Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

I ran the 500 this morning and all seemed to be running as normal.
Top temp at 79.5 or there abouts and bottom temp about 57
Normally I will get between 3.5 and 4 litre @ 93% and during the last 500ml the top temp will start to climb.
Today however, at the 3 litre mark the top temp dropped so I raised the bottom temp, this started the top temp to jump and I got a massive surge of output.
I couldnt control the temps from there on so I gave up.
The only thing that I changed was to add a small amount of copper mesh to stop the saddles dropping out and to fill the 1 inch gap in the column.
Could the mesh have caused this???

Cant really help much Andy. I looked through some records Ive kept and all that tells me is that I usually run a couple of degrees cooler than you do top and bottom. ( or my thermometers are reading slightly differently). My thought is that you may have had some sort of build up of product in the top of the column, flooding is the term that springs to mind. Did you try going back to total reflux for a few mins and letting everything settle down a bit before trying again. Not sure but it could have helped.
SBB

I did crank the water flow till the temps came down then adjusted the flow to allow the temps to climb.
But it was imposable to control, temps were either way too high or too low.
Every time the temps went back up I got a surge of hot output.

Hi Andy

Just wondering if you found the solution to the problem you where having with the temperature control and surging issues. I have just recently aquired a T500 and I am having very similar issues.

Matty

I just removed the copper mesh and flattened it rather than having it bunched up and its been all good since.

Mine did something like that first time i used it ... Had a quick read of the destructions and it called it surge boiling and the fix was to drop a pot scrub or two in the boiler .. I did that and never had that problem again ...

Hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread Andy.
I have a question regarding packing the T500 column. I haven't read anyone doing this, but I would like to know everyone's thoughts. What I do know is, the copper saddles are an important part of the T500, and copper being an important part of the distilling process in general. My question is, could we use an additional packet of copper saddles, and less of the ceramic saddles to pack the T500 column, would this have any effect or benefit on the final product...?

My thought is not to mix half and half of the ceramic and copper saddles, just an addition packet of copper, as there is far more ceramic in the column than copper.