380L 8" Question

So what am I looking at in terms of run time with a 380L boiler powered by 15500w with a 4 plate (later moving to 10 plates) 8" SD? There will be pump agitation. I know heat up might be a bit long, but will the 15500 be powerful enough for the 8" I've been running 200L with 4" right now and that was pretty sweet. This will be my stripping still with the 200L boiler for spirit runs. thanks

Comments

  • stupid me, i forgot the 380L had 5 element ports. So I'll be bumping that to 15.5 + 11kw.

  • i did some research on the website and answered my own question. But i would be happy to hear some does and don't about this setup. thanks

  • edited June 2014

    Calculations for a Reflux Still @ Homedistiller.org

    I'm only using 4 out of the 5 element ports for 22kw on a 500L with 4 x 8" plates. The other element port is for an RTD temp sensor, I use a PID and start my heat up with one element the night before, so I can run my low wines in 2 production runs in one day off of my stripped 3000 liters of beer/wine.

  • That's a nice pro tip.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • @Telluride you strip from 3000L to 1000L then do two 500L spirit runs in one day by preheating the first run?

    sorry, feeling a bit slow today...

  • 3000 liters through my steam stripper, then two 500 liter spirit runs, it takes a couple days, but I can do 2 spirit runs in one day. I have a family member that builds continuous ethanol fuel stills, so I got with his engineering team and we scaled it down to minimal reflux and we can continuously strip any amount. The biggest problem we are having at the moment on the stripper is the minimal beer flow rate we are reduced to with using a couple liebigs for our heat exchangers. Once Larry gets the regular 2" product condensers in and to us we should be able to up our flow to several liters per minute. I'm sure larry loved all the random items I ordered in setting this up, hahahahaha, I'll post a build thread after I get the last few pieces and share the design

  • It's a pretty common thing to get weird orders @Telluride . Sometimes i will be picking an order and say to myself "what the fuck is he going to do with all this stuff?".

    Sometimes i've realised and wished i hadn't. :-O

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

  • @Telluride - at the ADI show, I talked to some of the vendors that had heat exchangers out, some said that people had significantly improved performance running the vapor through the water jacket and the water through the vapor path... just something to think about trying... also, I ran my water through a counterflow chiller first (and the condensate after the regular chiller and had amazing water usage reduction..... here is the one I used that I bought 10+ years ago, a chillzilla would be the one to use today..

    Heart's Super Chiller @ HeartsHomeBrew

  • The heat exchangers i am referring to are in regards to heating the beer before it enters at the top of the steam stripping still, the first one is basically the first product condenser, the next heat exchanger is where the spent beer exits the bottom of the still. After the beer runs through both of these it is at a more reasonable temp to be stripped of any alcohol by the steam and series of plates that slow it down. It will make more sense when you see the pics. I do have a glycol chiller that is used for a water cooling tower that recirculates all of my condenser water, i have another one that is used for my chill filtering/mash cooling heat exchanger. Running the product condensers inverted is an interesting concept, maybe punkin or smaug could chime in about that

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