Spirit Stills and Reboilers?

[Peter Wood]

Interesting question Brian. 

Preventing heat wastage during distilling has always been a challenge I
guess, and various ingenious ways have been used to apply 'waste' heat from
one part of the process to save fuel on heating up fluids in another part.
I am definitely not a heat engineer, but I do have a couple of papers
produced by the UK Dept. of the Environment "Energy Efficiency Best
Practice Programme" in 1996:
Guide 46 The Malt Whisky Distilleries
Case Study 113 Integrated heat recovery in a malt whisky distillery (Aberlour)

Just as an example of the loving detail in these reports is the following:

Hot Condensers. [at Aberlour] "...a supply of hot water at 80-85C was
produced using a closed-loop cooling water system for the wash and still
condensers. The hot water was used for heating the following streams: the
mashing first water to 67C; the wash still charge to 85C; the spirit still
charge to 75C, and replaced the steam which was previously used for these
duties....corresponding to 15-30% fuel saving.

I'm sure the answer to your question lies somewhere in these reports, but a
bit beyond me to figure it out I'm afraid. If you'd like to have a go and
reort to us, we could find a way of getting copies to you. The case study
is only 4 pages and I could scan and email. The guide is 23 pages. 

I got these reports when I was working and was able to fudge my request to
the DoE by presenting myself as a scientist working in a research institue
concerned with energy extraction from hot fluids. Perfectly true actually -
I was much involved in geothermal energy exploration and development, and
if Scotland had geothermal fields I bet you could run a distillery directly
fom a few holes in the ground. That's no joke either - not far from where I
live there is an industrial alcohol plant that uses milk as feedstock (we
have moo cows and green green grass by the plenty in these parts) and as
they are on the edge of a geothermal field they once looked into the
possibility of using geothermal steam to run the plant. However, geothermal
extraction would have damaged a nearby major hot spring tourist attraction,
so it was a non-starter.

Peter Wood

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