I got a neat little 240v plug in submersible pump from Bunnings the other day they were getting rid of for $20 to make way for new stock.
The specs are:-
- 250w
- Max flow rate 6000litres/hour (100litres per min)
- Max submergence 5m
- Max head 6m
- Max operating pressure 0.6 bar, 8.5 PSI, 0.06 MPA
It made short work of transferring 70 odd litres of wash from the fermenter into the still. Better than the pipe sucking and bucket bailing I used to do....
Now I’m going to have a play around to see if I can get it to work to recirculate cooling water to the stills via a couple of tanks.
So far I have a 200 odd litre drum and a 400 odd litre tank.
I’m still not exactly sure the final placement of the tanks but initially I’ll be putting them inside the shed within a couple of metres of the still.
I was looking at having the 200 litre drum as the coolant return point from the condensers, with a simple overflow pipe near the top to transfer the water to the lid of the 400 litre tank (its a bit lower than the 200 litre drum proposed overflow pipe). The pump I was going to insert into the other end of the bigger tank through the access lid. The pot still condenser will be just above the pump level, and the top of the vm column is around 2.65m above ground.
I haven’t got much of a clue about pumps, pressure losses etc.
I have researched a few posts on recirculation systems for cooling but still have questions:-
- Will this pump be powerful enough for the job?
- My reflux coil I made out of ¼ inch copper, is it worth trying with the pump system or should I rebuild a ¾ coldfinger with 3/8 coil instead?
- Can you use standard garden hoses in the system and still get the flow right?
- Do you need to have backpressure lines and valves to make this work properly?
- How hot does the water normally get for stripping v spirit/vm runs? This pump has some sort of thermal cut out if the transfer liquid gets too hot...