 Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 9/14/2012(UTC)
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HI All,
I did my sacraficial alcohol run yesterday and with a few glitches all went well. Had a few leaks in the cooling water system that were easy fixes. Also had a major issue with my rsc. This is the one I have MLCS 9410 20-Amp Heavy Duty Router Speed Control. After heat up with the 2 110v 2000w elements I shut one off and switched to the other controlled by the rsc. This rsc has 3 settings full, off, and var. When switched on "full" it worked fine but I had no control it was just on. When I switched to "var" for control it just shut off or at least I think it did as the top of column temp dropped rapidly and after a few minutes was not recovering . Not sure if the rsc is bad or just cant handle the 2000w element. Other than those glitches I think things went pretty well. Dumped in about 3 gallons of various old wines we had lying around and then added enough water to make sure the elements were covered (about 7-8 gallons total mix). Came up to temp pretty quick (about 35 minutes, killed the upper element and swithched to the lower rsc controlled element. Did my best to control boiler temp but the rsc failed me. Pulled off a quick 100mls of fores and another 150mls of heads. At this point I was surprised to be getting anything beyond that so I kept going for another 2 hours or so and starting making cuts pulling off another 8 jars with 2 to 4 ounces in each. Output was about 2 drops per second. Hearts pull temps were started at 172f and stopped at 174f. After that temps started rising pretty quickly and outputting into my heads/tails jar. Entire run was about 3 hours with about 14 ounces of 93% 8 ounces of fores and heads/tails. I probably could have gotten more in the hearts if my rsc had worked and more in the tails but I stopped early as it was getting late. I found that my Ebay parrot worked great. Throughout the hearts run was able to maintain 93% which I think for my first alcohol run was pretty good. Have the 8 jars covered with coffee filters and will smell check them tomorrow, mix and dilute to see what I get.
Thanks, Maddawgs
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Rank: Advanced Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 10/12/2012(UTC) Posts: 463   Was thanked: 3 time(s) in 3 post(s)
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good morning Maddawgs Well done. 93%. Sounds great. good luck with the RSC. How is the taste?
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 9/14/2012(UTC)
Posts: 515
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Originally Posted by: Hokey  good morning Maddawgs Well done. 93%. Sounds great. good luck with the RSC. How is the taste? Hi Hokey, Did finger taste tests on each jar with one being a bit harsh and 3 thru 8 being very good. Had to stop at jar 8 as the top of column temp started rising so I pulled the parrot and put my heads/tails jar in. Dumped the parrot remains in jar 8 was down to 90% at that point. I should know tomorrow if it will be good to use. Maddawgs
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
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"Hi md,
Glad to hear you're up and running!
I have the same RSC and I've had the same issues. There are a few things you need to know about these devices. The first is that, by design, they're not linear. That is, quarter-scale is not quarter power, half scale is not half power, etc. The other thing is that even at full scale you won't be getting full power. I read a manufacturer's application note that described some of these issues. Basically, if you get 90% - 94% you're doing well. Finally, these are inexpensive devices that are not really designed for our application. That's not an indictment ... they can and do work well in many situations ... just that we're using them in an application that falls outside of their design specs, so we're forced to adapt a little. IMO you will get the best overall performance from a high quality variac ... but they're relatively very expensive, bulky and heavy -- especially when you want one that is rated at 20 A or above. I've been keeping my eyes open for a good deal ... but no dice so far.
All that said, I was stuck between no RSC (too much power) and cutting in the RSC with too little power. My solution was to insulate the top half of my boiler. Once I did that, I was able to actually use it effectively. Nothing fancy ... I use old towels and some string. The string just fastens the towels to the base of the column (so it looks like an old lady's shawl hanging over the top half of the boiler).
I checked the towels to make sure they didn't contain any synthetics that might melt and stick to the boiler. You can check the labels (if they're still attached) or you can hold a match to some of the dangling threads. If the threads melt into a hard little black ball use another towel. If they just form ash (almost like a graphite powder) the towel is probably ok.
In any case, this worked very well for me. Note that I didn't say anything about insulating the column -- that's a whole different conversation and best left for another time and thread. For now, I'd recommend that you avoid insulating your column until you get several runs under your belt ... so you know how your rig drives without it.
As for the water leaking ... get some hose clamps ... the kind with the screws ... you'll never have to fuss with those annoying water leaks again.:)
Regards,
--JB"
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 9/14/2012(UTC)
Posts: 515
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Originally Posted by: John Barleycorn Hi md,
Glad to hear you're up and running!
I have the same RSC and I've had the same issues. There are a few things you need to know about these devices. The first is that, by design, they're not linear. That is, quarter-scale is not quarter power, half scale is not half power, etc. The other thing is that even at full scale you won't be getting full power. I read a manufacturer's application note that described some of these issues. Basically, if you get 90% - 94% you're doing well. Finally, these are inexpensive devices that are not really designed for our application. That's not an indictment ... they can and do work well in many situations ... just that we're using them in an application that falls outside of their design specs, so we're forced to adapt a little. IMO you will get the best overall performance from a high quality variac ... but they're relatively very expensive, bulky and heavy -- especially when you want one that is rated at 20 A or above. I've been keeping my eyes open for a good deal ... but no dice so far.
All that said, I was stuck between no RSC (too much power) and cutting in the RSC with too little power. My solution was to insulate the top half of my boiler. Once I did that, I was able to actually use it effectively. Nothing fancy ... I use old towels and some string. The string just fastens the towels to the base of the column (so it looks like an old lady's shawl hanging over the top half of the boiler).
I checked the towels to make sure they didn't contain any synthetics that might melt and stick to the boiler. You can check the labels (if they're still attached) or you can hold a match to some of the dangling threads. If the threads melt into a hard little black ball use another towel. If they just form ash (almost like a graphite powder) the towel is probably ok.
In any case, this worked very well for me. Note that I didn't say anything about insulating the column -- that's a whole different conversation and best left for another time and thread. For now, I'd recommend that you avoid insulating your column until you get several runs under your belt ... so you know how your rig drives without it.
As for the water leaking ... get some hose clamps ... the kind with the screws ... you'll never have to fuss with those annoying water leaks again.:)
Regards,
--JB Hi JB, Before I do my first real run I plan on filling the boiler to just above that element and turning it on "var" to see if it does anything. When I first installed them I did a power on test to make sure they worked and noticed you could see "heat waves" forming in the water around each element. Looked pretty cool, so I'll try this with it in "var" and see if I get the "heat waves". If not then I'll hit Home Depot and get another one. I want to control with boiler temp to get better product. Yes, I found that the spring clip type clamps for the water hoses are not as good as hose clamps (that was my easy fix). One thing I found that was interesting, The column cooling water heated up 32 gallons pretty quick so I'll have to have some 2 liter ice bottles ready. Thanks, Maddawgs
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
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Plug your RSC into an incandescent lamp and you'll "see" how it works. Compare the "full" switch setting (which means that power is just passing directly through ... no control) to "Max" scale when switched to variable ... that'll give you a visual feel for the difference between "full" and "max" ... they won't be the same. Keep in mind that luminous power is also not linear when perceived by the human eye.
When you reduce the power low enough you'll probably be able to "hear" the result of the switching in the bulb ... I always thought that was pretty cool.
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 9/14/2012(UTC)
Posts: 515
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Originally Posted by: John Barleycorn Plug your RSC into an incandescent lamp and you'll "see" how it works. Compare the "full" switch setting (which means that power is just passing directly through ... no control) to "Max" scale when switched to variable ... that'll give you a visual feel for the difference between "full" and "max" ... they won't be the same. Keep in mind that luminous power is also not linear when perceived by the human eye.
When you reduce the power low enough you'll probably be able to "hear" the result of the switching in the bulb ... I always thought that was pretty cool. Hi JB, Thanks for the tip. I did this when I got home last night and it worked exactly as you said. It seems to me that the difference (going by bulb brightness) with the rsc from full to var set on high is about 25% so I'm getting 75% (I'm no electrician so I'm probably wrong) of full power and from there you have pretty good control down to low. On my next run I'll try 2 things. The first will be to insulate the top of the boiler with refletix insulation (the foil covered bubble wrap type--after melt testing it) as you suggested. The second will be when I'm at heat up instead of killing the top element and switching the rsc element to var, I'll switch the rsc element to var and when temps recover kill the top element (reverse my previous process). Thanks for the help, I appreciate it. Maddawgs
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 1/12/2012(UTC)
Posts: 804
Was thanked: 5 time(s) in 5 post(s)
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" Quote:It seems to me that the difference (going by bulb brightness) with the rsc from full to var set on high is about 25% so I'm getting 75% (I'm no electrician so I'm probably wrong) of full power I think the electricians would be likely to get this wrong as well. The lighting design guys would likely know all about this though. I read that power vs. ""brightness"" (how we perceive it) isn't linear. So ""half as bright"" isn't half power. Beyond that I'm well outside my understanding.  The good part is you could actually see how the RSC affects things. And the most important thing is that when the knob is turned to ""Max"" you're definitely not getting your full 2000 watts. If you need to operate in that dead zone between ""Max"" and ""Full"" something needs to change. In my case, insulating the boiler did the trick -- the power requirement dropped enough to bring things into the RSC's control range."
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Rank: Senior Member Groups: Registered
Joined: 9/14/2012(UTC)
Posts: 515
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Hi All,
Just wanted to give an update on this run. I think that due to my inexperience with the rsc resulting in no boiler heat control (could not turn it down) that even though I had 93% thru my run I was getting smeared heads-tails. After a few days now of airing out (covered with a coffee filter) final product looks to be cloudy to blue tinged and a bit harsh. I diluted to 45% and it is probably drinkable but it does have a bite. If it has not gotten better by the time I run my first wash then I'll mix it in and redistilll it.
Maddawgs
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