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Showing results for tags 'steam boiler'.
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Hi there, I am a newbie, both to this forum and to distillation in general. And I am about to set forth on one of the biggest ventures of my life: to build my own distillery from ground-up. I design things and my friend will do the metal works. My friend seems very sure of what he will be doing. But I am not. So I am here asking for your help! (Why from ground-up, you may ask. Well, a short answer is: I couldn't find any ready-built distilling equipment suitable for the place where we put our distillery.) I've just spent the last two months laboring on numbers and drawing, going from one equation to another and back. The whole process was much more convoluted than presented below as I didn't know much from the start. But here it is: 1. 500 liter still (132 gallons). This is the starting point. 2. It requires 115K BTU to bring 500 liters of 60/40 mixture of water and ethanol (40% abv) to boiling point and 755K BTU to vaporize them ALL (latent heat). (I don’t do strip run, only still run with 40abv spirit). Hence, a total of 870000 BTU is required to vaporize all 500 liters of this mixture. 3. One distillation run will take 8 hours (I just pick a number to fit into a day of work). Hence, a steam source of 109K BTUh (BTU in one hour) is needed. 4. The steam will come from a wood/coal-fired steam boiler. I did a search on “heat content of wood” and pick this number, 12MMBTU/cord (3.625m3). From there, it would need 0.03 m3 (1 ft3) of wood to generate 109K BTU. The firebox, therefore, must be big enough to burn, at least, this much wood in one hour. This is the easiest requirement ? 5. I design a firebox, and blower and secondary combustion chamber, etc…, to burn three times that much, i.e: burning 0.9 m3 (3 ft3) of wood in one hour to generate 327K BTUh. Assume that only 70%, or 229K BTUh, of this heat acctually goes into making steam. 6. Latent heat of water is 2141 BTU/kg. With 229K BTU, the boiler can generate 107kg steam in 1 hour, equivalent to 6.8 BHP (1 boiler horse power = 15.65 kg/h of steam). Now come the confusing parts: 7. Jason Funk at Hughes Machinery states in his Basic Boiler presentation that for vertical firetube boilers, like the one I am building, every BHP needs 3 ft2 of heating surface. So my boiler would need 6.8 BHP x 3 ft2/BHP = 20.4 ft2, or 1.9 m2, of heating surface. I’ll add another 50%, bring the total of heating surface to 2.85 m2, to be on the safe side. 8. I omitted the actual calculation with the heat transfer equations and went with an estimation from CheCalc.com and the Titan Metal Fabrication websites to derive the length and surface for the immersion coil in the still. If all 500 liters in the still are water, hence 489 kg, then I would need 0.78 m2 of cooling surface to raise the water temperature from 20C to boiling point in 1 hour. I plan to use 22.1mm diameter copper tube and that brings me to a total 11.3 m of tubes. I’ll make it 20 m, to be safe again. 9. Last part: Condensing tubes. I plan to use the same amount of tubes that are in the still, i.e.: 20 m2 of 22.1mm diameter copper tube. As said, I have gone back and forth countless times between these numbers, checked them against multiple formulas and/or website (which I am glad to provide if asked). At this point, I am very much comfortable with them. But again, I have never done this before. There is still a lingering doubt in my mind, of course. I will (forever) be grateful to anyone who has the patience and/or knowledge to examine these numbers for me. If they are indeed bogus numbers, I really don't want to spend a couple grand on them before knowing... Thank you! Khoi -
We're currently going through an expansion and i'm sure alot of you have gone through this so I thought it might be a good question to throw out there. Boiler will be heating: 300 gallon still, one 4 plate whiskey column, one 20 vodka column plate column hybrid still one 10bbl or about 310 gallon mash tun one 17.7 bbl or 550 gallon hot liquor tank We also wanted to have room for a future stripping still or a continuous to strip. We are getting quotes on 1.3 million btu input low pressure cast iron boiler thoughts? Should we look at bigger boilers to be safe or do you think we should be fine? Thanks
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New high pressure 93% efficiency, 15HP natural gas boiler. Never been fired runs at an output of 300-630 MBH at a pressure of 150 Psi, 3.89" in water column with a max of 14" water column, and a condensate unit is included. Boiler is located in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. May be possible to ship to US would have to look into it closer. Asking $ 22,000.00 or any fair offer.
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These Boilers were purchased by me off Craigslist for installation in my new Distillery. The Nat Gas Utility to the building is insufficient to support them so I am going a different direction to suit my needs. The Thermaflo unit originates out of an Oregon Brewery that out-grew this boiler. To the best of my knowledge it is fully functional. We have air pressure tested it and replaced the only damaged item, the condensate loop. The Burnham Independence unit came to me from Colorado Springs out of a large Victorian home. It was put into service in 2008 and was then removed last year when the home was gutted for renovation. I was told that the place sat vacant for approx 6 months. So this unit should only have about 2.5 years of service on it. We have also air pressure tested this unit and to the best of my knowledge it works just fine. $3600.00 for Both or as below. SPECIFICS: Thermaflow GSA 150N IP Steam 94 MBH 392 sq ft 150,000 BTU Input Natural Gas Steam 15 PSI Water 50 PSI Max Temp 250 Deg. F $1800.00 Burnham Independence SIN9LNIP-LED 280,000 BTU Input Natural Gas Steam 725 sq ft Steam 174,000 BTU Output Water 201,000 BTU Output $2000.00 BOTH for $3600 BUYER TO COLLECT OR ARRANGE SHIPPING AT HIS/HER EXPENSE CALL JOHN AT K J WOOD DISTILLERS,LLC 303-517-7697
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Hello, I'm in St. Louis and I'm looking around trying to find a used, nat-gas powered steam boiler that is in good working order. And obviously it needs to be relatively inexpensive to fit in my budget. Everything I've seen is $12-20+k. I'm looking for something in the 750,000-1,000,000 BTU range to heat my 500 gallon mash cooker and 200 gallon still. Up to 15 PSI (low/atmospheric pressure) is what my jacketed kettles are rated to. If it came with a blow down tank (if necessary) and/or a condensate return system, well that would be a huge plus. If you have a boiler, or maybe you're looking to size up and need to get rid of your current one, or if you know where one is, please let me know! Feel free to contact me off the forum at: David@still630.com Also, if you're in or around St. Louis area, and you know of a reputable, reliable, and cost-effective company to do the process piping for the boiler lines, please shoot me an email and let me know! Thanks, Dave
