Glass marbles

[Tasturbo]

Going to try some for my next run but i dont have a full understanding on reflux and how it works.

I know it is vapour going up and coming back down but different materials have different ratings and i have read some where about etching the glass.

Does etching the glass make it catch more vapour because its rougher ?

I could sandblast my Glass to roughen it up/take the shine of if it would help ?

[Mash]

It's surface area thing. So I would think rings are better.

[vino-tinto]

What you are after is a smaller HETP number, READ THIS: http://homedistiller.org/theory/refluxdesign/hetp

The smaller the number the better the quality. Go with SS scrubbers if you want to change from saddles, they will give a greater improvement than marbles.

[Tasturbo]

Ive been running SS and Copper scrubbers but have been reading that the glass is doing a good job.

glass marbles would be easier to load and clean, i guess if im still getting 94% ABV next run they will be as good as SS.

[Phantom]

Ive been running SS and Copper scrubbers but have been reading that the glass is doing a good job.

glass marbles would be easier to load and clean, i guess if im still getting 94% ABV next run they will be as good as SS.

I don't know if there's a league table for the best materials or not somewhere, but if enough digging is done, you'd likely come across SPP or structured packing.

It's basically pieces of stainless steel spring that have been snipped off after each rotation of the shape of the spring. The pics I've seen show that the spring would be a triangle shape form.

I'm guessing but I believe/suspect it's to do with the amount that be fitted into a given space/volume so it allows the greatest possible surface area for the vapour to condense against while allowing some vapour up and condensed drips back down (refluxing) but with the most random possible flow so there's no "channelling" of vapour or liquid (which reduces efficiency).

To do that purely with scrubbers (irrespective of copper or stainless) would be very difficult as getting the optimum density of scrubbers or knitted copper sheet is very difficult...

You'd still want some copper in the vapour path so I'd guess that some copper sheet/scrubber/mesh might be needed as well as the SPP.

Also, don't forget, increasing the density of the packing (say changing from saddles to rashig rings) increases the weight of the column. So such a change would likely need a bit of an experiment with stability as well.........