Gears&Spirits Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 Hi guys, I am new to the sight and I'm needing some help deciding if buying the automated for my is worth it or not. For those of you that do have automation on your stills... What are the advantages? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluestone Posted May 20, 2016 Share Posted May 20, 2016 Can you give us an idea what your operation looks like and what parts you might want to automate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gears&Spirits Posted May 20, 2016 Author Share Posted May 20, 2016 It will be a 100 gal Artisan still 8 plate column. There is a three way valve on the lyne arm and modulating control valves for the control water. I like the idea of data logging for consistency. 4 thermometers to monitor, one in the pot, one on the helmet, one on the dephlegmater, and one on the liquid manage condenser. That's what I am thinking so far. Would anything else be beneficial or nice to have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silk City Distillers Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 We have temperature control on the dephlegmator and product condensers, as well as monitoring/logging on vapor temp, distillate temp, wash temp, and jacket pressure. We do not yet have steam jacket pressure control hooked up, but will likely do it in the next few months. From an "automation" perspective, we are finding that dephlegmator temperature control is the most useful/beneficial - as evidenced by extremely tight batch to batch consistency. Wash temp is very helpful to monitor the progression of heat up. System will shut the boiler down on high distillate temp. Product condenser temperature control is useful as well - as we run a recirculating water system - our reservoir will heat up through the run, so as the run progresses the system needs to increase water flow through the condensers to maintain the set points. We are using Omega Ethernet-connected PID and Process Controls/Meters. Not sure how you define automation though, we designed our system to work as an assistant, not an automaton. So, we want to control the reflux ratio (dephlegmator temperature), but I don't want to fiddle with a valve to do it, or have to fiddle with valves the whole run to keep it where I want it. I could imagine a much more complex PLC based system that essentially automated the entire run. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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