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My Steam Generator

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  • @TheMechWarrior said: Thanks Lloyd, I believe naming rights go to Cambo on page 2 of this thread ;)

    @Lloyd said: Oops, step aside TheMechWarrior and let Cambo step to center stage to accept the much coveted Bragging-Rights award.
    Envelope please and drum roll...

    Yes, bragging rights (according to our fine panel of honorable judges on page two) does in fact go to Cambo. Well done!

    My how this thread has gotten some attention, thanks for all of the props on the name however i relinquish the honor to @TheMechWarrior as he has pioneered the being that is the "Steam Dragon" i look forward to seeing how the design finalizes and the control system develops.

  • Firstly allow me to apologise for promising so much and delivering so little, today has just been crazy!

    This is all I managed to get done, more next week.
    Have a great weekend folks and stay safe!

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  • Sing out if you need pipe to weld flanges to. I have some lengths of 2" and 1.5" plain mirror polished pipe.

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

  • Not to rain on anyones parade, but I still retain all bragging rights, these designs are still based off my steam generator :)

  • @Telluride - why did you pull the plug and go with another approach?

  • My steam generator is almost complete, based on telluride's design. I should wrap it up this weekend. Not quite as as pretty as telluride's. I repurposed a old copper condenser as the holding tank, also used some old copper with flanges already soldered on. I will post a photo, if someone can tell me how.

  • @Telluride none of this would be possible without your brave pioneering spirit

  • on the connections between the reservoirs, I was thinking maybe use a coil of stainless tubing and then you could piggyback one reservoir to the other with a bracket. and that bracket could also facilitate a post or wall mount

  • @grim the stripping still is running about 3 days a week, i just went bain marie style at the bottom of the column, i couldnt get enough power out of the steam to run as fast as i wanted, i have come to the conclusion that the steam injection wouldnt be as practical as a steam jacketed or bain marie, if i had a big boiler in ny distiller i would run a low psi steam through the water lines of a condensor, or dephlag. I still use the steam generator under a direct injection in my mash tun, it maintains and raises heat quite well.

  • @bachman and @TheMechWarrior a port to drain the water would be super nice, i like to drain mine after i use it and I end up siphoning it out, a little valve would be super handy :)

  • Yeah I let it cool off and tip it upside down and drain out the manifold. I think I will probably install a drain towards the base of the element.

  • What's the power input to the stripper with the bain marie? Just curious really.

  • I just did a test run with my steam dragon, running it through a pid set to 100% in the manual mode and I was getting surges of steam. Tomorrow I am going to try running the steam generator without a pid to see if I can get continuous steam.

  • @bachman

    Imagine having a simple on/off control on a steam generator that has a 5L volume. Using 5.5kW and heating from 20oC it will take roughly 5minutes to get to boiling at which point you'll then begin evaporating water at a rate of 146mL per minute. Without top-up you'll boil dry in 34 minutes from reaching 100oC.

    At that power it only takes 9.4seconds to heat 146mL to boiling, so if your top-up level control is set fine enough the addition of 20oC water will have minimal impact on the performance of the unit. Preheat the top-up water for improved performance.

    If however you have a large volume being dumped in during top-up you can encounter surges, even with on/off control.

    Do you know the volume of your system?

    Are you running 5.5kW?

    Are you preheating the top-up?

    Are you boiling water or pot-ale?

    Cheers,

    Mech.

  • @bachman said: I just did a test run with my steam dragon, running it through a pid set to 100% in the manual mode and I was getting surges of steam. Tomorrow I am going to try running the steam generator without a pid to see if I can get continuous steam.

    Pictures please!

  • @bachman do you have a needle valve to control the pressure?

  • edited December 2014

    @TheMechWarrior, the volume is about 3 quarts, I am running a 5.5kw heater, I am not heating the top up reservoir but it is warm to the touch and I am just running water

    @Telluride, I have a gate valve I also have about 200 liters of tpw going. Sorry about the photos I had the tablet turned the wrong way

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  • edited December 2014

    I got the photos turned

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  • Based on 3 quarts or roughly 3L I estimate the following:

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  • It appears that some of the members on this forum are immensely more intellectual than I. thanks for the info. Could I possibly get that in laymens terms?

  • Just a summary of your water and energy balance assuming no heat recovery on the top-up water. I did this exercise to see what the water top-up rate requirements were as well as to understand how long it would take for the unit to boild dry in the event of a loss of make-up water and no functional controls. The other useful bit of information is the available heat you have for heat recovery, useful when wanting to know the efficiency of a steam stripping column.

    In summary with power on, no controls and 3 quarts of starting volume your system will boil dry in 24 minutes if left unattended.

  • @bachman were you able to push continuous steam running direct? Based on @TheMechWarrior 's numbers, it doesn't appear that top off would be causing a major problem (unless your float action is very broad, but it doesn't look to be the case).

    Curious.

  • edited December 2014

    Yet to build mine. But I'm thinking?? Instead of the float.

    Or even simply a large airtight reservoir with the height of the tap the same level as the level above the element

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  • edited December 2014

    I'm not sure that'll work. Either the reservoir will be vacuum locked because it's airtight, and if you make it to not be airtight, it'll either be pressure locked by the boiler or just flood it outright.

    You could do something like that without a float, but you would need a peristaltic pump between the two. If you used something like TMW's spreadsheet, you could balance the steam generation with the correct volume of make up water continuously. Balancing the flow rate would be challenging though.

  • Did I misread or is the two feed valves to allow for two different flow rates? Shouldn’t they be piped up in parallel? You could either size them differently or add an orifice plate to one. Even better, a needle valve in place of the plate so the normal feed rate can be adjusted to minimise the shut off valve ‘off’ time. Why not one proportional solenoid control valve (and possibly a shut off valve) to get smooth feed rate of water regardless of power? (if the intended controller has a PWM output to drive it, even better!)

    I really like the idea of keeping the system open to atmosphere (via the output line). Controlling the steam output by the element power seems the simplest and safest way forward. The problem is 100° steam might be safer but it’s not nearly as useful. With my own experiments I found it hard to get a double boiler over 92° using atmospheric steam. Are these to be used for jackets or injection? Was there a point a while back where the intended uses was discussed. How variable is the intended load and what temps are required? How stable does the output need to be? It would be terrible for all that work to go in, only to find out once it’s built that it’s not fit for purpose.

    Pressure has a lot of benefits but it has a whole lot of downsides too in terms of added complexity and safety issues.

    On safety, engineering in double redundancy on critical features like low level and over pressure protection is a must. Make sure your over pressure valves are rated to the volume of steam that can be produced, not just a pressure.

    I was looking into homemade bursting disks a while back. You may not use them as your primary but a 2” tee piped to the roof of the shed with some Alfoil clamped in the tri might be good back up. Definitely a budget option. Piping the PRV outlet to a safe place is definitely a good idea too. At least a 90° elbow back to the wall.

    I think boilers are usually fed deionised water too. You’re going to get a lot of scale built up in there so some consideration too cleaning is worth some thought. Just flood it with CLR?? This thing is turning into an industrial boiler. Can we dig up any existing P&ID’s for inspiration?

  • Any updates on the Steam Dragon? Or any similar continuous steam generator that can be purchased for comercial use (fully CE certified)? BTW: props to all the SD forum members who contribute with such awesome ideas.

  • @Kshot said: Any updates on the Steam Dragon? Or any similar continuous steam generator that can be purchased for comercial use (fully CE certified)? BTW: props to all the SD forum members who contribute with such awesome ideas.

    Its on the back burner for now,,,but the flame is still burning.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • edited May 2017

    Interesting on similarity.

    Just for info on one of our small keg plants, the customer requested a clean steam generator for the keg internal sterilising process. The guys were not absolutely happy with their main boiler steam quality.

    None the less for water feed, only two level switches together with an isolating valve were used. The level switches were set approx. 100mm apart. During operation the water system cycled very fast. The water pipe was also piped direct to outgoing steam pipe which had a small expansion chamber on top.

    There was a flow control valve on incoming steam supply at top which then condensed to drain at bottom.

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