Raschig Rings For Solvent Extraction

Raschig rings are an extremely popular packing material used for moonshine still distillation, due to their porous ceramic composition and ability to allow vapors to pass freely across large surface areas without becoming trapped and choked off in any given section of your column. Furthermore, their inert nature means they should last forever so long as you keep them clean!

Cleaning these types of packing materials typically involves using highly caustic and corrosive cleaners that leave behind deposits on their inner surfaces that are difficult to eradicate, often damaging the material even after severe treatment such as heating the packing in a torch or other device.

This invention describes a novel approach for the removal of deposits on ceramic Raschig rings. This technique employs large volumes of wetted sand that has been saturated with cleaning solution to be tumbled with, thus greatly shortening contact time between cleaning solution and ring and the latter, therefore significantly lessening corrosion damage compared to alternative techniques used previously.

This method can be performed using any mixer or tumbler capable of providing controlled tumbling action. In general, the amount of sand employed should correspond to the number of raschig rings to be cleaned; for instance, in an Essential Extractor Pro Series II High Capacity/Volume column you would require 1.5 L of sand per row of ceramic raschig rings being processed.