under hood preheater

[harrison6jd]

as I sit hear cooking away, I am looking at my setup and start thinking about a preheater. there is plenty of room under there but my question is this. how do we control the condensation that is created? I am watching the hood drip with condensation even now. adding cold sap in copper tubing will create more and it will be directly over my evaporator. do we just let it drip back in the pan? sounds counter productive but I have no experience with it. I have a home built 3x4 wood fired evaporator with a copper hood to match its size. I have the hood tilted just a little so all the condensate drips off one corner into a bucket. I have not even seen up close a commercially sold unit so any pics would help. thanks

[West Sumner Sugar]

We had a setup like this...had. The sap came in from our storage tank and would flow through a series of slant fin (baseboard) units set over the pans and then into the rear pan. The sap would go from ice cold to pretty warm but the condensation dripping back into the pans seemed to offset the heating of the sap. We have a large fan drawing the steam through our hood. When the generator runs out of power, its like a downpour coming down.

[lpakiz]

Harrison,
The pre heater is suspended over a drip tray. There are a couple different styles, but they are designed to catch all the condensation and route it out to the hood gutters, or wherever you might want it to go.

[harrison6jd]

im glad you said "had". that tells me you've moved on and its not worth it. ive done the pan over the evaporator thing and the coils around the stack, both not great. im done messing around and that's why im asking here. the season is too short for more trial and error. thanks

We had a setup like this...had. The sap came in from our storage tank and would flow through a series of slant fin (baseboard) units set over the pans and then into the rear pan. The sap would go from ice cold to pretty warm but the condensation dripping back into the pans seemed to offset the heating of the sap. We have a large fan drawing the steam through our hood. When the generator runs out of power, its like a downpour coming down.

[brookledge]

As Harrison said you need a drip tray under the pre heater. You are correct when you say it would be counter productive if it drips back into the pan. Anyways inside the hood you have the drip tray that is piped out the side of the hood. This hot condesate is usually piped to some type of holding container providing you with all the hot water you need for cleaning. Using the steam to heat the incoming sap is free heat that otherwise is lost
Keith

[harrison6jd]

thank you. that helps explain and give me something to research.

Harrison,
The pre heater is suspended over a drip tray. There are a couple different styles, but they are designed to catch all the condensation and route it out to the hood gutters, or wherever you might want it to go.

[nudlebush]

11169 here is my improved preheater added extra copper line and more slope to help drain off condensation. Last yr the sap exitig the preheater was too hot to tough. Should be putting it to test this wkend

[West Sumner Sugar]

This is what our preheater looked like. With some drip trays it would probably work. We just eliminated it before trying the trays. Like I said the sap did some out nice and warm out the other end.

11170

[lpakiz]

I don't have a preheater, nor do I think need one because of the violent boil I get without one. Before I came to that conclusion, I had thought of using the finned heater units, except I thought I would rotate them 45 degrees, so the condensate dripped off the bottom corners of the fins, into a light SS angle iron trough, or a fabricated SS trough made of 22 or 20 gauge . Trough would only have to be 1 inch by 1 inch, allowing plenty of steam exposure to the fins.

[Pibster]

11181
I have small drip tray under each copper pipe. Works awesome and all the hot water I need in the sugar shack.

[harrison6jd]

Thanks for the info and the pics. Im planning for next year but cooking right now. 11183