Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

I recently purchased a 4 inch, 4 plate glasser and 4 inch RC. What I dont have yet is a 4 inch packed section. I do have a 1.2 meter long, 2 inch packed section filled from top to bottom with copper mesh. Could I temporarily use the 2 inch packed section on the 4 inch glasser with any success or would I just be wasting my time. Im only playing around with a sugar wash just to get the hang of things. Cheers.

Yes it will work fine, the actual power handling of a 4" packed section far exceeds a 4" bubblers usual running power, the bubbler should be able to run the 2" easily, it might even be better overall than one half the legnth in 4"

Most ppl have dramas with height so the "short fat" packed section is the best option as it dosent require size changes and works better for a given height

Only drama would be refluxing at the top, unless you have an extra 4x2 reducer handy to put the rc at the top

Thanks for the info.
I have a few 4x2 reducers and will be putting the packed section between the glasser and the RC. I know what ill be doing for most of tomorrow...100 litres of stripped ujsm ready and waiting. Thanks again.

I think you'll have issues with vapour speed. Pushing the same amount of vapour through 2" instead of 4" will probably result in flooding. My 2" bubbler runs about 4 times slower than my 4" bubbler (cross sectional area of 4" is 4 times a greater than 2").

I've never done it so don't know for sure but I would also reckon you would have flooding issues. It takes a certain amount of power to keep those plates loaded so you can't back off too much.

Only one way to know for sure I guess...

Good luck and report back how it goes.

It all depends on what you are using for the heat source, for years I just used a 3 ring burner and found all of my plates on my 4" bubbler wouldn't load fully. It was even worse when I put on my 500ml packed section for making neutral.

I decided to make my own BD747 burner out of 3/4" copper and man what a difference it made to doing a run, all the plates loaded fully even when doing neutral with the packed section. As far as heatup times on heatup I run the BD747 on around 40psi then for the run drop it to 10psi then tinker with the psi setting to get the plates loaded.

Making that BD747 out of copper and the unit is only 6" long is the best thing since sliced bread as the power source for my still and the best part the roar of it working drowns out the noise of the 12 volt pump running the cooling water :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:

Now if you are using elements then I can't give any advice as I've never used em.

Cheers Bryan

I finally got around to trying the 2" column today...better late than never. It was a nice day here in Adelaide so I decided to use everything I had and do it outside. I needed a step ladder to get to the top. I ran the still on one 2200 element and power controller at 100% (didn't really need the controller) Rather than use my 4" RC I went with a little 2" one that I had made for a T500 mod, and that was the only drawback. I needed a bit more heat to get the plates to load better but the RC was struggling, especially when trying to hold it in full reflux. In the end it worked out ok and I had no flooding issues. I think even with the 4" RC it still would not have flooded. I was just messing around and have never run the still in this configuration but I've now got 7 litres of 94%, in 300ml cuts to play with tomorrow.