Commercial Distillery Equipment Supplier
In addition to a still, distillers will need a boiler and mash tun to create the fermented liquid. Experienced distillers will also recommend using copper because it reacts with wash liquid and distillate vapor, neutralizing the sulfur compounds that give moonshine its unpleasant smell.
Manufacturer of standard and custom laboratory distillation equipment. Products include Kjeldahl, arsenic limit test and solvent fractionation apparatus. 24 hour technical support and process engineering consultations available.
Distillation Stills
The still is a key piece of equipment that turns water and yeast into alcohol. The simplest distillation apparatus is known as a pot still, and it consists of a heated chamber that collects vapor and a vessel to hold the purified liquid. This type of still only has one condensation stage, and it produces a dram that is a mix of ethanol and other volatile compounds called congeners. The more congeners a distillate contains, the weaker it will taste.
While this type of still is used in smaller Distillery equipment supplier to make single malt scotch, cognac and some rum styles, large industrial distillers use a much more modern process that relies on a series of interlinked columns. These column stills look like a long vertical tube with multiple floors and have a series of plates at different heights within them. Ethanol enters at the bottom of the system and rises up through these plates as they heat up. Ethanol loses impurities on each floor as it passes through, and the resulting vapors are pure ethanol at the top of the still.
These modern columns allow for what is called fractional distillation because the different compounds in a wash boil at different temperatures. These vapors are collected and separated out, and the resulting product is a high-quality spirit with no residual toxins. This is the process that makes the world’s best whiskeys and vodkas.
Vacuum Distillation Systems
Vacuum distillation is the process of boiling a mixture under reduced pressure in a column. It allows the separation of compounds that would be difficult to separate using atmospheric distillation methods. It also reduces the amount of energy needed to heat the sample, avoiding thermal degradation and unwanted side reactions.
In oil refineries, vacuum distillation is used to separate naphtha, kerosene, and gas oils from crude oil. In this type of operation, a two-phase mixture is heated in the CDU flash zone to separate the vapor and liquid streams, which are then sent to the distillation column. The vapor fraction rises through the theoretical plates in the column, and the less volatile liquid fraction is withdrawn at lower points. This allows the distillation of volatile organic compounds without the risk of cracking the aliphatic hydrocarbon chains.
Unlike vacuum evaporators, the Wastech VD system uses a standard heat pump design and is ideal for plating tanks and rinse water applications. It can also be used to reduce solvent contaminants in wastewater, reducing waste disposal costs and allowing zero discharge applications that require only water reuse.
The use of surrogate compounds makes it possible to correct for matrix effects in vacuum distillation data by measuring the relative volatility of the surrogate. This eliminates the need to group determinations by matrix, and allows a more efficient analysis of environmental samples.
Evaporators
In the distillation process, it’s important to have a good vacuum pump. You don’t want to lose a lot of your product due to poor seals or pump damage. Celebration Distillation’s Kelly notes that it can cost a bit more to buy a high quality pump but that the investment is well worth it. It can save you time in the long run due to less downtime and better efficiency.
Manufacturer of custom and standard evaporators and fractional distillation systems for industrial, wastewater and chemical processes. Products include multiple effect, forced circulation, rising film and vapor compression evaporators and distillation stills. Features include welded and cladded stainless steel construction, radial, stacked and double embossed heat surface designs, laser beam and spot welds. Designs meet ASME, TEMA and PED codes.
Both short path and wiped film distillation offer advantages to manufacturers by decreasing boiling point temperatures, avoiding degradation or isomerization of desired materials, reducing temperature gradients, and minimizing residence times in the still. Wiped film and short path distillation also allow manufacturers to reduce overall energy costs by using heat recovered from the vapor and waste-waster streams to preheat feedwater.
Design, fabrication and installation of water and gas distillation equipment including filters. Products are made of food grade sanitary stainless steel and PTFE. Services include system integration, turnkey projects, 24 hour emergency service and one year warranty. Serves the agricultural, beverage, laboratory, pharmaceutical and oil/gas industries.
Tanks
Whether your commercial distillery is large or small, you need a variety of different tanks to store and transport liquids. These include alcohol storage tanks and blending tanks in Eugene, OR. These tanks are critical to the distilling process. They help you create high-quality alcoholic beverages that are both flavorful and potent.
Manufacturer of stainless steel storage, mixing, agitator and fermentation tanks. Tanks can be custom manufactured to customer specifications. Services offered include machining, fabrication, welding and painting. Materials used include carbon steel, stainless steel and Hastelloy(r). Industries served are food, beverage, pharmaceutical, healthcare, energy and oil and gas.
Storage tanks are single-wall units that store distilled spirits before post-processing efforts like proofing, filtering and blending. They usually come with a volume indicator and scale, sampling port, vent pipe with pressure release valve and CIP ball and piping. Blending tanks mix distilled spirits and water during the proofing, filtration and hydro-separation processes. They also typically come with a motorized agitator, sample ports and a temperature gauge.
A grist case is a container that holds the pre-weighed and pre-crushed grain before it goes into the mash tun at mash time. It helps keep the grains from being contaminated with bacteria and other contaminants. Both the mash house and free-standing mash tuns have work platforms for easy access to operators. They also have built-in cold water chiller coils that allow the operator to start with cold mash water and grain, bring it to conversion temperature and then chill it to fermentation temperature all in one vessel.