Internal Reflux Cooling

Since the cooling is so important to the operation of this still, it might be in order to touch on just how this is done.

In the sketch shown below you can see that the input cooling water is circulated first through the bottom of the column, then through the condenser, and finally back through the top of the column again.

Here's a sketch of how this looks.

The rather large surface area of the copper jacket of this condenser acts as a radiator. It dissipates the heat conducted both by the lower input cooling pipe and the heat absorbed from the column vapors by the water as it passes through the column on its way to the condenser.

This is why the big, jacketed condenser we are going to build for this job is better. Its also happens to be easier to fabricate and more efficient than those condensers which use a coiled tube contained within the distillate output pipe.

The first step in building the condenser is to fabricate the core assembly.