DIY Electrical Evaporator Design - Page 1

[maple flats]

You can make sap by taking 1 pt of maple syrup and add about 40 pints of good potable soft water, (not softened with salt). then mix it well. However when you get back to syrup it will be much darker than what you started with.

[Cedar Eater]

I finished the first sap boil tonight. I am extremely pleased with how it went. I reported the results here http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...ric-evaporator, but a brief recap is that the 4000W element worked fine with an outdoor temp that fell below freezing during the boil. I calculated the evap rate at 1.25 gph from a cold start. I added whole gallons of cold sap during the boil and the boil recovered quickly each time. I walked away and let the box do its thing for half hour periods throughout the boil. I wish I had thought to measure the box internal temp during the boil. I'll try to remember that next time.

[Cedar Eater]

It's late and I might not be thinking straight, but my simplified view of the energy cost per gallon of syrup produced, assuming 40 gallons sap per gallon of syrup is

39 gallons sap boiled/1.25gph = 31.2 hours boiling time x 4kW = 124.8kWh x $.137473/kWh = $17.16/gallon

I have no idea how that compares to propane at current prices. I know I can beat it with wood, but I can't walk away from a wood fire for a half hour at a time.

[Cedar Eater]

After 16 hours of runtime, the fuse holder failed by melting/burning. I measured the temperature inside the box while it was in operation and it never went above 70F and only one side of the holder failed. It seems clear that one terminal of the heating element got much hotter than the other. I'm not sure what caused this but I suspect it was just that the nut on the heating element terminal was not tight. I really like the idea of plugging the pan into the base, so I'm going to work at finding a way to keep doing that, but for now I've just hardwired the leads to the heating element terminals.

fuseblockfail.jpg

[Cedar Eater]

I've finished two small batches this year with a new modification that allows me to plug the pan into the base so the leads for the heating element terminals don't have to be directly connected. I salvaged the spring clips from the melted fuse holder and mounted them at the top of two small towers made from two different sizes of flat washers. The washers radiate away the heat that comes down from the heating element terminals. So far, the wood beneath the towers where the mounting screws attach has shown no sign of excessive heating and because it is dry, it is good electrical insulation.

springclips.jpg

[Colin1234]

Dear community,

I'm a folk from a suburb of Montréal (Laval) where I tapped a dozen of maple trees of neihbours around, in exchange of sirup. I have 20 taps.
Last year I evaporated 5 taps in my kitchen, did a hole mess. So this year I was looking around on internet to find ways to evaporate the water. First taught of a rocket stove, but with neihbours juste a fence away, it was not the best to play with fire.
Then I ended up here in this thread. Wow. It inspired my plan from A to Z. Thank you!

So here is in few words my set-up:
- could not plug myself in a 240V, so I bought 6 120 V element of 1440 Watts each, for a total potential power of 8640 watts. My breakers circuit are 15 amps and each element with pull 12.5 amp so I should be fine plugging my elements in 6 different circuits of the house.
- the difficult part was to fit the element in a cauldron, because the elements have a diameter of 1''. Did a hole with a 1''1/4 hole saw. Finding a 1''nut was hard, because it's a NPS thread (didn't know the difference between NPT thread and NPS thread, the latter being not common). With silicone washer, the elements are watertight. The cauldron has a volume of 100 litres.

Now my trees are tapped, waiting for the sap and will probably first test this version of electrical evaporator sunday. As people said, Quebec electricity is 6 cents/kw-hr!

Here are some pictures. Comments and insights are more than welcome


IMG_1406.jpg
IMG_1407.jpg IMG_1408.jpg

[fisheatingbagel]

Looks like it has great potential to really boil! Let us know how it goes...

[Cedar Eater]

Then I ended up here in this thread. Wow. It inspired my plan from A to Z. Thank you!

You're welcome! Glad to see that you're trying something different. You might want to run with your level down close to the top of the elements to maximize your boil rate. Also set your pan in a non-flammable, non-conductive insulator to cut out heat loss through the bottom. I would love to see and hear how it works for you.

[Colin1234]

Hi everyone!

I am very excited to tell you that my first boiling is happening right now.
With just 4- 1440 watts elements out of 6, it took 40 minutes for the sap to boil around 45 litres. Didn't use the other two elements, had trouble finding two free breakers. I like to have two spare elements, because if one of my wire extension gets too hot, then I can switch to another one (I have 6 extension cord, most of them 16 AWG, which is limit from what I understood)

So far so good, the breakers are holding, such a great feeling to look at this steam coming out of the evaporator.

Here are some pictures. The set up is not the best one, I put the evaporator on two fire bricks, I know I am loosing a lot of heat since the thing is not insulated at all. ''Better is the enemy of good enough'', Cedar Eater said

But it's not done yet, I am still far from good taste syrup!

IMG_1418.jpgIMG_1414.jpg

[Colin1234]

Update: I am at almost 2 gallons of syrup so far.
The evaporator is doing great, I started boilling 80 litres of water this afternoon, my biggest volume of water at a time so far, took a bit less then 1 hour to reach boil temp.

While boiling, I had a question... 5 elements at a time manage to boil a lot. Does it evaporate faster when the boil is ''bigger''? Could I remove one or two elements and if it still boilling it will evaporate at a similar rate then 5 elements?