Urn with secure lid.

[ant]

Although I intend a keg boiler I came across two water boilers, both made by Swan, that had lids worth mentioning. The edge of the lids fit down about 18mm inside the top of the boiler like one cylinder sliding into another and six pressed bumps in the lid locate into six pressed bayonet fittings in the boiler when you turn the lid. Seems better secured than average. One is 10L the other 20L; SWU10L & SWU20L. Swan may have other sizes with the same lid. Thought it might help someone to know this.

[ant]

Did a quick search they do them in 8L, 10L, 16L, 20L & 26L.

[Easydrinker]

I think it may still require a little more securing than twist and temporary destorting bumps,but, this may form a good foundation to work upon.
Robert.

[ant]

Maybe. Seems pretty strong though. I'll see if you can lift it by the lid when it is full. Be a bit of an indication. It lifts fine empty. Depends what you put on what size I guess. Would need some silicone grease or something for a vapour seal I would imagine.

[Easydrinker]

I don't think grease would seal it,I would expect the vapour to push through that.
But what do I know?
Fill it with water,grease it up,seal it,and tip it over,see what happens?
Robert.

[ant]

I don't think tipping it over is a fair approximation of working conditions. I think there are a few water urn setups in operation with bulldog clips and the like that would fail that test.

The grease is a high vaccum type so is only good for 14psi ish and only on close fitting surfaces as it is designed for. High temp, high melting, chemically inert etc.

However the lid is not strong enough to be the sole support for much of a column. Maybe a short inch, inch and a half bok filled with tiny SPP or SPN as the russians and poles who use such set ups in small flats call it. The lid can be pulled out of the base when in the locked position if you try.

I was at mum's before but have got back to test it as promised. It can be pulled apart. I put a wrap of tape over the grease sealed lid and ran it as a solvent recovery pot still with cleaning alcohol, IPA. Supported the GL condenser vertically with a stand and ran a few litres through it using my big variac for power control. It was the 10lt pot with less than 2kw heaters and it ran fine and quickly at 230v.

Just a test for the sake of it but it did work.

[Magnu420]

I would invest in a couple of rachet straps from either pounland poundworld or 99p shops

[ant]

Not a bad idea if i intended to use it with a reflux column. I intend to use a keg. This is just a toy I was playing with. IPA boils at 82.4degC so is a reasonable test fluid for a pot still; just to quickly establish if it works. I don't intend to use it for anything, just playing for the sake of playing.

[Almanac]

You're obviously a practical person who has loads of common sense. This type of 'playing' (experimentation) is a great way to learn what works, how and why.

That setup would probably make a very good simple wash stripper.

AM

[ant]

Thank you. Yes it would do for that I think. I hope not to need one with a 7" bubble ball followed by a 2" column of SPP. Should make azeo in one pass at a reasonable rate. Neutral might be a little harder. Or that's the theory. Time will hopefully tell.

I like playing for the sake of it. Experimentation with no pressure to achieve a particular goal is a fun way to feed my inner scientist/child. Aiming for neutral azeo is fun too though.

This was my first run of sorts. I hammered the three steam vents closed and blobbed them with silicone rubber externally. I used cork gasket on the tank fitting in the lid. The compression joint is just greased and done up finger tight. The elbows are just greased slip joints so i can reconfigure as required to play with the larger pot or use the GL for different things.

The greased lid mostly worked without the tape but is out of round through some previous abuse before I met it. Where this left a gap to be filled I got vapour exit. Turned off and packed it more and it held but thought the wide tape would be a good addition as the grease is made primarily to seal lab glassware, usually with ground glass surfaces like the flange on a vacuum jar. It expects close fitting surfaces and is not meant to be much of a gap filler. Of course filling very small gaps is what it is made for. Technically it is non melting rather than high melt. I forgot before.

Running it at 240v i found it initially ok but vapour started to exit the bottom of the condenser as everything warmed up. This GL should be able to knock down almost 3kw and this was only 1.74kw at 240v. I was using IPA instead of methanol which is the solvent the GL is most used for. 82 ish as opposed to 60 ish. More heat but easier to condense. Dunno.

Water pump smaller than the ones commonly used by biodieselers. Faster pump and or bigger water tank would help. Or kill the planet and just use mains water. Could be silly and pass it through a beer chiller. Prolly do as it is with a bigger water tank. The pump is a nice self priming bronze gear pump. The 12vdc permagnet motor does make big hot sparks when you connect or disconnect the wires from the car battery. Definite ignition risk if you are careless. Might fit a switch.

Someone clever could perhaps tell me how many watts I was actually using at 230v? Save my tired old brain the ache.

Although I didn't time it the three or four litres came through fast at a non tedious rate of knots.

[YHB]

I know this is very low tech, but how about flour and water paste?

Never used it myself but it should have better gap filling properties than the silicon grease.

This is another thread where vapour passing through the condenser at the beginning of the run during warm up has been mentioned lately.

Have you considered the non condensable gasses in the wash that are given off at he start of a run?

At the start of each run I get a puff of gasses sometimes quite smelly before the condensate starts to appear. From what I can gather these are dissolved gasses being released from the wash, CO2, Oxygen, Air & Nitrogen that were dissolved and released from the wash and obviously will not condense at the temperatures we are talking about.

[Almanac]

When I ran my now retired VM I was able to run a wash and achieve 94% but it wasn't right. After diluting it still had some undesirable notes. After that I only ran low wines through the VM - much better result

AM

[ant]

Nothing wrong with low tech. If I planned to use this for anything purpouseful i might; or fix the gap. It was more to test the urn and play with my GL. The cpu cooler pump failed for no apparant reason so I dug the gear pump out and fiddled about getting it connected to the GL. As Aidan said, see how things work.

This wasn't a wash, just IPA. Might have dissolved gases in it but turning the heat down a bit made me feel safer. Was still fast. One nice thing wss that the heat trips built into the urn turn it off as it runs dry and can be reset when it cools. It has three. I think one is for boil, one for keep warm and the resettable one for overheat.

Yes Aidan, I know azeo and neutral are not the same, you may well be right in the end. I want to try and see if i can get both in a single pass though. Just a fun experiment to focus play around.

My variac is only good for 2.1kw so I need to make a power controler soon. Got to sort my SPP out first though.

[ant]

One schoolboy error I made was to have the water inlet and outlet on the GL the wrong way around. I had tested it previously ina different configuration and not fixed it for the new one. This may be why I couldn't run happily at 240v. It was really just a quick lash up to put Easy's mind at rest. He brought up some valid concerns and the only way to know for sure was to test things out.

On balance I would say the lid is not as strongly secure as I first thought but much better than the flat disk type that just sit on top of the urn. This positively locates with an 18mm slip joint all the way around. Plus the bayonet fittings which will give way if you apply enough force to flex the thin stainless walls of the urn.

[ant]

Ran it again with the pipes the right way around. Cranked up to 270v without a problem. Looks like it was just my error holding the GL back.