I just finished the first test of a stovetop distiller I'm tryng to design and build.
Instructions (so far): I bought a 20 quart stainless stock pot, Cooks Club brand from our local Meijer's store. It has a domed glass lid, and measures about 10" deep and 12" diameter. It cost about $40 on sale. Grind the ends off and drill out the two rivets that hold the metal handle through the glass lid and remove the handle. Feed a 3" long #10 round head stainless steel machine screw through each of the holes in the lid, with nylon washers under the heads. Add more nylon washers, then nuts. Tighten nuts firmly. *Carefully* grip each machine screw firmly near the glass with pliers and then, using your other hand on the end of the screw, bend it outward. Repeat this process until the holes in the handle will line up with the screws. Use 4 more nuts to mount the handle near the top end of the screws, elevated about 3" above the inverted dome glass lid. This is the main distiller chamber. For a collection jar, I bought an Anchor Hocking 3 quart glass storage canister from K-Mart for $10. I saw the same thing at Bed Bath & Beyond for about 3 bucks more. <grin> It's about 7" diameter and 7" tall. Strip the insulation off the wires from a 2 foot long chunk of 12 gauge Romex house wiring cable. Use one piece to make a collar around the neck of the jar, twisting in two loops, 180 degrees apart, for a wire handle like you'd find on a bucket, and forming the free ends into a fixed handle to help you grip and tilt the jar. Then make the wire hoop handle, attached to the loops in the collar. Now you can handle it much like a paint bucket. Now make supports to keep the jar centered, upright, and off the bottom of the pot: Cut out two flat U-shaped pieces of thin aluminum sheet. (It's easier to make a pattern from cardboard and trace it onto the metal.) The inside of the U conforms loosely to the outside of the jar. The outside of the U fits the inside of the pot. The bottom of the U will keep the jar about 1 1/2 inches above the bottom of the pot. The arms of the U extend several inches up the sides, helping keep the jar from tipping any if it should happen to float a bit when you add water to the pot. Stack the two U-shaped support pieces together, drill two holes on the center line and pop-rivet the pieces together. Spread the arms out to roughtly 90 degrees apart and adjust the fit until the jar settles into it easily and it's a loose fit in the pot. The spacing works out so that the rim of the jar is just below the glass of the inverted dome lid, leaving enough clearance for water to drip down to the center of the lid. The loops that hold the handle stick up enough to keep the jar from floating up and touching the lid, as do the heads of the screws holding the handle, which happen to be spaced almost the same as the diameter of the jar. Testing: I put the support and jar inside the pot and filled it with 7 quarts of tap water, which is just enough to start to float the jar, but not enough to make the jar lift the lid. I brought the water to a boil on my gas stove on medium and reduced the heat to just barely enough to cause a small amount of steam bubbles to rise in the middle under the jar. Water condeses on the lid and drips into the collection jar. Anything more than very low heat causes a rolling boil, the lid hops up and down, and you're obviously wasting a lot of energy and water. I started it Thursday night and let it run for 36 hours or so. I collected 3 quarts of distillate while 3 quarts were left in the pot, meaning another quart was lost to evaporation. Now, that's obviously not very fast or efficient. I'd have to repeat this cycle just over 3 times to fill a 2 1/2 gallon jug that costs about $2.50 to $2.90 each at the store. So, approximately 3 liters in 36 hours is 12 hours per liter, 83 ml per hour, or 1.3 ml per minute. There were drops forming every 7 seconds or so, or about 8.6 drops per minute, so each drop was about .15 ml. That's only about 6.7 drops per ml, which is a lot bigger than the standard drop from a eye dropper or pipette, which is 20 drops per ml or so. That looks about right; they're big drops. If you toss an ice cube on the lid the condensation rate quickly more than doubles to a good 3 seconds per drop until it melts, so this indicates great potential for improving efficiency and speed. Next step is to mount a small, quiet, DC powered computer cooling fan just below the handle, blowing downard on the top of the lid. I'll power it off a wall wart (sorry Wayne!) with an in-line switch. It should significantly speed up the process and probably cut down on vapor loss, too, just by finishing faster. I'll let you know how much better it works when I do the next test. Total cost with all new parts ought to be less than $80, assuming you already have some aluminum sheet laying around and all the tools that you need. Be well, Mike D. [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [[email protected] ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: [email protected] Address Off-Topic messages to: [email protected] The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
