped so but they cost about 7% more than a 180 to produce. At about 20% less weight the shipping costs are little less. Seems to balance out that they will sell for about the same price as the 180 bend. One less clamp is the bonus and this new fitting lends itself to your popular Pot Shot.
@Lloyd - please investigate making the 12" sight tower more 'sano'/'race quality'/'artsy'...
At least some 2D machining to get rid of unused material on the bolt flange, similar to a wave-style brake rotor?:
if you do that, put me down for a 12" CD... even if I use it as an aquarium on my desk for the first year ;-)
Hoping for at least double the speed of the 8" column, which looks like it will be absolutely possible (mathematically it would be). This would make for a very reasonable run-time with the 1000l boiler.
yeah, I was thinking it would be perfect for the 1000L in a production environment..
Going from 4" to 8" improved output from 5L to around 18-20l. So going up to a 12" should yield around 40-50L hr if you have enough power to push it and generate enough vapor off the boiler.
Red - are you talking perf plate or bubble cap?
Ordered the 12" replacement glass today from the glass factory to make absolutely sure of the measurements before getting the CD gaskets made. Going with a height of 120mm which I think is more than enough space between the plates.
The bump from 5L to 18L was with Perf Plates. Based on others that have now provided some details on 8" Bubble the output was only a little bit less. So the figures should be around the same bumping to 12" either way. Probably on the lower side around 40L on a 12" bubble.
The output increase is exponential. Not linear. As the total exposed surface area of each plate grows in a non linear manner. A 4" has a surface area of 12.56 sq/in and a 8" has 50.26 sq/in area. A 12" is 113.09 sq/in so as you can see the active plate area of a 12" is more than double that of an 8" so the output should be double of an 8" + 10% for the overage of 13 sq/in.
This would not account for any improvement in Lloyd's new Bubble Cap design he is working on that might be gained as well.
If you have a conservative avg rate of 15L on a 8" bubble over the coarse of the entire run. Scaling this up to 12" should get you an Avg output of 33L. Early on it would be much faster. But I am talking about the average collection rate over an entire run.
Now that I have done many runs on the 8" Perf plate I really think I am running to deep into the tails on the strip run and surpassing the energy in/ ethanol out value point. Because I am running so deep into the tails I believe this is dragging down my Avg take rates quite a bit. And I am still averaging 17-18L over the coarse of the Strip Run. I think by not running collecting so deep I will actually improve my avg take rate to around 20L hr with the perfplates.
@RedDoorDistillery what is your boiler size again?
New plates have active area of close to 100% \m/
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My boiler is 350 US Gallons or 1324Liters. And I normally charge with 260 gallons 984L of 10% for Strip Runs. And 260 Gallons of 45% for Spirits runs,
Off we go! 1000 liter steam jacket boiler with the 12" flange is ordered.
@grim has stepped forward and commissioned the first 12" Crystal Dragon to be produced. We are all working on it together but I fear the SD parrot may be too small to handle the production without pushing the alcoholmeter out of the parrot.