Steam Generator

image

image

image

StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

«13

Comments

  • The one that you helped me with last year is still doing great. A lot simpler than the one above but still very functional.

    FC

  • @FloridaCracker said: The one that you helped me with last year is still doing great. A lot simpler than the one above but still very functional.

    FC

    Ah sure for the self contained steam.

    This one here is something that would feed live steam and so make up water has to be factored in.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • this one has a dernord 9kw 3-phase element in it and dual float switches for fill and safety shutdown...

    image

    steam generator.jpg
    185 x 800 - 36K
  • @CothermanDistilling, model (#) on the float switches?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • @cothermandistilling Watch out for that safety pressure release, its ilegal and could potentially blow and injure yourself. You need to get an alternate where it's piped to the ground.

  • Probably want a gauge or two on there? Temp and pressure? Also, switch the 1/2” triclamps for 1.5” triclamps. Pipe size is ok, just not the 1/2 gasket & clamps.

  • edited April 2019

    Would there be a need for a feedwater preheater, so that you are not adding cold water directly to the boiler (thermal shock to boiler elements)?
    You could run a bit of extraction steam through a coil in a feedwater preheater vessel. Or run a coil of feedwater through an extraction steam-filled chamber.

    Or you could run your boiler feedwater from the condenser cooling water outlet(s) - aka heat recovery.

    Or you could run your boiler feedwater and hot condenser cooling water through a counter-flow heat exchanger (tube and shell wort chiller)

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • @Kapea, preheating with recoved heat surely would be useful. But I don't think the system as designed will have an issue with any thermal shock. The feed/discharge ratio and the divorced fill well should keep things in equilibrium.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • @Smaug - here is the float switch

    US Liquid Water Level Sensor Stainless Steel Double Ball Float Switch Tank Pool @ eBay

    @richard, it is fine, thanks for offering your advice' I will not be anywhere near the device or near the 15pis/1-bar it operates at. I also have the same device on my steam jacket of my BainMarie still and am familiar with what happens when it releases.

    @jbierling - I will be adding this 0-5v pressuer guage, I have one on my bain-marie and like it....

    5V PRESSURE TRANSDUCER SENSOR STAINLESS STEEL 30-500PSI OIL GAS AIR 0.5-4.5V zhn @ eBay

    @Kapea - if you go back and read all the history on abbott's steam stripper you will see the science behind this, the separate feed chamber worked for him, and the feed will be through an orifice/needle valve tuned to be somewhat close but faster than the steam use rate.. the unit in this configuration is a total loss steam generator, no real way to recover heat with the situations it will be used in as is, but the one for the continuous still, as described in the other thread, will use bottoms heat recovery.

    This is designed to be a replacement for my 16.5KW keggle I use to heat molasses, it will take longer during actual cooking time, but have much less setup time and can run longer, so will still be a step forward.

  • edited April 2019

    @Smaug said: Kapea, preheating with recoved heat surely would be useful. But I don't think the system as designed will have an issue with any thermal shock. The feed/discharge ratio and the divorced fill well should keep things in equilibrium.

    Configure a shotgun condenser to be a divorced fill well - with boiler feedwater on the tube side, and product condenser cooling water out (hot out) feeding into the shell side of the divorced fill well - on its way back to the cooling water reservoir.

    How hard would it be to divert hot condenser water through a feedwater heater on its way back to the cooling water reservoir/radiator?

    Maybe not a lot to be gained where tap water/feed water is 85F, but in colder climes where tap water is in the 40s it might make sense. Heat recovery from the tail end of the process, reducing wasting heat to the atmosphere through a radiator.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • No doubt @Kapea. My comment was more about the steam generator itself suffering from any kind of thermal shock.

    If this little generator were used on a small stripper, then for sure the cooling medium for the secondary PCHX would optimally pass through a preheatHX prior to entering the fill valve. Have to engineer a bypass however because the feed rate for the valve compared to the feed needed for the PC would not at all be matched I wouldn't think?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • edited May 2019

    The PC cooling water out would flow through the feedwater heater at whatever rate you set for optimum ethanol vapor condensation in the PC. The hot cooling water would pass once through the shell side (unrestricted) on its way back to being dumped into the cooling water reservoir, at atmospheric pressure.

    The boiler feedwater is pressurized and regulated going to the boiler through the tube side of the feedwater heater.

    The flanges attached to the divorced fill well shown in your drawing above would become the inlet and outlet for hot cooling water from your PC - instead of the mounting brackets they appear to be currently.

    A shotgun condenser with torpedoes clamped onto both ends. Torpedoes modified with nipples to attach a feedwater liquid level sight glass.

    The temperature of your PC cooling water out would be the (theoretical) upper limit of what you could heat your boiler feedwater to.

    Steam boiler feedwater at 140F would help to stabilize steam output, and perhaps reduce latency, and/or hunting problems in the still boiler temperature,

    Or not.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • You will also need a steam boiler blowdown, or you will scale up your heating elements.

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • Might also want to make the spool longer to handle elements up to 25” long.

  • @jbierling said: Might also want to make the spool longer to handle elements up to 25” long.

    Sorry not sure why, when you can buy 3 phase elements that are mounted in a 2" triclamp. I'm running 6Kw ones(3 x 2Kw elements in a single 2" triclamp) that are just over 12" long. Smaug's design will allow 3 (& probably more) in the 12" base plate meaning I could run 18Kw - or more. Thats a lot of power in a small unit.....

  • edited May 2019

    Blow down valve is on the small can. Also, fresh water feed for the duration of use/operation on a 12" x 20" tank populated with tri clamp fittings would be no problem at all to pull elements for all manner of coiffing.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • @crozdog said: I'm running 6Kw ones(3 x 2Kw elements in a single 2" triclamp) that are just over 12" long.

    9kw ones are 600mm (23.6") long.

  • the link to the old Abbott's Steam Stripper thread, I find it helpful looking back sometimes...

  • Yeah, note that had 4 element ports in 8" as well. I'd say, the more the better in 12". You don't have to use them.

  • It would be possible to make @Smaugs design a bit more modular to allow for other TC spools to be added to increase the height of both the main chamber and the water inlet side.

    The amount of power in such a unit really depends on what you're going to be using it for

  • edited May 2019

    OK reworked some stuff.
    Added an additional heating element and also changed em over to 8kw/3phase.

    Increased the boiler can size to insure that the elements are more safely covered with water.

    Installed some heat recovery to preheat the system's feed water.

    Put a beer column. I do have reservations about the gravity drain (trap) holding solids and creating an obstruction. But there is a sight glass for viewing behavior. Just trying to eliminate a bottoms pump to hold cost down. Though ultimately,, if ya need a continuous unit ya should be able to get yourself a pump.

    image

    Steam Generator 2.0.gif
    607 x 715 - 45K

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • So purple is beer input and orange is the steam heating the column?

    What size column is this and how many plates? How many liters per hour feed rate are you expecting?

  • edited May 2019

    No, green is the beer feed.

    Orange is bottoms discharge.

    Bright purple is low wines.

    Dark blue is fresh water feed for the low wines HX.

    ASPEN won't calculate all of the parameters. Too tiny. But we are estimating 78 gallon per hour feed rate.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • What column size?

  • @grim said: What column size?

    4" The tees are 10" tall to help cope with foaming. I wanted 12" tall but so many have ceiling height restrictions.

    Plates have .5" perfs and 1" DCs. It's the active / inactive ratio on the plate that is the hardest to figure. The plates are the least expensive to do over so we'll go with this scaled version of the larger plate the we know works well.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • I like it... looks well thought out...

    Curious as to why the product condensers are horizontal, I was thinking vertical next to the column, to have less footprint and less additional pipe usage reaching up to the feed point.

    also interested in what the temp is though to be between the beer feed condensers and what bottoms output temp is...

  • edited May 2019

    Less foot print but more efficient with respect to heat "recovery".

    The bottoms HX pretty much has to be horizontal if gravity is employed to discharge bottoms.

    The slab is only 4' x 6' btw. The horizontal orientation really doesn't occupy that much more usable service space. Also, I could probably get things tighter on my piping if I drew in side reducers vs the concentric ones where applicable on the heat exchangers.

    image

    Steam Generator 2.0a.gif
    472 x 617 - 32K

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • yeah, bottoms hx horizontal...

    is there any metering of the feed at the injection point to keep the feed pipe under a few PSI of pressure to prevent boiling? (and if in practice, you were overheating the feed to steam/boiling, one could put a small condenser before to cool the 100C bottoms a bit while getting feedwater closer to 100C)

    regarding the product HX's, was thinking the inlet feed path after the two condensers had a lot of dead space, restricting the speed at which you can change feed temp, and vertical on these might reduce that.

  • The big system has a temp monitor at the beer feed that controls the pump. Feed rate/Pump speed is set to inject at 173 F.
    This little rig here is more bare bones. Though the lay out is all predicated upon the big system.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • So basically monitor injector temps to efficiently flash alcohol and monitor bottoms temps to insure alcohol has flashed. Pretty basic.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

Sign In or Register to comment.