StillDragon® Community Forum

Welcome!

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

In this Discussion

Introducing the NEW +++ ProCap36 +++ Product Line-Up!

13468911

Comments

  • The Crystal BeanStalk? The Crystal Megalith?

  • More videos!

  • @grim said: More videos!

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • Maybe this does

    image

    stilldragon_4_inch_crystal_dragon_with_procap36.jpg
    600 x 800 - 70K
  • Captn is that 4" or 5" ?

  • it looks awesome run it, video it a bit and post what you really think...

  • I love the sight tower rods @captainshooch.

  • I should get a chance to run it this weekend and I will update.

    @Lloyd the plates do not seem to be too crowded at all. I think the old style caps actually take up more room than 3 ProCap36.

  • Would 4 of em fit in a 4" cylinder?

  • @FullySilenced, 4 ProCaps will fit.

    image

    I only have 3 holes in my plates so I turned them over to give you an idea of what 3 vs 4 would looks like. I think 3 is going to be plenty fast enough.

    stilldragon_4_inch_bubble_plate_with_three_vs_four_procap36.jpg
    800 x 600 - 61K
  • 4 does not look prohibitive though...

  • Give it a shot and I'll do 3 n you do 4. We'll see how it goes :)

  • Pretty sure Lloyd trialed 4 and that's why he settled on 3.

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

  • Mehbe the grand master will chirp in then....

  • I didn't make a 4" plate with 4 ProCaps but did make a set of 5" plates with 5 caps instead of 4. Test runs showed little to no performance improvement for the extra expense.
    Placing more caps onto the plate did not seem to provide any advantage. Remember to try to keep about 50% of the plate area free of caps because you need the active plate area for the bubbles to form and to interact with the fluid on the plate.

    I was more active in testing the new ProCap on the 5" column but did manage a few runs with the 4" ProPlate (3 caps) and was impressed by the performance. Collection speed was more than 5L/H vs 3L/H with the classic caps. Again, I was only testing performance and not quality of product so I'd probably slow the collection down a little by inducing more reflux to produce a higher quality distillate.

    I'm glad the ProCaps are finally available for further exploration by artisans, the true innovators of distillation equipment and, collectively, a very clever group.

    Over the next months we'll all learn the pros and cons, the benefits and limitations, of the new caps and we'll use that knowledge when designing the much bigger ProCaps that are destined to operate inside columns bigger than 12" diameter.

  • Lloyd if 50% open area is the target then a 4" column has aprox.. 12 sq inches of surface and the area of a pro 36 is 1.574 sq inches... x 4 would give you about 6 sq inches of pro caps or about 50% of the area of a 4" column...

    so.... 4 caps?

    Hell i don't know but i like what i see... :D

  • The net available diameter in a 4" CD is 100mm. So 3 ProCaps gives about 40% coverage and 4 caps about 52%.

    50% open area is a rule-of-thumb passed on by Rednose based on his research into German stills but work done by folks that use one giant cap per plate also report good results. I'm not clear what their open area is though. It would be interesting if someone would do a side by side comparison on the 4" and see if the expense of an additional cap is worthwhile or not.
    It didn't make any real difference on the 5".

  • the kothe I saw had a lot of 'spaltter' or 'non-directional rain' above the cap, and would guess that each drop adds to the liquid vapor interface area where the magic happens....

  • All set to go for a trial run of the 4" 4 plate ProCao36 CD in the morning but I am not sure as to what ABV to charge to still with. I usually try stuff with 35ABV but any suggestions are sure welcomed. I am shooting for a spirit run versus a stripping run. @Lloyd what were you running ABV wise when you gave it a try?

  • I was running 6 plates (only because I already had the connecting rods cut to that length) and the product was about 93-94%.
    A 35% boiler charge for a spirit run sounds just perfect, though I often go above 45%.

    A spirit run from a mash charge is disappointing because I only get a couple of bottles of hearts.

    Push it hard @captainshooch, it can take it!

  • Hopefully I get my plates off Punkin tomorrow for my 4" CD. Ill see if it can handle 9600w on a 100lt boiler charge and report back.

  • Will do @Lloyd. Plan on starting around 4L/Hr then up from there till who knows. BTW I can do a side by side since I have all it takes to set up 2 stills, but I am shy one deph... Sure could use a second one specially if @Smaug has a scratch n dent super deph on sale.. :-\"

  • 9600w for a 4" column? I'm thinking half that, Micky.
    You'll need to let the cups load before applying full power.

    Please report back how much power you can throw at it. I figure about 1.5Kw per cap so that works out to about 4.5Kw.
    Useful data is ABV of the boiler charge, power applied, collection rate and product ABV and acceptability. I've been getting good 94+ABV results at about 1.5L/H per cap on a 45% low wines boiler charge feeding 1.5Kw per cap.
    To clarify, I'm counting the caps on a single plate - not the entire still.
    I don't know if that data, collected from running the 5", will carry over to smaller or larger diameter columns. I have had no problems giving the boiler full power (about 7200 watts in my case) and that works out to around 1800 watts per cap but it was pushing tails into the hearts so I cut it back to about 1500 watts. 6L/H of clean hearts with a 5" CD and 4 ProCaps per plate times 6 plates was the setup. (change my 600 ml beer bottles about every 3 minutes!)

  • I don't use full power for a spirit run only about 3kw. I did 80lt strip run 8% UJSM full power with 600mm pot still just over 2 hours for 20lt low wines. Just thought id give it a run and see how much these can take since ive got the power to do it.

  • Test run is over and all I can say is, FARKING AMAZING!!... I took a few videos and maybe if @Moonshine is up to it, I will upload to Mediafire for him to do his majic with.

    Started with only 8 gals of 40ABV...all I had ATM, fired up at 700am and shut down at 930am. That's 3 gals in 2.5 hours including warm up, and ABV was around 93-94. My regular 4" deph can not keep up with it and I should have run 2 condensers in line like I do with the beanstalk to keep the product temp at a reasonable 80 to 85F. I ran it slow, medium and hard and the output speed even at a medium heat input rate is just amazing. @-) 5 minutes per quart with 2 elements at 12 amps each :-O I just might have the holy grail of all strippers.

    @Lloyd =D> :-j

    I ran two 5500w elements at anywhere from 8 amps each to 14 amps, never have been able to do this before as I always slacked off to just 1 element at 10 amps +/- for a regular run on the other rigs. This things are meant do be driven like perf plates.

    I had to run both the deph and cond. at full flow to keep up.

  • @captainshooch said: Test run is over and all I can say is, FARKING AMAZING!!... I took a few videos and maybe if Moonshine is up to it, I will upload to Mediafire for him to do his majic with.

    I'll take care of it asap.

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • Uploading ATM 25 minutes to go....farking slow ass internet!

  • All done. It is in your hands @Moonshine

    Plz bare w/me I am not the best video host...but I can only get better :-S

Sign In or Register to comment.