StillSmart

BoR what diameter is the hose connecting the pump in your picture? How narrower can it be taken and still cool properly? Any idea?

Scrappy - I\'m a computer geek primarily looking after network security but used to code a lot.
There are two jobs - one is to control the heat and one is to control the water. I\'ve got a manual power controller already for the heat which works well so I\'m not that bothered as thats a case of run at full tilt for 90 mins until the column is stable and then reduce to 650 watts.
The cooling how ever is much more fun. I\'ve ordered one of these

4 channel controller for air and watercooling and a couple of PC water cooling pumps.One pump for the condenser and one for the reflux jacket. The condenser water pump will \"fire up at 40 degrees and forget\" but the big ng allows me to control the water flow from the other pump to the reflux jacket.
I\'m not making this any harder than I have to - looking at the software I should be able to quickly set the triggers up as I want using the sensors they supply. I am not sure about the sensors and putting them in the vapour path so I may use the thermocouple I have on my existing USB sensor which is fit for purpose.
If I have to code it myself I can but I really don\'t want to as I have much better things to do with my spare time
Photos for sure

You can do all the above with an Omron temperature controller and a 2 or 3 channel PLC with analogue inputs, and 1 or possibly 2 ssrs.
They will handle up to 3kw if need be, Its the power that’s gonna cause a prob, my boiler element is 2300w, but i can control the wash temp to within 1 Deg as for the water rate, it can either be done with flow meters or by temp of the condensing head.
I would have never have thought of using a PC for controls because low power issues, before using Solid State Relays (SSR !)+ Of my knowledge of industrial programmable logic controllers (PLC !) and using tightly controlled Proportional Integral Derivative controllers (PID)
But looks an awesome idea--- just substituting the Processer cooling cycle for the water cooling on a still !!
Genius !!!

Well all the \'toys\' turned up last night and I mocked up how it\'s going to work to test it out.
And immediately I hit a snag Or two
The pumps don\'t self prime - I had planned to sit the pumps at the top of the coolant barrel with the input hoses running to the bottom of the barrel but it looks like I\'m going to have to fit two taps to the bottom of the coolant barrel and site the pumps there.
The pumps are very powerful. Even on 2% they are probably shifting twice as much water as I need so I\'ll have to put a small ball valve on the input. That should be fit, dial in and forget so that\'s not that much of a problem.
There are 6 temperature sensors supplied with the control unit. Two are digital and four are analogue. None are really suitable to sit in the vapour path so I was hoping to use my existing thermocouple. Unfortunately when I wired it up it didn\'t work so a bit of investigation showed the control unit uses thermistors and they have a significantly higher resistance. I can\'t see any options in the software to change this so I\'ve had to go looking for a thermistor that I\'m happy to put in the vapour path. It would be nice to use one of the digital sensors as they are very precise but I\'d need to encase it somehow (basically it\'s a little pcb with a sensor chip) before using it in the vapour path. Any suggestions on that would be great !!
Anyway - despite these minor problems the software and setup has generally done what I wanted first time.
There is an option in the software to dial in a temperature from one of the sensors and the software will adjust the flow from the pump to keep it at that temperature so this will be tested this weekend
I can monitor the coolant water temp as well and control other fans so I could put a radiator in the coolant path and control one or more fans to keep the coolant temperature constant.
There is a lot of potential in this system.
I\'ll hook it up over the weekend and post some photos of it in action.

After a few hassles fitting hoses onto taps etc I got it all plumbed in and working.

It's a bit scrappy at the moment but I'll sort out a proper arrangement once a few more cables arrive to tidy it up.
Programmed up a pot mode to try it out with some water and it's great. It's no louder than the fans in my PC, I've programmed the pumps to watch the temp and keep the condenser cool(ish) and although it is in pot mode I've programmed the reflux jacket to kick in a little bit when the vapour temp goes up over 95 degrees.
It was great to be sat at my keyboard watching the temps and to hear the condenser pump kick in at 40 degrees without me having to do anything
Just to see what would happen I told the reflux jacket to get the temp down to 78 (to see what would happen) and it fired the pump up to 100% and the temp dropped, then when it got to 78 it throttled back the water flow to maintain the temperature.

Looking good. I don\'t know if it will help. I got a new digital thermometer from ebay for just 89p from an Asian seller. Would it be possible to strip the thermistor (or whatever they use) out of one and use that in your setup? Already fitted inside a SS tube. I drilled a 4mm hole in the top of the lyne arm on mine and stuffed it in there. Works fine but the auto switch off after 10 minutes is a pain in the arse.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Cooking-Thermomet ... 4cf1a5563b

In effect that is what I've temporarily done. I had a cheepo LCD monitor (probably from the same seller) that didn't work so I took the sensor from that and hooked it up and it works.
Found a place I can get a decent thermistor I can use for about a tenner so I've ordered one and I'm just waiting for that to arrive.

I\'ve been away for a couple of weeks so I\'ve not had a chance to take the output from the pot run and fire it back through on reflux mode.
I spent last weekend cutting the output from the pot run with various bits of heads + tails and other jars I had lying about with some filtered water and then filtering it all.
I ended up with 3 demijohns of 50% to work with.
Last night I set up the reflux with the water cooling, filled the pot with 6 litres of 50 % and added a couple of litres of filtered water to ensure the element wouldn\'t become exposed when the liquid level dropped.
I checked all the water cooling was working and fired up the power.
It didn\'t take long for the temp to hit 40 and I manually switched the water on in the software. 10% pump power to the condenser and 30% to the reflux jacket.
The temp in the jacket immediately dropped for a few mins and then steadily climbed. When it hit 70 degrees I switched the reflux jacket to computer control to hold it at 70 for a few mins to allow the foreshots to collect to get the majority of them out first.
The water cooling had other ideas though and it upped the water flow so much that the temp dropped down to 60. It then switched the pump off and obviously the temp increased... There are 5 different modes in the software for how quickly the pump will react to the temperature change and clearly the one I had it on was not the right one !! After trying most of the options out I switched the software back to manual pump control and dialled set the pump throughput at 40%. After a bit of fine tuning I found that 34% was a good balance.
I then tried the \'curve\' mode out. This allowed me to set temperatures and a corresponding pump %. After about 5 mins of playing around I found this worked very well, the pump% didn\'t fluctuate wildy and the temperature was maintained.
All in all it took about 20 minutes to get the software setup in a way that I was happy with. I then basically ignored the computer control for the next 6 hours and just collected some fantastic output. I ended up with 6*1/2 litre jars all over 90%. Towards the end of the run the temp started climbing and the pump followed the profile I\'d created increasing the water flow instep with the temp. Eventually the output fell to about a drop every ten seconds and the ABV had fallen to the low 80\'s. The last 1/2 litre was put to one side and will be heading back with the next run.
Once set up the computer control did exactly what I wanted so the next run I\'ll just use the same setting again.
One of the best bits though was after I\'d put 100ml of foreshots to one side the output for the next 2.5 litres had absolutely no smell. Nothing. It\'s beautifully clear and I can\'t wait to add some filtered water and try some tonight
Not bad for a turbo yeast