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#1 Posted : Saturday, July 01, 2006 12:27:55 PM(UTC)
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Have NEVER seen this one addressed. I've been using my still for about 2 yrs and it suddenly QUIT condensing. Output ZERO even when we attempted to distill water. Completely disassembled condenser and rebuilt and working fine again. The question remains: WHY did it quit???? Everything was CLEAN when the condenser was opened.
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#2 Posted : Sunday, July 02, 2006 6:42:57 AM(UTC)
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Impossible. All factors being equal, your still simply cannot stop condensing. Even if there were no cooling water whatsoever, you would still get some latent heat loss somewhere and get vapor condensation ,if, albeit very little,. The only way this would happen is if your still was under full reflux before the condenser. If you are using a Brewhaus still, this would come from the cooling lines in the stillhead. Of course, you would need a pretty amazing flow of ultra-cold water to maintain that for any length of time, and I still think you would have had some slip by and make it to the condenser.

My first guess would be that your heating failed, and didn't ,for whatever reason, provide enough heat to boil whatever was in your boiler. It might SOUND like it's boiling in this case, but it would not be.

My second guess would be that your packing was too tight and it was choking. This can take awhile to notice, but again you would have still condensed SOMETHING ,unless you didn't wait long enough,.

My third guess would be vapor loss somewhere in the system. This can be difficult to spot, will cripple your run, and is very dangerous to boot. It is possible that you developed a leak somewhere and that, during your process of disassembling the condenser and rebuilding, you resolved this problem. I'd keep an eye on it now, just to be sure. Actually, I'd probably do a run of water at the highest heat I could manage, and spread soapy water over the still and check for leaks. ANY possibility of leakage must be addressed with the utmost concern.
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#3 Posted : Sunday, July 02, 2006 1:18:43 PM(UTC)
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Thanks so much for your reply!!! Let me see if I can clarify. Perhaps my verbiage was incorrect. What happened was OUTPUT stopped...we tried Sugar Mash, Stripping wine and even Distilling water...in each instance we had steam coming out the top of the reflux still column, the condenser coil and the output pipe coil...BUT NO condensed liquid...we tried varying temperature...varying heat...you name it a never, ever, ever, got output. This is a Nixon-Stone Reflux unit and worked marvelously, flawlessly for a couple years...then STOPPED output...I know...it seems IMPOSSIBLE but that's what happened...we spent a couple days re-making the unit and have it going again...but still wonder what on earth happened to make it stop output and how long it will be until it happens again.

YOUR idea on packing being too tight seems plausible...we waited quite some time...used a mirror and checked for vapor loss at temperature.....we didn't get vapor until we brought temps to extremes...so perhaps it was choking....when we tested again our reconfiguration...we did notice and INCREASE in output when tilting the unit toward the condenser coil....also reducing the packing ,SS pads, also seemed to help but we still have a low output...everything else has pretty much been unchanged since the times we had flawless runs...

Thanks, again for the response and ideas.

'Doc'
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#4 Posted : Tuesday, July 04, 2006 4:02:10 AM(UTC)
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I just had a sililar output problem. I woke up and temp slipped to 62, maybe half a pint after ten hours. I reset the still on heat source and temp shot up. I thought all was fine, went to work and when I came home temp said 75 which is right for my house. However only about a quart. I ordered a new heat source from here. I know you hear it boiling, but my heat source just didn't have the output anymore to get the ethanol up the tube.
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#5 Posted : Wednesday, July 12, 2006 11:22:15 AM(UTC)
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Atually, experience has taught me that, if you hear anything distinct, it's probably not actually boiling. Most of what you hear initially is rapid evaporation and re-cooling of your liquid just above the heat source. Once the liquid actually begins to boil, the sound output drops dramatically as the evaporation falls in-line with the amount of energy input into the system.
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