Some questions about distilation

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josbos

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i want to know some things about distilation
1. i have read that i need to distil more than one time is that true?
i am not going to drink the alcohol
i use the alcohol of 92% to extract alkaliods from Peganum harmala plants.
(No drugs or cannabis)
i have a t500, classic 8, 8kg sugar, 18 liter water,
i should have used 25 liter water,
2. is there a change that i get a lesser percentage of alcohol in the wash?
or that the total volume of the distil is lower than 4.5 liter of 92% alcohol ?
4. like i said i used sugar, do i need to throw away the head 150ml?
because i read that with sugar its not necessarily. but in the manual it said that i must throw away the first 150ml.
5. finaly how can i bring the distil to 96% instead of 92%? because i can not put the 92% right back because of vacuum.


best regards,
 
maybe silly question but do you got a link to that distillation forum? is that on this site? or a whole different forum?

thanks,
 
[Thread moved to Distilling Forum.]

Welcome to HBT!

Next time, please [Report] a wrongly placed post/thread so we can move it to the appropriate forum.
Thanks!
 
I know next to nothing about distilling alcohol and even less about using alcohol to extract anything from plants, but most of the questions you are asking has more to do with people who distill alcohol to make spirits for ..um.. drinking. Distilling the distillate will reduce the amount of water captured with the ethanol so distillers either distill their wash or mash several times if they are trying to produce a taste free vodka (as opposed to a brandy or whisky or gin) with a very high percentage of alcohol. They can do the same thing using a still that refluxes (is that a verb?) or allows the same vapors to condense several times and be vaporized frequently as the vapor climbs up the column before it reaches the condenser arm and drips out the still, and each time it is re-vaporized it loses some of the water which drops back into the kettle. A pot still does not work in that way (it has no column) which is why whisky contains the flavors of the malted grains from which it is made.
As I say, my knowledge is close to zero but I imagine that taking a wash with say, 12% alcohol and removing enough of the water to bring it to 95% alcohol using a pot still is an incredibly expensive use of energy and time compared to producing the same amount of alcohol using a reflux-column still - Again, I am just imagining that it may take you 9 -12 hours using a pot still to do what a reflux still could do in three hours - but I could be wrong.

Heads, hearts and tails, I would imagine are important to those distillers making spirits for drinking. Heads contain alcohols that boil off at lower temperatures than ethanol and their flavors do not add anything to a drink. In fact they detract from the pleasure that people get from drinking spirits (hangovers and headaches, for example). Are their removal important to you? If they are then your protocol would need to be similar to those who make alcohol for drinking.
 
As I say, my knowledge is close to zero but I imagine that taking a wash with say, 12% alcohol and removing enough of the water to bring it to 95% alcohol using a pot still is an incredibly expensive use of energy and time compared to producing the same amount of alcohol using a reflux-column still - Again, I am just imagining that it may take you 9 -12 hours using a pot still to do what a reflux still could do in three hours - but I could be wrong.

LOL, i'm no expert either...but i've seen 6ft reflux columns, (in my closet), that will pull 92% on a first run....never tried a second to get , damn what's the word for it...equilibrium? aziotrope? i usually start with 16% though....

That seems like the easiest way to get 95 % ethanol for the extraction of hallucinogens, no?

but no where near as fun!
 
1L 95% 30 euro $33 no way. i bought the T500 instead its cost me 575 euro. but i can make my own everclear, its distils alcohol at 92% but i want to up it some how to 96%
 
thanks for the indebt comment. i have a t500 thats a pot with a reflux. if i turn it on it will distil the wash at 92% alcohol but i want to know how i can up it to 96%.
 
thanks for the indebt comment. i have a t500 thats a pot with a reflux. if i turn it on it will distil the wash at 92% alcohol but i want to know how i can up it to 96%.

To get that high you have to use chemical means, add something particulate that will bond to the water, and then filter it out.

There are a number of things that work. Corn meal. Silica gel. Your best bet is to take one of these, bake it dead dry, mix it with the 92% alcohol, and then run it through a filter. You can do this repeatedly to get purer and purer.
 
To get that high you have to use chemical means, add something particulate that will bond to the water, and then filter it out.

There are a number of things that work. Corn meal. Silica gel. Your best bet is to take one of these, bake it dead dry, mix it with the 92% alcohol, and then run it through a filter. You can do this repeatedly to get purer and purer.


thanks for the advice sir!
 
For most extractions, 80% works fine, let alone 92%. I honestly can't think of too many alcohol soluable substances that have a massive difference in extraction and absorption between 92% and 96%

For this though, I would recommend a silica gel route, followed by a damn good filter.

Otherwise just stick to the 92% from the still.

As for the heads, if anything you are extracting is going to be consumed in any way, then yes it is best to throw it away or use it as a cleaning agent, I'm not sure how tight the cuts are on that type of still, but if that is the recommendation I would go by it
 
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