multi-coil field generator detail

What you see to the left is a field generator inner core consisting of six mobius coils.  It's pretty much the same as all the other inner cores I built, only this one has 600 feet of insulated 20 gauge solid copper wire, made basically the same as the other coils I made for my other field generators.  That is, 100' of wire doubled twice and twisted counter-clockwise until the cable has a 45 degree twist, and wound around itself at three points until I have a tightly wound ring that looks like an emaciated bagel.  I stacked all six of these coils and wired them in series, creating a massive, 600 foot mobius coil that looks more like a tower than a disk.

This project is only half way finished and I would've completed it last night if I was at all satisfied with a flat top and bottom cylinder.  It's the edges on this thing that bothered me and on previous projects where I studied the before and after effects of rounding off edges and filling voids, I realized I need to adjust the design before I move on. 

As I sat at my computer and pondered this problem, I glanced to the paper plate sitting on top of my printer.  Pulling out my ruler, I measured the dish diameter and it measured 8.5 inches.  The perfect size I needed!   

Grabbing a clean paper plate and a 4" PVC coupler, I proceeded to make a torus dome for the inner core.

The coupler is held to the plate with nothing more than Vaseline and the plate got a couple squirts of WD-40 as a release agent.  Removal from the mould was too easy and I was able to use the same plate for the other side as well.

The fit is perfect and turned the inner core from a cylinder to an elongated torus.

You may be thinking, why bother?  It's going to work the same whether it's round or square, right?  Well... not really.  From past experiments I found edges and voids distort the energy flow.  The energy from these things seem to exit out an edge, and a cylinder has four edges, two on the inside and two on the outside.  By eliminating the outer edges I'm able to concentrate the energy in the open shaft where it belongs.  On a torus shape, such as this, the energy flows over the outside walls and concentrates in the center shaft, like an energy vortex.  This energy easily travels over flat surfaces and smooth bends.  An edge would divert and dissipate the energy and voids in the surface disturb the flow.  Think of running over a speed bump and immediately hitting a pothole doing 35mph.

I'll let ya know if all this was worth the effort.

  

Thumper update

After fixing the seal problem on the new thumper, I decided to run a rum wash to test the system.

I gotta tell ya, I'm rather impressed with the results.  I charged the thumper with about 2" of rum wash, in the hopes of improving the rum flavor out the pipe.  As soon as I got it up to running, with a top columb temp of 196 degrees, I had to adjust the coolant water flow to liquefy the alcohol vapor that was getting past my condenser.  Let's just say a couple good whiffs of alcohol vapor will give you an instant buzz.

After I stabilized the system to produce a distillate just under body temperature, all I had to do was replace full jars with empty ones.  I ran eight pints of quality rum with the first at 150 proof and the last at 120 proof.  Not bad, considering I started out with six gallons of rum wash.

It seems the thumper acts as a second distillation, not only purifying the distillate of unwanted sulphides and off flavors but maintaining a consistent alcohol content throughout the run while maintaining the rum flavor.  An added benefit was letting it run with no adjustments on the equipment.  The system didn't need the constant adjustments of heat and coolant flow as it did before installing the thumper.  The vapor from the thumper had a lower temp compared to the column, allowing a drastic reduction of coolant in the condenser.  The condenser water flow was a mere trickle to produce the same results I had in previous runs.  I spent two hours playing with my phone and listening to music instead of constantly adjusting controls.  If that's all this thumper did, that would be enough, but I believe I could turn this still into a continuous run unit with a few modifications to drain out some of the back-set while adding more wash.        

Now, this is just a prototype to test the system.  It's workable but far from perfect.  A major improvement would be designing a larger diameter intake to improve the flow.

I found the biggest pain in the ass in distilling is the inability to work on other projects when doing a run.  You need to remain focused and pay attention to what you're doing at all times, unlike making orgonite or building field generators.  That stuff requires walking away from the project to let the resin set, or at least, leaving the project to work on something else.
 
I have other plans in the works, like the multi-coil field generator I mentioned a few months back.  The coils are built, the moulds are acquired, and the protocol is laid out.  All I need to do is stabilize the assembly, wire them up, and pour the extra high density inner core before step three.

I'll most definitely keep ya posted on this one.

thumper test

I've been thinking about building this thumper for a few months now.  I finally decided to stop the planning and build the damn thing.

My plans were a bit more elaborate than the finished project, and it was that way of thinking that kept me in a holding pattern.  The original plans involved building a new column with a 2" to 1" reducer with a 90 degree elbow connected to a 3/4" copper pipe through the dome lid with an equally elaborate exit pipe connected to the liebig condenser.  All of these parts connected with compression fittings for easy assembly and disassembly for cleaning.

As I mentioned, all this planning only got in my way of building it.  All the measuring and constantly searching hardware stores for parts they don't carry kept this project in a perpetual state of limbo.

I decided to just build the damn thing freeform and see where it goes.  Where it ended up was a rather efficient second distillation thumper, despite a few minor flaws.

The parts list was simple... A 3 gallon stainless stock pot with a stainless salad bowl as the dome, a few feet of 1/2" copper tube, a couple compression fittings, some foam seal, and some spring paper clips to hold down the lid.  Soldering copper to stainless was the tricky part and that was easily accomplished by acquiring the proper liquid flux from Amazon, since no hardware store around here carries such a thing.  Some reinforcement to hold the dome pipes in place and it was ready to run.

The first test was distilling water to test the seals and compression fittings.  Good thing I did because the foam seal between the stock pot and dome blew out on one side.  (The last thing you need is alcohol rich vapour near a heat source.)

If this test was distilling alcohol I would check the proof, flavor and measure the consistency throughout the run, but since this was a water run I did a few tests on total dissolved solids.  The end result from the thumper showed a TDS count of 4 parts per million, or 4ppm.  The water left in the thumper showed 55ppm while the cooker registered 86ppm.  Since the water I started with had 71ppm, I can only assume the cooker and thumper vaporized only H2O, leaving a concentration of dissolved solids in the boiler and thumper, with decreasing TDS at each stage.  Going from 71ppm to 4ppm is pretty good, considering my boiler was cranked up to 220 degrees.  I believe I could have reduced that 4ppm if I reduced the heat a bit.

It seems this thumper did a good job purifying water.  What it will do to a ferment wash is something else.  My main interest is to carry over the flavors from the wash, not eliminate them entirely.  I think I can achieve this by charging the thumper with some backset from the still along with some tails from a previous run, allowing the desirable flavors to pass while maintaining a more consistent proof.

I'll let ya know after I fix that broken seal and try again.