FijiSpirits Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 Pics of your vac setup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southernhighlander Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 6 hours ago, Silk City Distillers said: Vacuum is fun. i have a gin still that runs the product condenser at -20f. I can easily distill at room temperature with no heat input at all to the boiler. That's Awesome! I agree, vacuum is fun and it opens up a lot of possibilities and the vacuum distillation process for beverage ethanol is a safer process, in my opinion. We've built some smaller short path ethanol reclamation stills with vacuum pumps. They reclaim ethanol from a mixture of oil and ethanol. The oil is extracted from the plant material at -80 C during the extraction process, so there is no water component in the oil ethanol mixture. The boiling point of the oil is very high, so the ethanol is easy to separate from the oil. I'm working on a design right now for a 500 gallon short path vacuum still for ethanol reclamation. It's a big jump in size from the small ones that we've built. Challenges can arise when going from small systems to large systems, but I believe we will be successful. Once we build the 500 gallon short path, we are going to start experimenting with beverage ethanol vacuum stills. The big industrial vacuum pumps are expensive, but the size needed (including installation) should cost less than the cost of a steam boiler including installation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk City Distillers Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 I'm working on a post about the vac setup that'll go up on SD first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MG Thermal Consulting Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 Silk City, Are you saying you are using a glycol chiller @ -20F to condense the product? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk City Distillers Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 VWR 1109 low temperature lab chiller, glycol at 50%, I need to use a gear pump at that temperature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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