Nanodistilling

Adam Lonicer (1528-1586) was the town physician in Frankfort, Germany. He studied medicine and mathematics and taught at the University of Marburg circa 1553. He authored the works Naturalis historie opus novum (1551), and Herbarium (1555), which contained a special appendix about distillation. A strange apparatus is provided which Lonicer intended for essential oil extraction. It is very similar to one later sketched by Porto in his third chapter of De Destillatione (1609). It also closely resembles an apparatus given by Andreas Libavius in his work, Syntagma (1611), and gives credit to Lonicer

In our modern day reconstruction of the Lonicer apparatus, 1″ borosilicate glass was used, and we are only using one apparatus, as opposed to two in the ancient sketches. Our Lonicer sits ontop of a 3000mL boiler in the picture above, and this should operate with good control up to a 5000mL boiler, but not much larger.

Our path length is 7 feet. The pronounced crook in the path acts like a set of theoretical plates of separation. The rising hot vapor has to contact liquid condensate descending by gravity around the 90′ corners, providing intimate contact area. The boiler is controlled carefully and slowly to bring the apparatus to thermal equilibrium, about 75’C, up to the peak, but not past it. The right side of the unit from the peak is the air-cooled condenser, and the condensate moves to the receiver by gravity.

In contrast, the ancient designs pictured above use a “thumper” and a water-cooled barrel before the receiver. This means that their boilers were driven very hot, and the hot vapors transited the entire first apparatus and well into the second, where water cooling was required before the receiver. We took a more gentle approach, thanks to modern digital temperature control!

Like all of our other ancient reconstructions, this is an air-cooled design and that requires the room temperature to be controlled as well. These units work best in an air-conditioned or “wintery” ambient, not in the heat of summer.

As we can infer from a characterization run using neutral spirits (shown above), the apparatus provides rectification. The distillate collected is between 88% and 92% ABV on a first pass distillation. The “tails” fraction, richer in water, appears at the end of the run, as expected.

Overall, we have found that the Barchusen and LeFevre designs have provided the most pure, highest %ABV of ethanol on the first pass. The Lonicer is a respectable second, along with the Boerhaave cone. We post that Porto’s design improvements on Lonicer’s design (shown above) would have increased the theoretical plates and improved the purity, and this is of interest to us for another experiment. We acknowledge that “thumpers” are pictured in all of the ancient sketches of this design, but we have shown a single unit works very well on its own.