Run times for a 380L boiler?

Can anyone share their experience running this boiler thru an 8" column or similar?

What wattage and how many elements are you running?

I'm trying to get a handle on my power needs to run this thing so I can plan electrical wiring and cost estimates to it.

Details folks...Details!

Comments

  • Candella throws 11k at his 6er but it appears that his plates are in a quasi flooded condition.

    I was thinking 11-15k running speed?

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  • Depends on your % wash. at 10% wash you have about 38L of Ethanol. So now what are you shooting for Proof Output? How may plates? With 10 Plates going from 10% to 95.5% I would say you will average 10L hr output. So about 4 hrs. There about. Plus heat-up time and reflux stabilization time.

  • I found the distilling calculators with vapor speed calculations but hows does Inches of vapor translate to liters per hour?

    By these calculators it looks like 15000watts would be about minimum if I want to move along with production. more likely 20,000W

    Are there figures for production levels for various column diameters?

  • @RedDoorDistillery said: Depends on your % wash. at 10% wash you have about 38L of Ethanol. So now what are you shooting for Proof Output? How may plates? With 10 Plates going from 10% to 95.5% I would say you will average 10L hr output. So about 4 hrs. There about. Plus heat-up time and reflux stabilization time.

    i'm planning on 6 plates right now. dont know if that'll get me to 95+ or not. Not sure what percentage I'll actually run, but I'm estimateing 10%. calculators say it should take between 1.5-2 hours to heat up.

    What are you running right now and how long does it take you to do a whole run from start to shut down?

  • Well I ran a strip run today. 950L 10% wash. 10 Plates on 8" column. Combined Output was 174.8 Proof. 29.85gallons collected.

    I run 1 element over night to preheat the wash from 10C to 60C. When I arrived this morning I kicked on the other 7 elements total 44,000 watts. Took 1.5hs to bring the wash up to temp and load the plates.

    From this point I 100% refluxed for 1hr. Then pulled off the compressed heads over 1hr and then started collecting. From the start of 100% reflux time to shut down was 9hrs. But this was for 2.5 times your volume.

    The 1hr 100% reflux would be the same. So heads and product collection of 8hrs that remain divide that by 2.5 to account for only 380L of wash would give 3.2hrs.

    3.2hrs run time + 1 hr reflux. 4.2hrs. from the time you get your wash up to temp.

    How long the heatup time would be would depend on your starting temp, and how many watts you can throw at it.

    I averaged 16L hour of output today. Across the 7hrs of actual collection time.

  • Sounds like I am looking at a ~6 hour run from on till off. Probably want a minimum of 22000 watts with 27500 being preferred for more vaporization.

    My ground water temp here is about 27C which is where my mash will be as well. I think I'll need two reflux condensors if I'm gonna throw this much heat at it, cause my water temp barely keeps my 4" 4 Plate with 4500 watts at a vapor temp of 78C running flat out right now.

    @reddoordistillery so can you pull 95%+ off your rig with less than 10plates and still get a decent flow rate?

  • Hi @Fiji_Spirits. I'd go along with RDD on that (see Grips 8" Crystal) early days yet though!

  • @RedDoorDistillery said: From this point I 100% refluxed for 1hr.

    Do you find that refluxing for that length of time vs. just fully loading the plates and stabilizing makes a difference in the output?

  • I reflux for 1hr to compress the heads. My charge is 250US Gallons so I want to make sure it all has time to release and compress to the the top before I start taking fores and heads. I think you really only need to reflux for a little bit after the plates load and you would get the same abv output.

    I have not tried less than 10 plates. You could probably get to 95% with 6 but you would need a lot of reflux and output would probably take a significant nose dive. No hard data on this as I built my unit for 10 plates.

    The product is very nice. I have had nothing but good feedback on it from my customers. Smooth, no punch to the nose, nice mellow warmth after you swallow. And this is bottled at 82 Proof. And I am still carrying a mild wheat flavor over to the final product. Sat down the other night with a glass of my Vodka on the rocks and sipped on it for about a hour.

    Very interested to get more data from @grip on his bubble cap version to compare results.

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