1868 The complete Practical Distiller

CONTINUOUS DISTILLATION.

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losing any tiling in the wine, while the portion of watery vapour will be condensed, and produce a relative q-tiantity of alcoholic vapours. Such are the phenomena which take place in the systems in which one still is distilled by the other. Such are, also, the phenomena which aro observed in the distilling column and in the rectifier of the apparatus now under consideration. The nearer the vapours are to the summit of the column the richer the wine they meet, and the more they are charged with alcohol. As, in this case, the wine operated upon, and such as it is supplied by the condenser, is the richest, and as these vapours are greatly charged with alcohol when they leave the column to enter the condenser, it must be con- ceived that this column has an immense advantage of other stills ; and that it serves only and continuously to enrich the vapours, without ever enriching the wine; while in other apparatus it is always necessary to render the wine rich before richer vapours can be obtained. The same phenomenon takes place in the rectifier. The low wines, which run back into it, present to the vapour a liquid much richer in alcohol than that which it has met in the column ; but these low wines only appropriate to themselves the water of these vapours, to which they aban- don a portion of their alcohol. The spirituous vapours^ on leaving the rectifier, enter, through h, into the worm of the wine-warming condenser : even in this part of the apparatus they may be more dephlegmed, and from these they pass into the worm. In this apparatus every thing is combined in such a manner as to cause all the vapours that are produced to be condensed in the wine- warming