This still design dates back to the 70’s. The plan was to let farmers process their own corn into pure alcohol. The heat was to be supplied using hay bales. I helped put one of these stills together but it was totally manually operated. The evaporation tube was around 25 feet tall. It would be interesting to see a scaled down model.
The general process is as follows:
A mixture of corn and yeast is left to ferment
The result called is pumped into a chamber at the base of the column.
A heat source is used to cause the bier to boil and evaporate.
As the evaporated bier moves up through the stripper plates impurities are stripped off.
If the temperature is set right, all that is left at the top of the column is alcohol which falls into the collection cup.
Gravity drains the alcohol into the tank below.
The control system is divided into four parts:
(1) The power control with an “ON” push button and a master “OFF” button,
(2) The safety level float switches with fermenting tank empty and alcohol tank full shutoffs,
(3) The column temperature optimization control, and
(4) Bier pump on/off control.
