Automating column still

[schmerzdj]

Hi, building a column still soon and wanted to automate a few tasks.

For a lil info onhow a column still does what it does.... the boiler at the bottom gets hot and sends alcohol up the column, but we dont want most of it to make it all the way thro and into the condenser

so we run cold water into a kind of water jacket called a deflag.... this will condence a % of the alcohol in the walls of the column while on the way up, so it runs back down the pipe as liquid back towards the boiler

But that pipe had anywhere from 1 to reasonably 5 bubble plates with a sight glass. These bubble plates are set up so the liquid hasto get to a certain depth on them before it can drain back into the boiler, but as the plates fill with alcohol, the vapour is still comming up from the boiler and thro little holes in the bubble plates... which essentially distills that alcohol 1 more time for every plate your useing cause the hot vapour is boiling the cooled alcohol back into a vapour and redistilling it and making it stronger each time it goes up a plate. But u dont want to flood the plates, so managing the amount of deflag is important.

One thro all the plates it reaches the condenser, which is similar to the deflag, exept upside down, so theres only 1 way out when cooled. U want to control how much liquid is coming out of the end of the condenser. U want a very very fine stream or drops depending on still size. But u dont want flamable vapours comjng out lf the conenser either(boiler temp can help this)

So we control the condenser output by how much water wr put thro the jacket(it heats up water quick)

So i esentially want to know if u think theres a way to set how much water is going thro the deflag by measuring how deep the alcohol is on the bubble plates with a sensor?

Controlling the condenser output with data from a flow meter on the end of the condenser that measures the output and changing how much water cools that?

Could put a sensor that detects ethanol vapours and turns the still down..

Im curious, could an arduino make decisions on how much to change the water pressure to get a approximate amount of change? Or is it on/off?

[jremington]

Arduino compatible sensors are readily available to report temperature and vapor pressure, for example. Any Arduino can read them and make decisions for fine control of pumps, heaters, water flow, etc.

See Arduino water temp control for still, also there are several posts on this forum and tutorials on the web for Arduino control of beer brewing. They may give you some ideas.