Personal pages/Reflux cooler

In September, Alex Stalder helped me mill a 10mm groove into four old Pentium III heatsinks, to fit them onto the 10mm copper pipe after the thumper. I had tried with one, without a groove - it got hot, but obviously did not cool enough. In October before my first run, I mounted all four as well as an 80mm fan. Not really a trial, more to see how I could best mount them.

2020/10/25 I distilled the 2nd 25litre gin bottle - yield was about 2.8litres of 80-85% alcohol, which is pretty good. After that, the yield steeply dropped to 30%. This is the first run with the reflux cooler. I wonder if this nice high level of ethanol and the steep drop-off to 30% is due to that ? I will probably have to do a run on a proper maische to really be able to tell. Seems encouraging though.

More thoughts:

Use a bit of plastic to hold three fans on top of the heat sinks, pulling in air from below. Attach it to an airduct (just cardboard) going down the sides of the heat sinks, creating improved airflow. I think the airduct will rest on the copper piping, but I could also attach it to the fan board, maybe just with sticky tape.

My existing three-fan setup that pushes air in over the first bit of pipe is probably largely useless without some heatsinks.

I guess I need some temperature sensors, before the first reflux cooler, in between and after?

2020/11/08 Have completed the fan setup for the reflux cooler. Three old 80mm fans from old ATX power supplies, plus some cardboard and sticky tape. Looked up buying new 80mm fans, am happy to see they are easy to come by, at 4-5 apiece.