Modernity

Thank you Meerkat. That is a huge reply and a few sleepless nights to answer your questions. Thank you very much.

@meerkat, great feedback thank you. I'm processing your thoughts. The perforated trays are a beast of the thing to get my head around. I was considering 10% hole surface area but are more than happy to go for 6%. I can always make those holes larger if necessary later. I'm looking at hanging or truncated downcomers. This was the least fouling design I could come up with for gain-in distilling. With the down comers covering between 1/3 of the width tray area in the double downcomer configuration and 2/5's in the single downcomer configuration. I was planning to laser cut the trays out of 4mm copper TIG welded into a stackable interlocking configuration. The plan was to counter sink the backside of the 6mm holes (150 per tray) to reduce back pressure. I'm not sure how to work out your downcomer residence time of 10 seconds given the feed rate of 420-480 litres per hours. I can use the 'orifice plate in downcomer to hold a dynamic seal on the liquid in the downcomer', could you give me some guidance on what you think the surface area of the downcomer openings should be to hold the 10 second residence time? Also, I was thinking 30mm height of the weirs. Your thoughts? Cheers

I'm currently building a whisky column (on a budget) at the moment. The plan is to distill grain in. I am aiming for a feed rate of between 420-480 litres per hour. I had the main copper column is fabricated in 4mm copper. It's made up of two 2400mm sections. Overall it measures 5400mm / 300mm. And will hold 12-14 trays? I am aiming for a 70-73% abv spirit. I'm planning the trays will be perforated with 6mm? holes and 50mm? downcomers. If anyone has advice on the percentage of hole area to surface area I should be aiming for that would be helpful. I've just managed to find second hand a 3000mm / 110mm heat stainless steel exchanger. The tube stack is 15 x 12.5mm. I plan to counter flow the spent wort (360-420 litres per hour at 95+ degrees celsius) scavenged from the column sump via mono pump to preheat the incoming fresh wort. I'm not sure what to expect the temperature of the fresh wort to be coming out of the exchanger at but I'm guessing the heat exchanger is oversize. So if someone who is more clever than I knows how to work that out I would appreciate your math skills. The next on the list of things to do is to spec the size of a second steam feed heat exchanger to boast the fresh wort temperature from the heat recovery exchanger before it is delivered into the top of the column. Feel free to add any of your suggestions here as well. The demethanizer will be 3000mm / 100mm column packed with ceramic structured packing. I haven't done any drawings that are worth sharing.

Thank you for clarifying the confusion. I was starting to think I was living in an alternative reality.

I consider myself told, thank you.

Are you absolutely sure? I think you mean that 96.63% is the azeotropic limit.

This is great thread. I've just started building out a continuous column. The stripping section is 300mm/4800mm copper tube holding 14 perforated trays. That then feeds into the factionating section which is two X 200mm/6000mm copper columns with structured packing. There is reboilers at the bottom of stripping section and the first of the 200mm columns. I hope to have a feed a rate of around 1000 litres per hour. I'm still unsure of the sizing of the condensers I'll need at the various stages, there is about five in the process to make this thing work. My target is to get better than 96% abv. For the guys getting their head around how it all works here is the best video I've found so far.

Hi Julius, All the local spud farmer supply contracts to potato chip, fries and supermarkets. All the growers wash on-farm. Also, our local soil is a red volcanic earth that washes off well with little to no stones.

We have just started the build out on all the gear to do this. The key to the development of the idea was finding the right way to cook the spuds. The more I thought about how a potato distillery would work the more I realised that when the potatoes arrive in the distillery speed was the number one consideration. Nobody wants to spend 3/4 of the day processing spuds everyday of the season. A 20t/hour mill feed straight into a pressure cooker. Through a heat exchanger and into jacketed fermenters for further cooling for yeast pitching. Our pressure cooker has a high powered mixer that will move the volume around for even cooking.

I found that cooker today. 3500 litres, 125 PSI steam jacket and 50 PSI/vacuum shell. With a 500KW steam boiler we should be able to Pressure Cook 2000kgs of smashed potatoes in no time at all.

Heading to Denver for the ADI Con and I am keen to check out a few of your local distilleries, of course. Can anyone direct me to any distilleries that are running continuous column setups? Thank you in advance.

Many thanks, MadMacaw.

Jeffers, head over to Amoretti.com. They will overwhelm you with flavour options and possibly make your brain explode, mine certainly did.

We are looking around for used 5 & 10 Gallon barrels. I found a company offering 45% discount on all their barrels. That has me worried. It sounds too good to be true? oakwoodbarrels.com What do you think? Does anybody have experience with Oak Wood Barrel Company out of Lexington KY? What were they like to deal with? Is it me OR does this look shonky?

Thank you Indyspirits. My understanding is that the spuds are 80% water straight out of the ground. That's 800 litres or 211 Gallons. We plan to lift them from the ground and then process them directly into a potato washer/scrubber leaving the muck in the paddock. At the distillery they would be passed through a sieve plate (similar to an over sized sausage mincer). They would be cooked with or without direct steam (not sure how much extra water we will need to add yet) before enzymatic conversion. If a liquefaction enzyme is used, we are told that we can get away without adding any additional water. That would be a pretty neat idea. The spuds would be left in the ground for less time than an eating spud as we don't need a thick skin for transport and retail sale. As a result there would be a lot less fiber (so we are told by the growers).