Thanks Jeff.:cool:
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Thanks Jeff.:cool:
Eric,
I find your design and experimentation fascinating. Well done.
I hope there's more discussion in this thread. :D
Today's first batch.Quote:
Originally Posted by saphound
Attachment 11687
AWG 12 good for 20A derate at 25A melts in half at 56AQuote:
Originally Posted by Jeff S
Awesome! Thanks Eric...now skim off that foam, lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fyreaway
That foam turned out to be a treat for the bees. When I skim I just fling the crud out the door. My son just hived his packaged bees and they were really enjoying the maple treat.Quote:
Originally Posted by saphound
I've made some progress on the kitchen sink to e-Vaporator conversion, but I'll take it to its own thread. Thanks, Fyreaway, for the inspiration. There are many ways my design is not as good as yours. I won't be using it to finish syrup or warm it for bottling, because it will take at least two gallons to cover the element, but if it boils water more cheaply than propane can, it will be worth what I'm spending on it. ;D
In another hobby, where they boil liquids to separate the vapours from what remains in the pot, they use beer kegs with one or two water heater elements. Run them on 240VAC to heat up, then switch to 120VAC for a constant simmer. The foil backed bubble wrap insulation keeps the heat in the keg quite well.
A beer keg on it's side, cut in half or slightly higher, would make a nice sized sap e-boiler without the major fabrication cost.
Something I'll ponder for next Spring.
bkeith, what other hobby are you talking about?:rolleyes::D
The fun part is you don't really know that anything you do will be less than what I've done. My design has a V-bottom that works pretty well. A flat bottom sink might very well be better. Without playing around with the options we would never know. Using the sink to boil off the bulk of the water and then finish with what you're familiar with sounds like a good plan. I'll be watching for your thread on the new build.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
I learned a lot from those folks, reading posts by the shine of the moon. I 'still' remember how much help they were in my crazy pursuit to make syrup.Quote:
Originally Posted by bkeith
What I've found in regulating the current flow is that anything that reduces the heat output will work. Spending the money on the PID controller gives almost perfect control. With that magic little box I can slow the input to any percentage of maximum draw. In the middle of a boil I run it full throttle and can drip sap in to maintain a good boil. If I remember right, the fairy dust that runs the heating elements drops to 1/4 with half the voltage input. I don't understand it but it sure is a good way to slow things down. I like the bubble wrap idea. There's only a few places where that stuff really works and this just might be one of them.
Aren't most beer kegs aluminum?Quote:
Originally Posted by bkeith
They come in both aluminum and stainless. You can buy them online, but they ain't cheap. I think a used sink is probably the cheapest SS your going to find. Steam table pans are under 20 bucks, I just wish they came a little bigger.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
The stainless steel sink idea is also intriguing. I can imagine salvaging the sink portion of a kitchen cabinet. That would provide a place to drop the sink into, nice height for working, and you could even stuff insulation up and underneath. Why not run taps on it, while we're at it, to assist in the clean up process. :lol:
If a fitting could be found to convert the large centre drain to something appropriate for draining off, the sky's the limit.
I'm working on that fitting in the In-Sink-Evaporator thread. If I find the parts I need, I'll post links to them.Quote:
Originally Posted by 67HEAVEN
I hadn't noticed that thread, Cedar Eater. Here's a link for others - http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...ink-Evaporator
See you over there.
Meanwhile, thanks to Fyreaway for generating all this creativity. I'll continue reading this thread as well. http://i49.tinypic.com/30kg3fs.jpg
I'm very impressed with your setup.
This is my first year boiling as a hobbyist in my backyard, and I'm already trying to find a way to move to electricity. I'm planning to build my own electric evaporator and this is the first successful diy project I found.
I like the V shape design of the sides of your evaporator and I was wondering if you also had a slope from back to front to allow for draining?
What thickness of SS would you ultimately recommend?
I was wondering if you could provide more dimensions on your evaporator, or a basic version of a plan?
Have you experimented with a system to continously re-feed cold sap as the water evaporates?
Sorry for all the questions, your project is making my brain spin. Thanks for posting!
Welcome to our sappy discussion! I don't have plans for the boiler I made. With rough dimensions it's not too hard to figure stuff out from the pictures. I think the thing is made of 16 gauge stainless. It seems to be plenty sturdy but if the budget is as high as the dream I'll have the next one made a bit thicker. It's about 17" square and 12" deep from the bottom of the V. The V is a 90 degree angle and the vertical bits of the walls are 3" tall. I did use some maths to get the basic dimensions. It will hold five gallons of liquid when filled to the top of the angled section. The 3" riser is nothing magic, just what was left on the sheet without making another cut. The cradle that it sits in has a 1/4" difference in height from end to end so the metal work didn't need to accommodate a drain slope. I feed sap from a 5 gallon bucket perched precariously on a shelf above the evaporator. I find that the precarious perch is helpful because everything else works so well I had to leave something to chance. I have a bulkhead fitting in the side of the bucket and feed through clear tubing with a needle valve to regulate flow. I have thought about flattening the bottom angle a bit to add to capacity but after further review I think I'll keep it the same. It only takes a gallon to cover the heating element and that has turned out to be a useful quantity for a very small run. You've got time to putz around with next year's evaporator. Let the fun begin!Quote:
Originally Posted by loubard
I know a guy that is using an electric turkey fryer to preheat sap. That would be one way to go all electric. He actually has 2 of them and has made syrup with them, but the boil is a little slow so now he uses a propane burner and those to preheat.
I wonder if those small on-demand water heaters that they use for bathroom sinks could be repurposed for preheating sap on-demand.Quote:
Originally Posted by saphound
I think that the on-demand heaters need a minimum flow to activate the heat source. I don't know what that minimum flow is but there has to be a safety so a dripping faucet doesn't keep making hot water all day. As with all things, there are ways to bypass controls and make the unit do what you need. Of course, I would never do such a thing!Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
I took my old coffe maker apart. Under the warming platform is a horseshoe shaped (aluminum?) tube that consumes 600 watts. I bet that would preheat sap quite well. It's about the diameter of a pencil. It has its own thermostat, so over heat might not be an issue.
good info can be found on Heat Source Comparison including electric http://www.kegkits.com/heat_sources.htm
Prob would work well, but aside from the flow they require. cleaning would be limited to just flushing water or detergent through the system. They don't come apart..at least not the ones we have. You can replace parts, but can't really get into them to clean where the sap would flow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
Eric,
How many kw's actually used to evap 1 gallon of sap? A 4.5 kw unit @ 3414 btu kw should evap est. 7 gal hr with a 2'x2.5 surf area.
Thanks,
Dwight
His surface area is closer to 2 sqft, but I'm curious how you came up with that estimate for 5 sqft. The reason I ask is because mine will also be close to 2 sqft.Quote:
Originally Posted by Locust Farms
Or I could kluge something that works much the same way, just thinking of a SS coil and a heating element that heats a trickler to 180-200 degF. Doesn't seem likely to be very expensive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fyreaway
That would be more along the lines of what I was thinking, except it would be SS and immersed in a small SS pipe so that cold sap would enter the pipe from the bottom, get heated and come out on the top at around 200 degrees.Quote:
Originally Posted by lpakiz
Dwight,Quote:
Originally Posted by Locust Farms
Here's where I jump off the train. I have never calculated what it actually costs me to make syrup. My goal was to figure out a way to make the same product cheaper than using propane and easier than wood. My first calculations showed that the cost of electric versus propane was about the same per BTU. When I factored in the efficiency of the submersed heater it all went pear shaped and propane was beaten hands down. The surface area of my boiler is just over 2 ft² and I manage to evap 3-4 gph. Near the end when I stop adding sap the rate goes up. Dealing with such a small production rate the differences are pretty easy to measure. I have to pause Netflix and check the boiler more often as it gets closer to syrup.
Here's my take on preheating sap. Unless I'm able to make use of free energy to bring the temp of the raw sap closer to the boiling point I don't see the benefit of preheating. Wrap a tube around the stack or use the steam from a back pan and it all makes perfect sense. I could arrange a preheating vessel and use the steam from my boiler but I'm not sure that covering that much of the pan would be beneficial. My evap rate goes up when I use a fan blowing across the top of the boiling sap. It's the surface area that makes the difference not the temp of the sap entering the pan. I'm going to use a given number of BTUs to evaporate a given quantity of water. Using a second source of energy to provide those BTUs just adds more equipment to the process. If I can't keep a good boil going as I add cold sap I need to increase the BTU available at the boiler. That being said, if time is a factor and you're looking for a quicker turn around then adding equipment and preheating might make more sense.
Now let's work on the solar preheater and really get a bang for our bucks!
If an electric preheater is more efficient than a propane-fired preheater, then people who don't go electric for the boil can at least benefit from some sort of immersion type 120 VAC preheater, which would be much cheaper to build than an e-Vaporator and wouldn't require routing a 240 VAC circuit. That's where I see the benefit of adding an electric preheater. It makes the gas burners more efficient. My intent is to stay a small scale hobby producer of maple and birch syrup, with 20 - 30 taps max for maple and 10 or less for birch. So I like the flexibility of being able to use other methods when the primary boiler can't keep up with the sap influx. On-demand point-of-use heaters seem like a useful idea if the temp can be set high enough. Coffee makers and room humidifiers heat water to boiling temp, so they seem like natural candidates for a kluge. I'll look into that after I get my In-Sink-Evaporator running.
The solar preheater could be made with a used Dish or Direct TV antenna with small pieces of mirror or aluminum "furnace" tape glued to the curved surface to focus the sunlight on a glass or metal cup. A Sun-follower to move the antenna isn't that hard to make. Someone else is more than welcome to work up a design for that. I do too much of my boiling at night to think about daytime boiling.
Hi CE, Trying to get handle on the surface area his 4.5 kw heat source will support for a fast boil when adding a surface breeze which evap faster but requires more btu to maintain boil.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
I have extensively used a window fan to apply air to the surface of my 2.5x5.5 flat pan evaporator (wood fired) increases evap rate considerable, also has to be fired hotter with added combust air.
Dwight
Eric,
Another question. How fast do you get a boil in your unit. using full power?
I ask because I installed a 4.5 kw unit in the finish end of my flat pan. It instantly boiled so agressively in 3in of sap, had to shut off.
Dwight
Just based on my limited experience..pre-heating sap makes a huge difference unless maybe you could trickle in sap at about the rate your boiling off water. I didn't have a way to do that so I preheated pots (about 1.5 gal) of sap to boiling on my stove and then poured it in my main boiler outside and it never hiccuped. Otherwise, adding cold sap, I would lose my boil for a good 10-15 mins. That's another hour every 4 pots of sap I didn't have to wait. A slow trickle of cold sap might work..but I haven't tried it.
I'm thinking a fan over any evaporator might be a good idea. If Fyreaway can get 3-4 gph from his e-Vaporator, maybe I'll be able to get that from mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Locust Farms
I boiled over propane in the Southern Ontario outdoors and a west wind was always howling across my pan. In my case, a fan would be superfluous. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
Sounds like you could have used a wind preheater. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by 67HEAVEN
67HEAVEN wins the 'word of the day' contest. Well played, sir.Quote:
Originally Posted by 67HEAVEN
Here's how I move the air without excessively cooling the pot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
Attachment 11701
CE,Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedar Eater
You're exactly right, that would be a perfect place for a scaled down electric unit. A 1500 watt heater in a hotel pan would heat a fair amount of sap to a helpful rise in temp. Also, as you say, there wouldn't be the need for a dedicated high voltage circuit. The key would be the actual evap rate of the primary boiler. The preheater will only work so fast and if you're boiling faster than that there wouldn't be the benefit.