T500 automated water control

by **freelancement** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 1:23 pm

It happens to the best of us, laying in bed til 5.30am wondering why we cant sleep. Overly active mind, so I was thinking how difficult would it be to make an automated water contol system for the Turbo 500? I use to play with thermostate controllers in primary school, and connect them up to the computer to do tasks for environment week or what ever it was called back then.
Basically what I was thinking was to create an environment control system, attach a 0.1C sensitive thermostat to the top probe, a probe to the water in and out and learn the behaviour of a wash. Then simply connect a sensitive water flow controller to the water flow in, flood the tower and slowly ease it back until it hit the condensation point at 65C, then 78C, then 82C and so on. Once you hit a temp in the reflux, flood the tower, shut off the power to the boiler and shut off the water flow 5 mins later.
A systematic automated seperation system, the % should be much higher as you are removing guess work, and you wouldnt have to watch it, it would then be totally self contained. The only difficulty I have had was to find a sensitive water flow controller that you can plug into a computer.
Thoughts? links?

by **MrCat** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:49 pm

I did it with my SS reflux and it wouldn\'t be much work to use it with my T500.
I haven\'t though as the T500 water control is much easier, I take cuts (separate the output into 400ml jars) so I\'m watching the output the whole time and I wouldn\'t be happy not watching anything that outputs flammable liquid and not be close by !!
The way the software works is that you set temp readings and what % the pump is working at - so if the column temp is 78 then the pump might be delivering 25% of max capacity, then at 78.5 the pump is at 30% etc etc.
There was enough power in the pumps that eventually the ABV and the amount of reflux from the water equalised so the output fell off to nothing.

by **freelancement** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:39 pm

haha i have obviously been away from this forum a bit too long, decent setup, did it cost much to build?
as for the fire hazzard, I support this idea of hanging around, (currently the demijohn is tied into a ice bath slurry to help bring down the temp of the alcohol once it comes out of the unit, also it has venterlation in the area). Its more an idea of being able to multi-task whilst doing other things, I have too many times collected tails as a result of getting caught up in my assignments, coming back 5 mins to lates (as my old system had a sesitive reflux and would climb very quickly once it hit thresholds). I see it all about additional control.
I was also thinking of an output redirect module, having an alcohol flow switch, thus every temp grade, it would switch to the next collection station, with focus on the heads of the alcohol

by **MrCat** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:56 pm

I think the bigng controller was about Â£50 and the pumps were Â£20 each.
The software supplied with it is up to the job, there are multiple sensors and fan/pump controls so there is plenty of flexibility.
I saw some where that you can get a sensor that measures % alcohol (similar principle to a thermister) so one thing that crossed my mind was making a little control unit that beeps when the ABV changes - which should allow control of heads, hearts and tails. I\'ll see if I can find the info and post it back. Of course an electronic parrot would rock !!

by **freelancement** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:07 pm

HAHA i want an parrot
to tell the truth i had bigger figures running through my mind, thats actually quite cheap
hmmmm bigng controller, i fear I am not going to find that one locally. The one thing I like about this system is that you can then use a recyled system with the T500, as it adjusts accordingly to temp. the current setup is accepting a certian environment and a recyled system changes the import temp varibles.

by **freelancement** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:39 am

haha totally doing my head in, trying to figure out how to follow the link in the post above from mr cat since the forum was update. seems to be a dead link now and I have spent the last hour sifting through threads chasing it
does anyone have a fresh link to the thread?

I have some time now and I want to see if I can build me something fun for some anal quality control.

freelancement

by **MrCat** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:32 pm

Updated link - http://www.stillsmart.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=367