Hey guys. I went ahead and ended up with My 3" stainless still. The reflux column is 1.5m high of stainless scrubbers, a copper catalyst mesh and insulated. It sits on an insulated 50lt keg with 2 x 2400w internal stainless elements. I orginally ran it as VM only. In the search for better heads compression I adopted a lm / boka style head. Although in my opinion, Running the vapour management at low power and nearly fully closed was as good. Maybe a little slower.
I couldn't fit it in the garage so modified it to utilise a " Thor's hammer condenser " to save height and minimise over cooling the condensate. I was originally worried about smearing as their is no angle but haven't noticed any detriment. In the picture I show a stainless steel 2" shotgun condenser with an adapter to a 1/2" copper pipe. This was the first time I used this set up. It pulled 5lt of 92% in about 35 minutes. Great rate but not aezeo. Normally I run it with a 1" stainless gate valve to a 800mm 1/2" over 3/4" copper liebig with turbulator in jacket. This knocks down everything even in pot still mode at 4800w with no huffing etc and minimal mains water flow. With the liebig however I can not go over a 1:1 reflux ratio so am limited to about 4lt 93% per hour at 4800w or 1.8lt per hour at 95-96%. This is on a spirit run at about 30-40% in the boiler. A wash run at 10% yields about 1-2% less.
Anyway enough of the updates and on to the questions. I was wondering if these figures are about right. I was actually hoping from more from this still. I have tried very tight packing, tight packing and looser packing. More loose seems better at higher power and vice versa. I thought I would easily be able to run the full 4800w for aezeo. Evidently not... I have two 3500w elements on their way that I don't think I will even be able to use!
So I would love to see a comparison of what people are using and achieving please.
IE column style: bubbler, scrubbers, lava rock, marbles etc
Power input as close as you know
Insulation
Take off rate and percentage
Boiler size and percentage
Column height
EDIT : MISSED THE LAST BIT OF THIS POST SORRY