hillzabilly wrote:When building I would advise on doing a sacrificial run of alcohol or at least vinegar or citric acid solution first ta clean out any shit from construction and make sure everything works ,before putting any good stuff thru it,and if there is any probs like leaks you can sort them out befor it cost you a load of good stuff.cheers hillzabilly ;-)
hillzabilly wrote:Nice work,I put about 400gr roll of copper mesh in mine ta help with sulpide removal and taste over all,nothin like haveing a bit more copper with all that stainless steel, I've stuck a small roll of copper mesh into the 2" riser, however will remove this for further runs and replace it with a 4" roll in the extension just above the thumper before the first plate.
how much power ya throwing at it ,I run 3600wt with mine on a 80lt boiler, Was playing around with different power settings trying to find the sweet spot, started at 3000W and moved up to 3600W, however I found I had to power down twice throughout the run to re prime the downcomer as the boil vapour just blew through it (ended up just leaving it after the 3rd time, didnt seem to affect the run just the amount of liquid transferred from the boiler to the thumper). Got a few hypotheses as to why this happened that I want to test out.
1st being the depth of liquid held in the thumper was greater than I allowed for in the downcomer cup depth, going to try a smaller liquid level for the thumper on the next run.
2nd the copper mesh in the riser tube restricted airflow following a puke.
3rd the liquid in the downcomer cup was boiling throughout the run.
4th riser and downcomer are quite close to one another, vigorous bubble activity may have affected the downcomers ability to draw liquid down.
It could be either of these or a combination having additive effects.
Gonna make a few changes to see how it reacts
hillzabilly wrote:Have ya got detail of the top of ya riser,is there a good gap between the riser and the top of the bubble cap,
Fairly decent amount of clearance, the bubble cap screws down but stops a few mm shy of the nut
also I would have slotted the bubble cap instead of cutting out the little vee's ya have ,for me the slots or vee's area should be equal to the area of 2inch circle because thats what ya riser is I've cut more smaller vee's in the end of the bubble cap to correct this, no calculations carried out just cut and continue ,these are both points of resistance ta vapour if the area is too small ,it puts more pressure on the downcomer,I would also try a smaller cup on the down comer If you don't mind me asking whats the thinking behind making a smaller down comer cup? Do you mean diameter wise or length wise? I would think that making a shorter 2" cup would reduce its ability to resist pressure from the vapour trying to pass through.
I'm looking at it this way, the boiler exerts an equal pressure on both the downcomer and the riser at the same time. The down comer cup when primed allows me to direct the vapour up into the riser as it is now the path of least resistance. As the run continues and the thumper starts to fill, the liquid bath depth increases it also increases the back pressure on the down comer cup, when the depth of the bath finally exceeds the depth of the down comer cup it will now divert flow through the cup.
In order for the down comer to correctly work I would need to ensure that the cup depth is greater than the thumper bath depth.
Hope that makes sense. Does that sounds right?
.I ended up doing half a dozen runs with mine, makeing adjustments to get it working with sugar wash before doing rum ,wich is well known ta be prone ta pukeing problems Ha yeah kinda wished I did this now but had the rum wash sitting there staring at me,another option is ta strip wash and then use the thumper on spirit runs with 50% wash and 50% feints from your last run. :text-+1: to removeing the mesh from the riser another possible point of restriction.cheers hillzabilly :handgestures-thumbupleft:I've pissed the copper roll off, going to replace it with 4" copper roll just before the 1st plate
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