Bigadz

Does there need to be any temperature control on the water supply at the beginning? if I go straight from my reservoir to the final condenser the water is pretty cold in the cooler months. So I assume you bypass the danfoss valve for loading plates, then when they are stacked you enable the danfoss valve, but the water going in to the final condenser wont start heating up until vapour is aloud to pass. How do you manage that or have I missed something?

Really appreciating the comments! The input temp going into the dephleg was something I picked up from @Southernhighlander and I think @clearwaterbrewer with the use of a Danfoss thermostatic valve and I am lead to believe from reading up on it that it's how some of the big still manufacturers control control there stills. Danfoss valve on PC cooling input, thermoprobe on PC output, PC output to dephleg input. I supposed the idea would generating another constant in the cooling equation and altering the variables like reflux ratio that way, but I'm any sort of expert on this stuff and may have misunderstood.

Many thanks @DrDistillation. I have read the adi link you posted but not the stilldragon link, I will read that and come back with more. I'll see what I can do for coolant temp measurements, as we are on city water and in Melbourne it's particularly cold at the moment the water temps are quite low, however Melbourne on a good day can swing temperature quite significantly so if there's a compensatory control for that it would be interesting. I guess one immediate thing I'm thinking of for a proportional valve is what kind of Cv I should be looking for? This is something that confuses me a bit. Really appreciate the response!

G'day from Australia! I've messaged a few people on various forums but thought it may be worthwhile to ask the question here for others in the same boat as me to gain any insights. First up, I wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that has gone before me and left a tonne of valuable knowledge through comments and posts on the forum. I have learnt so much from everyone. I am in the development/tuning stages of my distillation process and trying to drive repeatability and consistency in my product as I get ready to launch here in Australia, for me, until I can do this without fail I don't want to open the doors. I make my own spirit for Gin primarily, but also some brandies, with an intention of whisky down the track. I have been reading up on RC/Deph control and have been umming and ahhing on one of the Danfoss setups or building a PID controller. I'm technical enough to do it and have some experience with automation, but the more I read the more I'm getting confused, and I'm not sure if there is a "definitive" way or a best method to go about setting up a pid or a danfoss. I am looking for a method that requires minimal manual intervention as I firmly believe there has to be a better way than tweaking needle valves. My current coolant source is municipal water into a surge tank with pump into the condensers. The pump feeds into a Y split that goes to PC and RC cooling inputs with a needle valve on each condenser input and then both outputs are plumbed together and drained off. At this stage the water is not recirculated. I have 2 stills setup in this fashion, a 230L steam jacketed boiler with a 6" 8 plate column, and a smaller 4" plated column that I run on either a 110L milk can boiler or 35L pot boiler for testing. All are Dephlegmator for reflux and shot gun for PC. With all of the reading it seems a few things are common for PID: A PID with proportional control A proportional ball valve controls either input or output flow Temperature is taken from either the Deph coolant output or from the deph housing itself around mid to 2/3 the way up In the Danfoss setup, apparently it's as simple as water input plumbed to PC, Danfoss valve measures and sets water temp going into deph and thats pretty much it. From what I've read many use PID and/or a danfoss? Are there any resources around the best way to build or some general best practise stuff that I should be looking at to weigh up my options? The Danfoss set up is desirable I supposed from a "simplicity" and potentially a safety point of view, but I imagine a PID would be better for setting a program and getting the most out of a system. Really appreciate any input, and if I haven't been clear enough or need to add some information please let me know! Cheers!