First run of the Baby Crystal Dragon

jez · 17 January 2016 03:56AM

Hi all,

Running my new Baby CD now as I sit in the shed writing this. All I can say is WOW thanks StillDragon very happy with everything and how it's running. I'm doing a spirit run with 50L of 30% low wines. The electric parrot is working well, it's been sitting on 84° and 91% ABV for the last two hours and hasn't had any temp change. The only thing I had noticed was the parrot was showing fore the hole time while collecting the 250ml fores, then when I started running faster to collect the heads it changed to show the ABV. Will have to say it's been very stable to run and a what a great upgrade fro my old 3" Boka.

punkin · 17 January 2016 04:58PM

Good stuff Jez, is that with the packed section?

jez · 17 January 2016 11:14PM

@punkin
Yeah mate the 510mm section was filled with s/s scrubbers 11 fitted into the section loosely packed.

Just a question it ran great but I ran it a bit quick. I got 11.2 lts in 6 hrs. But when I thought it would start to lose abv it dropped from 94-93% then to 91-90% that's when it stopped coming out all together and the parrot stopped showing the abv and started reading fore again. Did I do something wrong or is that the way it is ?

Also I have a few videos how do I go about posting them?

punkin · 17 January 2016 11:29PM

The parrot is not going to give you a reading if there is no vapour. In order to get it to run again you would have turned the reflux down a little and taken it off full reflux.

jez · 18 January 2016 12:00AM

I had the reflux condenser turned down to a trickle and the product condenser flowing a bit more than a trickle. Then I stopped all water to the reflux condenser still no flow so I shut the system down.

punkin · 18 January 2016 12:02AM

Were the plates still working mate? Was there reflux dripping from the reflux condensor? It must be something simple.

jez · 18 January 2016 12:07AM

Yeah mate it was still working fine.

Smaug · 18 January 2016 12:59AM

It is entirely possible that after the body of your keepers are done,,,it will stop running. If you have your dephlegmator water adjusted accordingly.

It does a really nice job of squeezing heads and tails.

Sounds like you got it all to me.

jacksonbrown · 18 January 2016 01:16AM

@jez said: Then I stopped all water to the reflux condenser still no flow so I shut the system down.

That's very weird. Even at the the end of the run you should've still had stinky water coming out after tails, it isn't VM.
Sounds like there was no vapour being produced for some reason. Exposed element perhaps?
Was it definitely boiling?

punkin · 18 January 2016 01:25AM

@jez said: Yeah mate it was still working fine.

This tells me that your reflux condensor was condensing all the vapour. I'd go so far as to suggest that it's possible you turned the valve the wrong way and increased the flow of coolant, or if not that you haven't dropped the flow of the coolant enough in any case. If the plates are still loaded, and the reflux ix dropping from the reflux condensor but not coming out the product condensor, either it's not getting through the reflux condensor or it's leaking out somewhere else in which case you'd smell it and see it.

jez · 18 January 2016 01:54AM

@punkin I had to have the flow to the reflux condenser to a dribble just to get the flow I had and it sat at that rate for 6 hrs no problem. The reflux condenser is so efficient when I wanted to start collecting the fore's after being in eq for 55 mins I had to stop all flow to the reflux condenser just to get Vapour to the product condenser then raised the flow to a trickle to get the desired output flow from the product condenser.

punkin · 18 January 2016 01:56AM

Ok, you haven't got the long condensor set up as the reflux one have you? Is the water input really cold?

jez · 18 January 2016 02:01AM

@jacksonbrown im using a 50lt keg and a gas burner.

@punkin
No mate I have the small condenser on the reflux side and water was from the mains supply

Johnboy · 18 January 2016 02:31AM

more power to over whelm then rc at a set flow is easier i found that way you are still refluxing unless you want to run in pot mode but the fact that it dropped 3 percent is a pretty good indication that you were in to tails anyway

jacksonbrown · 18 January 2016 02:40AM

Buggered if I know then.
With CM all you control is in that needle valve so maybe look at that but if you have confirmed zero flow to your RC and still nothing bypassing the RC then my mind is telling me 'error'. The scenario as described sounds impossible.
Maybe thermosiphoning in your coolant lines?? Obviously something is up though so there must be a missing piece of the puzzle.
It'll be interesting to know when you work it out.

punkin · 18 January 2016 03:38AM

@Johnboy said: more power to over whelm then rc at a set flow is easier i found that way you are still refluxing unless you want to run in pot mode but the fact that it dropped 3 percent is a pretty good indication that you were in to tails anyway

/\ This/\

jez · 18 January 2016 03:39AM

@jacksonbrown I will check the flow valve it was a bit dodgy the day before when I check to make sure I had no coolant leaks thanks :)

jez · 18 January 2016 06:14AM

Thanks all for your input I will get to the bottom of soon enough and will post if I find anything new :)

Moonshine · 18 January 2016 07:33AM

@jez said: Also I have a few videos how do I go about posting them?

Either put them up on YouTube yourself and post the links, or make the files accessible to me and I'll put them up on our StillDragon User Group YouTube Channel.

jez · 18 January 2016 08:51PM

@Moonshine how do I make them accessible to you?

Moonshine · 19 January 2016 07:20AM

@jez said: Moonshine how do I make them accessible to you?

Have them uploaded somewhere (e.g. one of the usual file sharing services) and give me the links for downloading, may as well be as hot as posting them to YouTube directly, if you have a Google account.

Anavrin · 19 January 2016 11:21PM

Just a quick comment, I've run a baby cd with a 2"section packed with SS Scrubbies, it's very easy to flood the packed section if you use a little too much power, and the only way to clear it is to turn off the power, did you notice a lot of liquid coming back down the CD section after power off?

When mine flooded I noticed an increase in collection speed which seemed very strange at the time, until I powered off then I could see it had flooded by the amount of liquid coming back from the packed section, maybe this happened!

jez · 22 January 2016 07:50AM

@Anavrin I had that problem at the very start it filled all 4 plates to the top and im sure it filled the packed section,i had to turn the burner to low and let it settle then build the heat up again. there wasn't much liquid after turning off just what was on the plates at the time..

jez · 2 February 2016 10:03AM

hi all just a quick note I have run the system again on the weekend doing a strip run of my first TPW and it didn't miss a beat so im assuming that the problem I had on my first run was an operator error. thanks for all your advice much appreciated

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First run of the Baby Crystal Dragon

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