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| Completed Assembly. |
With some preliminary testing with water, I realized that there was a slight flaw with the condenser design. It condenses the vapors well, but since the condensed drops just fall off the coil, the liquid is still very hot. I decided to add a cooler in order to bring the temperature down.
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| The cooler is the smaller tubes in the foreground. |
The cooler is a simple tube and shell cooler. The cooling water is plumbed from the outlet of the condenser so that I can operate both with a single pump. With this configuration I'm able to get the condensate to almost room temperature.
Another component completed is the temperature control for the pot heater.
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| Temperature control unit. |
The control unit is the same as some DIY Sous Vide controllers that utilize a PID heater controller and solid state relay. The control unit powers a water heater element which is connected to the pot with a sanitary fitting.
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| Heater element with detachable cord. |
I did notice some inconsistencies in the temperature readings as compared to other thermometers, but this heater unit can hold consistent temps. I believe this may be due to a slow reaction time of the RTD probe.
Other experiments have also shown that it will be better to use the dephlegmator to control vapor temperature, so I may use the temperature controller to power the dephlegmator pump instead.
The experiments will just continue from here...
