Pages:
1
2
3
4 |
pHzero
Hazard to Self
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 89
Registered: 16-5-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fully substituted
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by entropy51 ![](images/xpblue/lastpost.gif) | pHzero, why are you distilling water of all things? I buy distilled water for less than $1 a gallon and I use it for many sensitive analyses without
problems. |
Sadly, I can't get it that cheap - the cheapest i can find it is £17.50 for 5 litres (ie about $20/gallon
Quote: |
You can use a pump in a large bucket of water, as has been suggested. When the water starts to get warm, move the condenser outlet hose to an empty
bucket and take out most of the water. Dump the warm water, bring back a bucket of cold water and dump that into the bucket with the pump.
Condenser water only needs to be about 20 or 30 degrees cooler than the the boiling point of the distillate. I only use ice water for distilling when
the boiling point is less than 80 degrees or so.
There are probably limits on the amounts of flammables your fire code allows to be stored in dwellings. If you have a fire, the fire marshall's
report will note that you were in violation of the fire code. Guess what? Your Mum's insurance company will not pay off on the policy!
Personally I am beginning to believe that pHzero is concocting wild tales of dangerous plans just to set us off. Even most kewls have better
sense. |
Wait, so you're saying I'm trolling? Because my idea which i thought up on the spot turned out not to be so good on closer examination?
[Edited on 15-6-2009 by pHzero]
|
|
bfesser
Resident Wikipedian
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 2114
Registered: 29-1-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Where have you looked? In the United States, grocery stores and pharmacies sell distilled water in gallon jugs for around 99 cents. I'd be surprised
if it's unavailable where you live. (By the way, try the real world... not ordering from the internet.)
[Edited on 6/15/09 by bfesser]
|
|
pHzero
Hazard to Self
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 89
Registered: 16-5-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fully substituted
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by bfesser ![](images/xpblue/lastpost.gif) | Where have you looked? In the United States, grocery stores and pharmacies sell distilled water in gallon jugs for around 99 cents. I'd be surprised
if it's unavailable where you live. (By the way, try the real world... not ordering from the internet.)
[Edited on 6/15/09 by bfesser] |
Well there isn't really anywhere near me that would sell dH2O. There are a couple of chemists but even if they did sell it, I expect their prices
would be totally extortionate. I'll check tomorrow but I doubt I'll find anything.
|
|
Lambda-Eyde
National Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 859
Registered: 20-11-2008
Location: Norway
Member Is Offline
Mood: Cleaved
|
|
ANY hardware store carries deionized water... And it costs next to nothing.
And pHzero: They're not calling you a troll because of the idea with the propane, they're doing it because during your relatively short time here at
SciMad you have shown that you are very irresponsible, you don't follow safety procedures, and you have no respect for chemistry as a hobby.
Heck, you're boiling mercury in your kitchen, storing "sulphuric acid and ferricyanide on your BEDSIDE table" (now a personal favorite of mine),
storing 20 liters of methanol in the sun, nitric acid on your lawn, playing with tens of kilos of extremely flammable gases, and your house looks like
a meth lab...
I really hope you are trolling, if not, then you'll end up killing someone someday... I just hope it won't affect those around you (not that I want to see YOU dead).
|
|
DJF90
International Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 2266
Registered: 15-12-2007
Location: At the bench
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Lambda-Eyde: I think you sum up exactly how I feel about this chap. pHzero needs to sort alot out before he should even consider continuing to
experiment. Deionised water and distilled water are usually acceptably interchangable in the home lab. You can find it at most hardware stores for
about £3/5L IIRC, maybe even cheaper. I think there may only be one major brand here in the UK (at least as far as I've seen), in a white bottle,
with "De-ionised water" written in blue, and maybe a red line above? (I'll try and find a picture...)
EDIT:
Check this link...
http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductD...
Some stores will do bigger for cheaper, go and look.
[Edited on 15-6-2009 by DJF90]
|
|
grndpndr
National Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 508
Registered: 9-7-2006
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Must be using water on an industrial scale?Be glad you do not live here the problem would be compounded.Our water comes out of the ground at the well
over 130f and depending on location summer tap water can be 110-120.
But my freezer holds Ice trays / liter-2liter bottled ice cubes.
Gravity,tubing and 2 buckets take care of the distilling column
as well as reusing the still cold water.
|
|
zed
International Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 2281
Registered: 6-9-2008
Location: Great State of Jefferson, City of Portland
Member Is Offline
Mood: Semi-repentant Sith Lord
|
|
In my neck of the woods, cooling recirculated condenser water is only a problem in the Summertime. During other seasons, diverting the water through
an appropriatly shaped "outside" storage tank, coil, or radiator..... would render it quite chilly in just a few minutes.
During the Summer, warm exhaust water can be cooled by passing it through an underground pipe or hose system. The planet Earth is a pretty good
"Heat Sink".
A few feet down, soil temps run ~55F year round ( at least, on most of the planet!). Which is the reason, of course, that your condenser water was
cool to begin with.
Otherwise, misting the exhaust water in some way, so as to cause evaporation, as by running it through a fountain or forcing it through a spray
nozzle or a sprinkler head, will cool the water nicely. Using your pump at the exhaust end, to "suck" water through your condensor, whereafter the
pump then forces the exhaust water through a spray nozzle, will prevent mishaps. Of course, the further the mist or spray falls, the greater the
evaporation, and subsequent cooling.
That being said, if your actually just need distilled or purified water, there may be better ways to produce it.
If you figured out your cost of fuel to produce one gallon of distilled water, you might find it cheaper to just purchase the water outright.
Solar stills are inexpensive and they can be easily crafted. No fuel costs, ever!
There are also.....filtration, ion exchange, and reverse osmosis systems that work very well.
[Edited on 20-6-2009 by zed]
|
|
chemrox
International Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 2961
Registered: 18-1-2007
Location: UTM
Member Is Offline
Mood: LaGrangian
|
|
@Entropy51- he probably wants to start his home lab explorations with something relatively benign. If this works out maybe he will distill some wine
next. I like his drawing and am thinking of trying a similar setup using a power steering fluid radiator. I also like the ice/water bucket
circulation method.
"When you let the dumbasses vote you end up with populism followed by autocracy and getting back is a bitch." Plato (sort of)
|
|
woelen
Super Administrator
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 7990
Registered: 20-8-2005
Location: Netherlands
Member Is Offline
Mood: interested
|
|
I have a distillation setup and I use tap water for cooling. No additional ice needed, just plain tap water. I distilled Br2 with that setup and it
works like a charm. The outgoing water indeed is quite warm, it is luke-warm, so the heating of the water is not negigible. But this of course is true
because of the very low flow rate.
The amount of water, used by my experiments is very low. I adjust the tap, such that the water just trickles out of it, at a rate of not more than
maybe 100 ml per minute. This is sufficient, even for cooling stuff like Br2 (which boils well below 60 C).
At a cost of at most EUR 2 per m3, my distillation experiments only require a very small amount of money. Even I am pessimistic, then my setup takes
10 liters per hour, which is just EUR 0,02 per hour.
|
|
veech
Harmless
Posts: 1
Registered: 3-12-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Hello, I'm new to the forum but thought I would chime in on this older thread.
I built a similar system, using an automotive transmission fluid radiator (~$60) that I bought new at the auto parts store. It even came with high
temp hoses and clamps. These come in all sizes so you can find the right one for your application. I blow a regular old small house fan through it
for cooling, using a small pump to push glycol up through my 600mm graham condenser, back into a 0.5L collection tank, and into the radiator again.
The whole setup cost me around $100 and it runs my distillation setup for hours without the condenser even getting warm to the touch externally. I
usually distill at BP ~90C. Plus I can leave it set up in my garage even during winter without worrying about freezing when not in use. Works like a
charm and maintenance free-I'm very happy with the results.
|
|
white rabbit
Harmless
Posts: 33
Registered: 29-11-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Groovy
|
|
Adding to the chord, I am also a newby to SM
I have also been using a home made water chiller for my condenser cooling. It is constructed from a window ac compressor (5000 Btu) and works well for
the smaller condensers, keeping the water at 3-5*C, but has trouble keeping up on the large scale, double cooling condensers. I am constructing
another from a 1 ton (12k Btu) unit to handle the larger volume distillations. I have included a picture here of the unit in operation.
|
|
grndpndr
National Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 508
Registered: 9-7-2006
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Doenst anyone own a freezer.Feeze a gallon or several, milk jugs full of frozen water with a recirculating system with pump or just a catch basin to
catch and recool the water and let gravity do the
cold water delivery to the condenser.Failing that Idea how about just buying dist water or water treated by reverse osmosis very common here costing
$3/5gallons.(akalinity/excessive radon exceeding gov secs.,instead of recitifying the radon issue $$ is being spent on 80yr old water/ sewer system
pipes to instal water meters to charge for nonpotable water?
I dont think the energy consumption of distilling water would come close to the purchased distilled/reverse osmosis water,Heating the water to a
vapor, cooling the condenser,Time,trouble though in some instances
doing it yourself with improvised equipment is 90% the fun of the lab at least in my eyes.Maybe dist water is his code word for FNA?
|
|
MagicJigPipe
International Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 1554
Registered: 19-9-2007
Location: USA
Member Is Offline
Mood: Suspicious
|
|
I don't get what's so bad about 19kg of propane. What is that about 40L? That is a lot but many people have huge 250 gallon (about 1000L) tanks in
their front yards. What of it?
But I think it would be ridiculous to let large amounts of propane evaporate into the surrounding air. I mean, surely you weren't even considering
that.
If you want something cheap and quick just use a huge bucket with lots of ice from the freezer or a bunch of those cold packs. Depending on the
length of the distillation it will work fine. I too have been pondering methods of cooling condenser water continuously. Was it Magpie that built a
cooler out of an old AC unit?
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry ... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any
question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and
that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think,
free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
|
|
white rabbit
Harmless
Posts: 33
Registered: 29-11-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Groovy
|
|
It's the length of the distillation that is the problem. I have done the ice thing and it is a real pain in the ass when your studying other aspects
of the process and then realize that you have to go get more ice. With the cooler and a couple of gallons of water, it's taken care of.
I once had to use 80lbs of ice to cool a flask. Not cheap or easy.
[Edited on 5-12-2009 by white rabbit]
|
|
MagicJigPipe
International Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 1554
Registered: 19-9-2007
Location: USA
Member Is Offline
Mood: Suspicious
|
|
To be fair it's probably not cheap to run a 5000 btu compressor either.
I found an old A/C unit the other day and I'm thinking about using it as a chiller. I need to make sure it actually works though.
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry ... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any
question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and
that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think,
free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
|
|
Skyjumper
Hazard to Self
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 93
Registered: 1-3-2010
Location: Assachusetts
Member Is Offline
Mood: Refluxing
|
|
You could put your bucket of ice water in one of those dorm fridges (the small ones). Safer than dumping propane on a cooler (with a bunsen going
right next to it) Also Liquid propane will flash to a vapor at atmospheric pressure and appears white due to moisture condensing from the air. (wiki),
Come to think of it, this kid hasn't posted in a while. Maybe he tried this and found out why you don't have pools of hydrocarbons right near a
burner... Or maybe something to do with his making xCN and other nasties at night in his room.
|
|
peach
Bon Vivant
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 1428
Registered: 14-11-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Hey! Don't be putting him off distilling water! A lot more DIY chemists need to stop messing around with some of the stuff they are and learn the
basics on water. ![:P](./images/smilies/tongue.gif)
Damm meth addicts blowing up every 4 out of 5 houses with their ether antics. "NO ADDICTS! NO! PUT THE CIGARETTE BACK IN THE PACK! BAD! WHY ARE YOU
PLAYING WITH THE LIGHTER?" The police don't even need to bother arresting them, they're always on fire whenever they turn up anyway. Mentally and
physically. Or at least they think they are. Got to extinguish your addicts before the cuffs can go on.
Besides, he's probably distilling his own moonshine. You know the routine "So I've got this Al/Hg reduction running on erm.... something"
Anyway, here's an idea I had which is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier than any of that ripping radiators or AC units apart stuff;
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=10450&...
Now you need to convince your mom you NEED that freezer from the dump and that it's not using up too much juice. Have you got an exercise bike in the
house? Hook it up to that. ![:D](./images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
The best approach to dealing with a woman based problem is to be direct. Go to the dump yourself or with a friend, collect the freezer and set it up
in the house while she's out.
I like you piccy, precise, informative, yet stylishly sketched - I particularly enjoy the coil, a difficult element to draw.
[Edited on 1-5-2010 by peach]
|
|
peach
Bon Vivant
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 1428
Registered: 14-11-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Oh I see, you might actually be genuinely distilling water.
Bare in mind that not all workups actually NEED distilled water. You can get away with the deionised water for refilling lead acid batteries
sometimes. Filtered water also lacks the chlorine that causes so many problems. For other reactions or washups, you can just get ultra lazy and use
tap water. If your aqueous phase is already rammed full of byproducts and HCl, the tiny bit of extra chlorine in tap water is swamped by the acid
anyway.
Incidentally, if you're on a metered water supply, you may want to consider your moms point about running the coolant straight to waste, since you'll
probably have spent a few $$$ on tap water by the time you get 5l of distillate over.
Water also has a fairly high latent heat capacity. Basically, that means it takes quite a lot of energy to boil it and it releases an equally large
amount of energy when it cools. That's why it causes such horrible burns. So, whilst the coolant doesn't need to be particularly cold to affect
condensation of water vapor, it will warm up quite quickly in a small, sealed, recirculating system. Specially if you're going to be running 5l
through it - that's a decent amount even by the standards of the nerds on here.
Saying this, how fast did you have the water flowing? Since water vapor will condense without the coil being super cold, you could have it trickling
through the coil. If you had a tap like stream of it at the other end, you're almost certainly overkilling it.
There's a worrying percentage of people in the US who believe distilled water is better for you because it's pure. That's actually incorrect, as the
purity means you're not only lacking the trace minerals that may be of use to your body, but the water is more likely to upset the osmotic balance of
your body that's been established through millions of years of evolution, drinking pond water.
As for bottled water, har har har. A journal entry recently explained how estrogen like byproducts leak out of commonly encountered plastics. The
study specifically looked at bottled water, which had detectable quantities of it stored within. "Drink Volvic, grow a Vulva!". This has also been put
forward as an explanation for why girls are continually reaching sexually maturity at an ever decreasing age; exposure.
[Edited on 1-5-2010 by peach]
|
|
chief
National Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 630
Registered: 19-7-2007
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
@ peach: Your post above, with the refrigerator, gave me quite some idea:
==> Just inserting into the fridge a 20-liter-thing with some water, then heating the water up to maybe 30 [Cels], and letting the fridge run ...
If the heating rate of the water could be kept high enough, the the stuff wouldn't form ice on the colder surfaces, just condense ...
==> and drop into something, or come out of some hole in the bottom of the fridge ...
This might actually be energetically more efficient than heating the water up to the 100 [Cels] otherwise needed ...
==> The needed vaporizartion-heat is different at any other temperature ...
Also Ethanol might be obtained this way: A fermentation-cell would be within the fridge, regulated to 25 [Cels], which is about the optimum for yast
...
==> The it would be just as easy as filling in sugar with some nutrients every 2 days, and all the while the Ethanol would collect, withdrawn fom
the water and thereby not hindering the cell-growth of the yast ... ![:D](./images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
Maybe it even could be "freezed" out of water on the cooling-surfaces within the fridge, by letting the fridge run really cold, so that ice would
form, but ethanol would still drop down ..., sort of giving a better separation ... and higher-conc. ethanole ...
==> Any ideas on the energy-efficiency of this as compared to standard-vacuum-destillation or normal destillation ?
==> Industry as well chooses those conditions, which are most energy-efficient ...
===============
... except maybe I forgot above that the inefficiency of refrigerator-cooling would probably eat up any efficiency-advantage of distillation at lower
temperatures ...
... but still easier to run a 20-liter setup than to watch flasks boiling to emptieness ...
[Edited on 1-5-2010 by chief]
|
|
peach
Bon Vivant
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 1428
Registered: 14-11-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by chief ![](images/xpblue/lastpost.gif) | @ peach: Your post above, with the refrigerator, gave me quite some idea:
==> Just inserting into the fridge a 20-liter-thing with some water, then heating the water up to maybe 30 [Cels], and letting the fridge run ...
If the heating rate of the water could be kept high enough, the the stuff wouldn't form ice on the colder surfaces, just condense ...
==> and drop into something, or come out of some hole in the bottom of the fridge ...
This might actually be energetically more efficient than heating the water up to the 100 [Cels] otherwise needed ...
==> The needed vaporizartion-heat is different at any other temperature ...
Also Ethanol might be obtained this way: A fermentation-cell would be within the fridge, regulated to 25 [Cels], which is about the optimum for yast
...
==> The it would be just as easy as filling in sugar with some nutrients every 2 days, and all the while the Ethanol would collect, withdrawn fom
the water and thereby not hindering the cell-growth of the yast ... ![:D](./images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
Maybe it even could be "freezed" out of water on the cooling-surfaces within the fridge, by letting the fridge run really cold, so that ice would
form, but ethanol would still drop down ..., sort of giving a better separation ... and higher-conc. ethanole ...
==> Any ideas on the energy-efficiency of this as compared to standard-vacuum-destillation or normal destillation ?
==> Industry as well chooses those conditions, which are most energy-efficient ...
===============
... except maybe I forgot above that the inefficiency of refrigerator-cooling would probably eat up any efficiency-advantage of distillation at lower
temperatures ...
... but still easier to run a 20-liter setup than to watch flasks boiling to emptieness ...
[Edited on 1-5-2010 by chief] |
THERE IS SOME CHEMISTRY INVOLVED IN THIS TO DO WITH PYRIDINES TOWARDS THE END, SKIP AHEAD IF YOU CANT BE BOTHERED WITH MY RAMBLING AND THEN
READ BACK IF INTERESTED. SKIP TO "THE CHEMISTRY STARTS HERE"
Now you're thinking in the peachy manner; which is worrying. Ask you doctor for
an appointment.
I doubt your method, which is seriously cheeky, would actually be far off the glassware variations on distillation in terms of efficiency. In fact,
you're correct that it may be more efficient, since this way involves a lot of insulation and lower temperature gradients to loose heat through. It'd
just take longer, but who cares with such simplicity right? Just chuck it in, walk away and let it go for a week or two.
I've seen your idea somewhere else, on the Turbo Distillers homebrew moonshine pages. There, they build a super simple pot still which is just a
plastic bucket inside a slightly bigger plastic bucket, with a lid on the second. The foul homebrew is place in the smaller pot with an immersion
heater and gently cooked. The alcohol vapors cool on the outer bucket and run down the walls. Not as fast as a water cooled condenser, but dirt cheap,
virtually impossible to brake and it works. I'm constantly impressed by the inventiveness and dedication of the addicts out there; including the smack
addicts who spend all day rooting through bins for $20 worth of junk, poor guys.
The fridge would just accelerate the process. The only problem with continually drawing it off would be defined by how quickly the vapor actually left
the mother liquor at a temperature where the yeast was still able to function. You can't have your yeast too hot. I think the turbo yeast performed
best at something like 27C, but I have a solution to that problem, which I'll discuss..... NOW!
Bare in mind that a freezer typically has an extremely good seal and essentially only has one open surface, the rest is molded. I'd be willing to bet
you could get a fridge to be more airtight than a none greased up glassware setup. You could probably make things easier on your yeast by exposing the
entire interior of the fridge to a vacuum. Thereby causing the alcohol to evaporate at a lower temperature. And as it so happens, I have also just
made a long post about how to obtain 80mbar vacuums free of charge, m'ere;
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=13581#...
Note that the last bit on the disadvantages wouldn't apply for such a dirty, bulk distillation.
And also, this is getting funnier, the water / ethanol azeotrope is broken under vacuum, so maybe there's some potential there for ending up with a
fridge full of absolute alcohol. Cue Homer Simpsonesque exploding garage.
What is a problem with the fridge pump method is that, from memory, you need a pressure of something more like 60mbar to break the azeotrope, which
the compressors I've seen won't do. But you can always clean up your alcohol afterwards. What's important is that you get the evaporation occurring at
a decent rate at a temperature the yeast will be happy with, and I'm guessing 80 - 120mbar will do fine. I've been up and typing all night, so I'm not
running the sigma-aldrich pressure / temperature curve calculator thingy for that now. I can already guess it'll be low though.
Not sure how you'd stop the alcohol vapor going for the pump, as it's not a standard condenser setup where you have the condense blocking the path of
the vapor. But, provided leakage rates where low and given that the alcohol will be coming off very slowly, it might form more of a plume around the
bin. So you could stick the vacuum port right down at the base and the vapors would then have to plume out and down the walls to get there.
I place the blame for my fascination with fridges with my DIY expert neighbor, who once pulled the compressor out of one we were chucking out and made
us a fancy airbrush compressor with it.
[Peach's pc has crashed, linux... wtf? And an immediate trip to get some beer is accomplished whist it reboots. Peach is itching for a smoke, where is
nicoderm when you need him? I could give him a lick. Peach has been up all night on sci-mad after driving parents to holidays]
Some fridges / freezers have a moisture collection point for collecting waste water dripping down the walls from condensation. If yours featured one,
you could just hook some tubing up to it and run the alcohol off to a big flask. Then any explosion would be more likely to just be a loud bang as
opposed to a major fire hazard, since there'd only be a tiny amount of vapor to ignite. You could also scale up the size of the fermentation bin since
all the alcohol would be leaving the fridge.
A fridge would probably be better than a freezer. You'd want to keep your temperatures, the warmth of the fermentation and coolness of the walls, at
just the points they need to be. If the walls are massively cooler than they need to be, it'll suck heat energy from the fermentation and vice versa.
Just cool enough to condense the alcohol and keep the fermentation ticking over would be great. Even better, fridges usually have a thermostat built
in, as do fish immersion heaters, so you could easily tweak the settings to perfection.
I love this idea, it's wacky to the max! Get that for some 80's chat.
I've messed around with stupid sized fermentations at home before - mainly just for fun. I bought a 210 liter shipping drum for $20 - formly used to
internationally ship olives; yummy! It was a beauty, it had a big screw on collar that pinned the lid in place and the plastic it was made out of was
so tough I could kick it around the warehouse floor and barely scratch it. It looked like something out of half life.
I'd also bought... 100lbs of confectionary sugar from a bakery supplier, stolen
a fish tank immersion heater from my crack loving, underage sex having boss and bought some Turbo Distillers yeast; guaranteed to yield something
silly like 18-21% distillation ready product in three days.
Before starting the big tank, I'd had a 10l flask cooking with some of the yeast to get the culture rolling and establish the microbes dominance,
which'd help inoculate the next mass up, a 20 fold increase in volume.
I added around 25lbs of the sugar to the tank (full of water) and dropped the immersion heater in there. I used a full tank of water and only half the
full sugar volume because I knew this girl was going to get seriously turned on and the yeast could kill it's self from thermal shock once it got
rolling.
Once I had it up to 50lbs of sugar, I came back the next day and the thing was fizzing like a shaken bottle of coke, the bitch was going critical!
The yeast had active carbon mixed in with it to soak up the fusile oils, so
the fermentation was black. It looked like some evil monster was living in there.
WHY BOTHER PEACH, WHY BOTHER?
Firstly, it was funny. I've done a huge amount of work with shrooms and other bits of nature and really appreciate scaling up and innoculation. I'd
been reading a ton of old papers on ergotamine cultures in bioreactors, so inoculation and mass fermentation was on my mind. This was a great way to
play around with it hands on, specially as yeast will dominate just about all over bits of life that try to get in it's way once it's up and running.
I had a better appreciate for this kind of thing than my tutor at university who had made a big error in his journal entry (trying to sterilize a soil
sample using a standard 15 minute autoclave cycle, noob).
Secondly, I was a student at the time and when the harder drugs ran out, I could scoop a pint of this creature out of the barrel and that'd be me
sorted for bedtime.
Thirdly,
THE CHEMISTRY STARTS HERE
if you like pyridines, you'll almost certainly have seen the one pot Hantzsch pyridine synthesis.
One of the key ingredients, if my abused memory is serving me right, is a keto-ester.
If you take ethanol, and split the azeotrope with vaccum distillation, you can catalytically oxidize it to the ?acetate? over the beautifully simply
copper method. There's a ton of patents and a memo about an industrial plant using it to produce acetate from ethanol derived from bio feedstock. Most
of the time the copper is precipitated onto a zeolite, is it ZS-10 (can't remember)? The specific pore size gives it a huge bump up in activity.
Zeolites are weird little things.
You can then take that and combine it with some of your dry alcohol in the presence of some concentrated battery acid to get the ester.
From there, assembling the pyridine I think requires some methanol and K manganate. The latter I think is involved in heroin production, but I managed
to find normal places to buy it from in bulk; not lab suppliers, but I won't mention the precise sources, since heroin is a horrible thing to happen
to someone.
I ran out of patience and never got round to trying it, but the implications if it worked would have been amazing. Pyridine is incredibly useful for
things like demethylation. You can also use the synthesis for creating things like the dicarboxy nicotinic acid used by Hendrickson and Wang.
Yep, I know you can buy poisoned ethanol, acetate or ester, or go from niacin, but this was is darn funny! And if you happen to need a few hundred
liters of pyridine or a derivative, maybe this might be a way to get there.
There ends my story of alcohol. Feel free to link to it or copy and paste it to related threads. I know it's entirely off topic to the OP's question,
but I couldn't resist it, Chief enticed me; blame him. It might be entirely off
the mark, but it seems feasible and it's chemistry you can throw into a huge bin and ignore.
[Edited on 1-5-2010 by peach]
|
|
white rabbit
Harmless
Posts: 33
Registered: 29-11-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Groovy
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by MagicJigPipe ![](images/xpblue/lastpost.gif) | To be fair it's probably not cheap to run a 5000 btu compressor either.
I found an old A/C unit the other day and I'm thinking about using it as a chiller. I need to make sure it actually works though.
|
The 5k btu chiller costs about 15 cents an hour to run. A 7 lb bag of ice is $2.20
|
|
mr.crow
National Hazard
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 884
Registered: 9-9-2009
Location: Canada
Member Is Offline
Mood: 0xFF
|
|
Oh hey White Rabbit, I look forward to the next youtube video! What else can be made on an enormous scale?
on topic:
My friend dumped snow into the cooling water for distillation, good ol canadian winter. Tap water would work just as well and if the flow rate is slow
enough it won't waste water. We had the water aspirator on full blast all day... whoops.
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble
|
|
white rabbit
Harmless
Posts: 33
Registered: 29-11-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Groovy
|
|
Hey there mr.crow,
Here the tap water isn't very cold and it ain't cheap either. This is why I made the cooler. I use a diaphragm vacuum pump instead of an aspirator
for distillations and filtering. It handles vapors really well but only gets down to 10mm.
|
|
azo
Hazard to Others
![*](images/xpblue/star.gif) ![*](images/xpblue/star.gif)
Posts: 163
Registered: 12-2-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
why in the hell would you want to go to that mutch trouble to cool a condenser , doing this Ewould tell you that the condenser is not efficent enough
why not just buy a double surface condenser or a duel coil graham condenser and just connect it to the tap ! my duel coil graham condenser has never
used no more than half of the condenser no mater what i have used it for .
GO MULTI COIL GRAHAM CONDENSERS![:P](./images/smilies/tongue.gif)
man invented machinery to make thing esier not harder.
|
|
white rabbit
Harmless
Posts: 33
Registered: 29-11-2009
Member Is Offline
Mood: Groovy
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by azo ![](images/xpblue/lastpost.gif) | why in the hell would you want to go to that mutch trouble to cool a condenser , doing this Ewould tell you that the condenser is not efficent enough
why not just buy a double surface condenser or a duel coil graham condenser and just connect it to the tap ! my duel coil graham condenser has never
used no more than half of the condenser no mater what i have used it for .
GO MULTI COIL GRAHAM CONDENSERS![:P](./images/smilies/tongue.gif)
man invented machinery to make thing esier not harder. |
I have virtually every style of condenser, however, I am unaware any deul (sic) coil graham condenser. I do have jacketed cool coil and jacketed
dimroth condensers. All that said, the efficiency of the condenser is not in question. It is simply the waste of water and relatively warm temp of the
tap water. When distilling some solvents under vacuum,DCM for example, I prefer to have the condenser a bit colder than tap water. Some reflux times
are also 7 hours+ and I don't want to run the tap that long either.
Could you post a pic of this "multi-coil graham" condenser? (I am assuming you mean the double coil condenser similar to those used on the rotovap.)
|
|
Pages:
1
2
3
4 |
|