Direct steam injection

[Okperioimplant]

Doeas anyone have any experience with direct steam injection heaters for hot water or mash heating?

[Swede]

Works good from what I hear. If applied correctly it can work pretty well for mashing and distilling, but most use a steam jacketed boiler rather than a steam injected boiler. Some information on steam injection...

[mattabv]

Moning once again, Direct steam (low pressure) injection works great. Be sure there are adequate injectors to heat your mash. One past experience proved adding an additional injector save 20% of the usual time needed for an avg. mash of 1 ton grain.

Matt

[coop]

I have never used anything but direct steam injection. I designed my own 237 gallon mash kettle with two offset and apposing jets. Works supper and the direct injection burns off un wanted chlorine as it supper heats the mash. Coop

[mattabv]

Ours had one jet and added a second above in same direction as mixer/aggitator. Concur with the rest

[Okperioimplant]

so the consensus is that Direct Steam Injection is viable to the process of distilling. Is it done on mashing, distilling, or can it be used quite well on both?

[mattabv]

Well my opinion would suggest steam injection for mashing and a steam jacket for distilling. my opinion and experience totally controlable and as long as you are using l/p steam to mash your supply is also available to cook.

[Stills Crossroad]

I have been investigating direct steam heating of the mash and from what my boiler people are telling me is that if I wanted to make the steam safe to inject into the mash that I would have give up the buffers that are carried with the steam that would protect the condensate return system,and the jackets and piping would break down more quickly. I run a 3,000,000 btu boiler powering a 30 BBL brewhouse.

[Jedd Haas]

Stills Crossroad, I think you would also need a steam filter. Such as http://www.mcmaster.com/#steam-filters/=m1etjb

Perhaps you could instead set up a heat exchanger powered by your existing boiler, that turns clean water into steam.

[Bier Distillery]

two offset and apposing jets. Works supper and the direct injection burns off un wanted chlorine as it supper heats the mash. Coop

Just mashing, or distilling as well?

Do you use a CIP ball or similar on the output ports in the tank? Any worries about the mash clogging the port?

[fldme]

Continuous distillation is done by steam injection.

[Natrat]

A Coffey-type continuous still (or derivation thereof) uses steam injection. There are other types of continuous still that do NOT use steam at all.

[Dehner Distillery]

If set up correctly dreck steam injection is very efficient.

And you don't have any condensate return lines back to your boiler.

[Hewnspirits]

Just curious....Super heated (250F) steam injected into the still where the high proof vapors exist isn't a safety concern? I understand that it would be introduced into the boil kettle but my gut is telling me that to inject it anywhere that the vapors exist could be a little exciting.

[fldme]

You never use super heated steam.

[Jake Holshue]

So just a heads up, we have a direct steam in our mash tank/reaction tank. And we have undersized boilers, so when they are heating up more steam we have a loss of power/pressure and we had an issue with mash back flowing into our steam lines! We fixed the problem by adding a one way valve on the steam line going in. I recommend this for all direct steam systems in case of severe malfunction.

Once we added the valve it works great, you will need a different boiler treatment as regular boiler treatment is not good to add to your mash, ask your boiler chemical rep for the right stuff.

[CountySeat]

For those that use steam injection for distilling: do you use it for stripping only or for a spirit run? My understanding is that with many steam injected set ups, you can only reach a certain proof (140-150) because the steam that is being injected necessarily adds water. Does anyone use a steam injected still with a column for the production of vodka or other higher proof spirits?

Also - will there be a loss of flavor by injecting steam in the distillation (i.e. you are gaining more water from steam whereas normally the water content of a distilled spirit carries flavors with it from the ferment)?

Thanks.

[Silk City Distillers]

Does anyone have a source for steam injector nozzles? I assume they are similar to mixing tank eductor nozzle, but I've only ever seen those in plastic.

[Sudzie]

After several months going back and forth we ordered this http://www.jrgjt.com/eductor_tla_heater.html to see how they work. The rep said he has several ethanol plants using them. I'll report back when we do our testing.

[Silk City Distillers]

Thanks, that's helpful. Love to hear how those work. What were the details around sizing?

[Tom Lenerz]

Our fabricator picked up those nozzles for our cooker. He originally had sized a single inch and half or two inch unit, but after speaking with a representative from the company they recommended going with several smaller units to reduce noise and shaking. We now have a total of 4, either 3/8 or 1/2 inch, on a manifold. We have the nozzles pointed toward the bottom of the kettle to help with agitating dish. They work quite well and are key to our 3 hour cook. We are going from about 100 or 120 to boiling in 45 minutes to an hour with a 500 gallon cook.

[Silk City Distillers]

Tom - What size boiler? HP or Lbs/Hr? Sizing is close to us so it would be helpful.

[Sudzie]

Thanks, that's helpful. Love to hear how those work. What were the details around sizing?

This is for our 250 gal striping still. The rep suggested that we use one 3/4" eductor nozzle installed in the center / bottom pointed up. This still is 36" in diameter. He said that the mash would be drawn in from the bottom and be injected at a 4x flow rate up and cause a rolling in the still to the sides and then to the top again. Based on calculations at 12 psi steam the eductor should heat up in 1 hour.

[Silk City Distillers]

Sounds like either 2 3/4 or 4 3/8 for my application. Those guys are just up the road from me so I'll take a ride over.

[Tom Lenerz]

Tom - What size boiler? HP or Lbs/Hr? Sizing is close to us so it would be helpful.

We are way overkill on our boiler for if/when we add more stills. Also we are doing steam heat in several places, but I believe it is 60 HP 2.2 million btu. With both stills running and my cooker going full bore I rarely drop below 12 PSI on my steam manifold.