I just noticed that you have 2 fairly major crimps in your condensor coil.
First under the cap and the other where the inner and outer coils transition.
If you sort that out it will probably improve greatly.
...increase my capacity to remove more heat by:
...
- Add a cold finger
- Replace 3/8 coil with a jacket condenser and 1/4 coil (I‘ll upload a sketch of this if required)
...
“Am I achieving maximum heat transfer potential / extracting the expected heat energy out through the coil given my coolant flow rates and power input?” --- I never figured out what this should be or how to work it out. Without the cold finger, the coil is still not sufficient to knock back very much power. With the cold finger, I am now removing 2-3 heat as previously (approx 13oC at 5l p/m!)
If the answer to this key question is NO, then I probably need to address these issues to achieve the coils maximum heat transfer potential:
- Vapour passing over the coil too quickly (I have already tried to address this through packing and wrapping the coil with copper - not an ideal solution). --- I widened the vapour path to negate the venturi effect and still do require one wrap of copper mesh at the bottom of my coil
- Spacing between coils and the condenser head wall might be too widely spaced (or perhaps even to tight?), resulting in vapour not making contact with the coil --- putting in the cold finger has increased contact area and reduced the large cavity through the middle of the coil
- Issues with reduced thermal conductivity due to dirty or badly oxidized inner wall of condenser coil --- inconclusive/unresolved
- Issues with reduced thermal conductivity due to turbulence / air pockets as a result of kinks in the coil --- inconclusive/unresolved
If the answer to this key question is YES, then I probably need to reduce the amount of heat going into the condenser head by:
- Lowering vapour temperature (I am already more or less achieving azeotropic point so not sure how this is going to help my spirit runs)
- Reducing power (not a preferred option!) --- even dropping the power to 1000w made no difference; so this was not the issue
- Reduce the amount of heat energy passing up through the column walls into the walls of the condenser head (is this correct physics?) (possibly isolating the column, condenser head and the coil from one another) --- inconclusive/unresolved
- Enable excess heat (but not vapour) to escape through the top of the column by adding extra vent holes (as suggested)? --- If anything, my current air vent is smaller than what it was. Inconclusive/unresolved
Or, increase my capacity to remove more heat by:
- Is this where using colder coolant water would sit? Again, I am not sure how this would be the case as I would assume cooler input water just means cooler output water. Does water become less efficient at cooling as it warms up? If so, is there a threshold that you should sit below? Please explain if I am incorrect. --- Coolent temp made no noticeable difference
- Bigger coil --- duh!
- Add a cold finger --- this has definitely helped
- Replace 3/8 coil with a jacket condenser and 1/4 coil (I‘ll upload a sketch of this if required)
- Increased water flow ( I can already achieve 5l p/minute which hasn’t always proved to solve my problem)
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