Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi Guys,
Thought I better introduce myself. Long time basic stiller with super reflux and t500. Looking to go bigger and badder with a 4" reflux. Where should I post to rack the genius brains?

Welcome mate :greetings-waveyellow:

You can post your questions here, that's fine :handgestures-thumbupleft:

woodduck wrote:Welcome mate :greetings-waveyellow:

You can post your questions here, that's fine :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:text-+1: hi mate, welcome to the forum.

Welcome to AD mate.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Welcome, great place here with lots of info and members willing to help.

Welcome here mate, what sort of spirits have you been making?

Thanks for the welcoming, I only distill neutrals. Normally just run the T500 and carbon filter the whole lot once watered down to 40%. I know now it's not the best method after reading heaps and heaps on here. My aim is to build a 4" boka from stainless steel. I have absolutely everything here ready to go but don't want to start the build until I get feedback from you knowledgeable guys. I have been stilling for 6 years odd now but don't have the time to do smaller runs. I will post a pic of my boka plan and see what you guys think.

Here is a pic of my proposed build.

Looks good. Could you use scrubbers up around your condenser instead of saddles? They might be more efficient and would need to be pulled apart to get in there but probably worth the effort seeing as you'd only need to put them in there once. You'd be able to fill more of the space with scrubbers and you'd only get so many saddles in there, with less contact between saddles and condenser.

Are the saddles in column 1 there because they're easier to clean than scrubbers and are expected to get mankier with more tails due to the position in the column?

Not sure why you've got plate 4 with a centering cone, would have thought it'd be more efficient (no dead space) to just have the whole column filled. Also, is plate 2 removable? If not, how are you going to clean your packing in between plates 2 and 4?

Hi Db,
Yes plate 2 would be removable as it would sit on top of the s/s saddles. I'm happy to use scourers around the condenser. Will s/s scourers be sufficient? Reason I thought of the centering cone is I was worried about the falling liquid running down the sides of the column. Yes the reason for the saddles in column 1 is because I thought it would be easier to clean and prevent choking. I can make the small hole in the cone 70 or 80 mm if you think that would work better? Do you think the volume of the holes in the plates would be sufficient?

The centring cone wont make much if any difference overall, you would have to be very unlucky to have the packing arrange itself so that there was a clear path straight down the side of the column

Given that you are in Vic, scoria is not a bad choice of medium vs scrubbers, its very cheap down there and many will argue it dose an equal or better job, many just use fresh stuff instead of cleaning it as its $35 a trailer load down there

Having 3 different mediums in the column will be inefficient as the column will have to balance out to the "weakest" one, also having "dead space" between sections just wastes height that could have packing in it (top of column 2 in your pic)

It would be much cheaper to have the packed section as a single 1.4m length (or as much height as you can get into your stilling area), those triclamps aint cheap and attaching them aint the easiest thing unless you have the tig available to do it properly yourself

Why all the plates? and the different hole szes? The one with 5mm holes would come close to loading at full tilt in a 4" packed column

If you just want to retain the packing some woven SS mesh is much easier to use and way less restrictive

Each unnecessary restriction adds to the amount of power you have to use and raises the the temp of the boiler, which in turn means to achieve the same level of separation (quality vs smearing), you have to reduce output speed. I am only talking very small percentages here, but given how many times its likely to be run, becomes hours/days of your life over a span of years of runs