Monumental Day - Hammer Mill with Cyclone - Page 3

Originally Posted by eesakiwi

A bunch of Kiwi mates decided to make use of some wild pine trees and make a few $$ from the oil now.

The good oil from wilding pines | Stuff.co.nz

I hear there's a huge market for Sassafrass oil too

Awesome story, there's a good market for all the volatile oils, you could probably harvest dandelion or even thistle flowers to make oil.

I have a large patch of wild rose that produces a large quantity of hips.

Locally two young fellow log spruce to mill into lumber, I'm going to collect the branches left behind after they log off an area. Since spruce is so full of pitch might try distilling sawdust from the mill, hopefully won't be turpentine.

Having to use stainless steel to build your distilling unit is all hype the human race distilled essential oils long before SS was invented, I thought about inducing vacuum to draw the oils off at lower temperatures which would also relate to using less fuel.

But instead opted in favor of the reflux column, by refluxing water steam back into water back into the boiler in theory should also save on fuel as your not having to heat fresh incoming charge of water to replace that which is lost.

I once made a moonshine still that I had equipped with a reflux column and found they work very good, you know when all the alcohol has been removed when the temperature increases above 176 degrees near the top of the column. You know that your done,

The same reflux principal will work with essential oils with only the temperatures being different during distillation and at end point.

Always and interesting read, 73, Mike