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.
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