food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398

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Food and Bioproducts Processing
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Optimization of the distillation process of Chinese liquor by
comprehensive experimental investigation
Hailong Li
a
, Weixing Huang
a,
, Caihong Shen
b
, Bin Yi
b
a
School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
b
Key Laboratory of Liquor Making Bio. Tech. & Appl. of Sichuan Province, Luzhou 646000, China
a b s t r a c t
Systematic experiments were carried out to optimize the distillation process of Chinese liquor through an
industrial-scale distiller. Effect of the operation conditions on the yield and quality of the liquor, and varia-
tion of liquor components during distillation were investigated. The steam owrate of 1.60kg/min gives the best
yield and quality, suggesting there exists an optimal owrate for the distillation. The yield and quality of the
liquor drops down obviously with the increase of bulk density, implying that the fermented grains should be
loosely packed. Increasing the bed height from 600 to 1250mm enhances the yield and quality, indicating that
current distiller (commonly used bed height from 700 to 900mm) has great potential of improvement. Adding
small amount of edible alcohol in the steam boiler is proven to increase the liquor yield, but excess amount
causes the quality degraded sharply. The liquor-vapor leaking is found to commonly occur at the initial stage
of distillation process and dramatically decrease the yield and quality. A simple method is proposed to elimi-
nate the leaking effectively. The gas chromatography analysis results show that the variation of avor compounds
during distillation is closely related to their dissolving properties in ethanol.
2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Chinese liquor; Distillation; Optimization; Steamowrate; Bulk density; Bed height
1. Introduction
Chinese liquor is a popular alcoholic beverage with a con-
sumptionof more than4 millionkilograms andsale revenue of
about 500 billionChinese Yuan(CNY) eachyear (ChinaBrewing
Industry Association and China Alcoholic Drinks Industry
Editorial Board, 2008). According to the aroma characteristics,
Chinese liquor can be generally divided into ve styles: the
strong aroma style, light aroma style, sauce aroma style, rice
aroma style and miscellaneous aroma style (Fan and Qian,
2006a). The manufacturing of Chinese liquor consists of three
consecutive processes: fermentation, distillation and blend-
ing. The fermentation is typically operated at 2832

C for a
fewmonths under anaerobic conditions in a solid state. After-
wards, the fermented grains are distilled with steamto extract
ethanol and other avor compounds. Finally, after being aged
for a period of time, these distillates are blended to yield the
nal product. The distillation plays a critical role to link the

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 28 85405209; fax: +86 28 85403397.

E-mail address: hwx@scu.edu.cn (W. Huang).
Received27 March2011; Receivedinrevisedform29 August 2011; Accepted19 December 2011
initial fermentation with the nal blending. The goal of dis-
tillation is to extract the avor compounds in the fermented
grains. Therefore, the distillation process determines the yield
and quality of the nal product. For a long time, the research
on Chinese liquor has been mainly focused on the species of
microorganismand the formations of avor compounds dur-
ing the fermentation process (Shi et al., 2009; Xiang et al.,
2005; Zhang et al., 2005) and focused on the qualitative and
quantitative analysis of the components in the nal prod-
ucts (Fan and Qian, 2006a, 2006b; Zhu et al., 2007). However,
the distillation process has been less investigated and cur-
rently applied distillation operation still follows the way that
it has been done in ancient time. Therefore, the investiga-
tion of distillation process and improvement of its efciency is
an important subject in the present development of Chinese
liquor.
To optimize the distillation process, the following fac-
tors are important to be considered: (1) The steam owrate,
0960-3085/$ see front matter 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fbp.2011.12.005
food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398 393
which represents the heating rate and convective strength,
has important inuence on the distillation process. In the
present production, the steam owrate has not been de-
nitely quantied, yet is mainly dependent on the intuition
of the operating workers. The random choice of the steam
owrate leads to lowdistillation efciency and great difculty
in maintaining the stability of the yield and quality of the
liquor. Only 5575% of the ethanol in the fermented grains
can be effectively distilled out (Pu, 2005a). The extraction ef-
ciencies for ethyl acetate, ethyl butanoic, ethyl hexanoate
and ethyl lactate, which are the most important avor com-
pounds in the strong aroma style liquor, have been found to
be only about 8.5%, 3.5%, 30% and 10%, respectively (Chen
et al., 2009). Some researchers point out that slower heating
rate is favorable for the distillation process (Pu, 2005a; Wan
et al., 1998; Zhong et al., 2008), while the quantitative rela-
tions between the yield and quality of the liquor and steam
owrate have not been clearly known. Therefore, it is neces-
sary to experimentally investigate the effect of steamowrate
on the yield and quality of the liquor. (2) The bulk density
and bed height of fermented grains: The bulk density, closely
related to the porosity, determines the resistance of steam
ow and the areas for mass and heat transfer. Therefore, the
bulk density certainly affects the distillation products. The
bulk density is much dependent on the mode of loading the
grains. Accordingly, understanding of the effect of the bulk
density is meaningful for the design of the loading mechani-
cal device. However, there have been few reports about this
factor thus far. The current used bed height of fermented
grains is 700900mm, which is determined according to the
height of operational worker, but not by the distillation pro-
cess itself. Pu (2005b) has pointed out that the increase of bed
height leads to a gradual increase in the liquor yield of per
unit mass of fermented grains. However, the research is lim-
ited to the bed height lower than 1000mm. The circumstance
for the bed height beyond 1000mm is seldomly reported as
far as we know. (3) The cross-steaming technique: Du and
Song (2004) and Zhang et al. (2003) have proposed that the
cross-steaming by adding edible alcohol in the steamboiler is
an effective technique to enhance the liquor yield. However,
the relationship between the liquor quality and the addition
mount of edible alcohol is poorly known. (4) The liquor-vapor
leaking: Water sealing has been used to joint the parts of
the liquor distiller for a long time because of its easy opera-
tion and low-cost, while the liquor-vapor usually leaks during
the distillation process, especially in the initial stage. The
distillate obtained at the initial distillation stage has been
demonstrated to be high quality product (Li et al., in press),
so the leaking may leads to the loss of high quality products
theoretically. However, there is not experimental report about
the effect of the leaking on the yield and quality and no effec-
tive method has been developed to eliminate the leaking up
to now.
In this work, systematic experiments were carried out in
an industrial-scale distiller to investigate the effect of steam
owrate, bulk density, bed height, cross-steamtechnique and
liquor-vapor leaking on the yield and quality of the strong
aroma style liquor, and the variations of avor compounds
during distillation process. As a typical representation of Chi-
nese liquor, the strong aroma style liquor takes up about
70% of the total production (Shi et al., 2007). The ndings
in this work also have important reference for other aroma
liquors on account of the essential similarity of the distillation
processes.
2. Experimental
2.1. Experimental setup
A schematic diagram of the experimental distiller used in
this study is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of a steam supply
pipe, a steam boiler, a steam distributor, a barrel for the fer-
mented grains, a lid, a liquor-vapor tube and a condenser for
the liquor-vapor. The linkage between the steam boiler and
barrel is packing seal, and the other points are sealed by water.
The experimental distiller is in industrial-scale, where the
inner diameter and height of the barrel are 1000 and 1250mm,
respectively.
2.2. Experiment design
All the fermentedgrains usedinthis work were takenfromthe
production eld of a famous company for brewing the strong
aroma style liquor. The grains were proportionally mixed with
a little rice hull according to the production technology. When
the barrel was full of the mixed fermented grains, primary
steam was introduced into the steam boiler to produce more
durative and even secondary steam. The secondary steam
went through the distributor to heat the grains. The liquor-
vapor owed out of the grain bed and was condensed to be
the distillation products. The experiments were performed
with the secondary steam owrate from 1.20 to 3.30kg/min,
the bed height from 600 to 1250mm and the bulk density of
389.7, 443.2 and 557.6kg/m
3
. The method to determine the
secondary steam owrate is to measure the owrate of the
condensates after a long distillation time.
The effect of the steam owrate were investigated at six
levels of the owrates, i.e., 1.20, 1.60, 1.90, 2.30, 2.50 and
3.30kg/min, with keeping the bed height and bulk density
xed at 1250mm and 389.7kg/m
3
, respectively, and with-
out any added edible alcohol. The effect of the bulk density
were considered at three levels of the densities, i.e., 389.7,
443.2 and 557.6kg/m
3
, with keeping the bed height and steam
owrate xed at 1250mm and 1.60kg/min, respectively, and
without any added edible alcohol. The different bulk densi-
ties were obtained from different loading methods: (1) drop
the grains into the barrel layer by layer; (2) drop the grains
into the barrel from the upper edge of the barrel; and (3)
drop the grains and shake the barrel simultaneously. The
effect of the bed height were studied at seven levels of the
heights, i.e., 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100 and 1250mm, with
keeping the steam owrate xed at 1.60kg/min, and with-
out any added edible alcohol. The grains were loaded with
Fig. 1 Schematic diagramof the experimental distiller (1:
steampipe; 2: steamboiler; 3: steamdistributor; 4: barrel;
5: lid; 6: liquor-vapor tube; 7: condenser; 8: outlet of the
condenser; 9: sampling bottle).
394 food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398
the layer by layer mode, and the bulk density was in the
range of 389.7405.5kg/m
3
(higher bed with larger density).
The effect of the cross-steaming technique were discussed
at ve volume levels of edible alcohol, i.e., 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8L,
with keeping the bed height, steamowrate and bulk density
xed at 1250mm, 1.60kg/min and 389.7kg/m
3
, respectively.
The added edible alcohol is composed of ethanol and water,
in which the ethanol concentration is 95% by volume.
The distillates were continuously collected through the
whole distillation process. The distillate samples were divided
into two parts based on their ethanol concentrations in line
with the actual production: the distillates with ethanol con-
centration higher than 45% by volume were the effective
products, while those with ethanol concentration lower than
45%by volume were the non-effective products for poor qual-
ity. The yield and quality of effective products are employed
as the criterions for the distillation assessment and the effec-
tive products are called liquor for short in this study. All the
distillation experiments were twice repeated and the results
were expressed as mean data.
Inorder to better present the variationof avor compounds
during the distillation process, the dimensionless concentra-
tions C
1
dened as C
1
= c
i,t
/ c
i,t
is introduced, where c
i,j
is the
concentration of one specic avor compound i in the dis-
tillates obtained at j distillation time period and c
i,t
is the
arithmetic average value of c
i,j
. Toexpress the effect of addition
amount of edible alcohol into the boiler on the concentrations
of avor compounds in the liquor, the dimensionless concen-
trations C
2
is adopted. The denition of C
2
(C
2
= c
i,V
/ c
i,V
) is
similar to that of C
1
, where c
i,V
is the concentration of a-
vor compound i in the liquors obtained at different addition
amounts of edible alcohol in the steam boiler (V=0, 2, 4, 6
and 8L) and c
i,V
is the arithmetic average value of c
i,V
. The
dimensionless concentrations of the important avor com-
pounds in the strong aroma style liquor were calculated, such
as, 1-propanol, 1-butanol, isobutanol, 1-hexanol, ethyl acetate,
ethyl butanoic, ethyl hexanoate, ethyl lactate, acetic acid and
hexanoic acid.
2.3. Chemical and sensory analysis
Ethanol concentration was determined by a density meter
(DMA 5000, Anton Paar, Graz, Austria), based upon the rela-
tionship between the density of waterethanol mixtures and
the concentration of ethanol in the waterethanol mixtures.
An Agilent 6980N (America) gas chromatography tted with
a ame ionization detector (FID) and a HP-INNOWax column
of 60m0.25mm0.25m (Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, CA)
were used to quantify the avor compounds. The experiment
was carried out at constant pressure, using nitrogen with the
owrate of 1.8ml/min as the carrier gas. Each concentrated
sample was injected at a split ratio of 1:50. The column tem-
perature was rstly programmedat 40

Cfor 4min, followedby

increases of 2.5

C/min to 60

C and then 25

C/min to 120

C,
and increased from10

C/min to 240

C, and held at 240

C for
4min. Injector and detector temperatures were 240

C. The
analyses were performed in three replications.
The sensory quality was evaluatedinduplicate by two well-
trainedexperts. Theyhadmore than10 years experience inthe
sensory analysis for Chinese liquor. Sensory attributes, includ-
ing taste, smell and aftertaste, were evaluated using a 10 point
hedonic scale, where 1 means dislike extremely and 10 means
like extremely.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Effect of the steam owrate on the yield and
quality of the liquor
Fig. 2 shows the effect of the steamowrate q
m
on the liquor
yield m and quality. The yield in the study is calculated
based on 100kg fermented grains, in which the concentra-
tion of ethanol is 60% by volume. As can be seen from
Fig. 2(a), increasing the steamowrate from1.20 to 1.60kg/min
enhances the yield of the liquor, but with further increasing
the owrate, the yield turns to decrease, especially after the
steamowrate exceeds to 2.30kg/min. This phenomenonmay
come down to the thermodynamics and mass transfer dur-
ing the distillation process. The lower steam owrate cannot
provide the thermal condition for full evaporation of ethanol
in the fermented grains, while the higher owrate causes
the grains to be pasted so that the mass diffusion within
the grains become slower. Both situations results in lower
liquor yield. Differently, with the increase in steam owrate,
a single decreasing trend for the yield was reported by some
researchers (Pu, 2005a; Wan et al., 1998). This may be due to
that their experimental conditions are limited to high steam
owrates, not covering lowsteamowrates. It canbe observed
fromFig. 2(b) that the liquor distilled with the steamowrate
of 1.60kg/min possesses the best quality. Therefore, fromthe
viewpoints of higher yield and better quality, there exists an
optimal steamowrate for efcient distillation.
The liquor quality is mainly dependent on the concentra-
tions of avor compounds. Table 1 gives the concentrations
of representative avor compounds in the strong aroma type
liquor distilled from different steam owrates. The ethanol
concentration shows an upgrade tendency with the increase
of steam owrate from 1.20 to 1.60kg/m
3
, while it turns to
decrease for further increasing the owrate. Furthermore, the
change of the concentration of avor compounds presents
close relationship with the dissolving properties in ethanol.
The concentrations of alcohol-soluble compounds, such as 1-
propanol, 1-butanol, ethyl acetate, ethyl butanoic and ethyl
hexanoate, exhibit similar trends with that of ethanol, while
the concentration of water-soluble compounds, such as ethyl
lactate, acetic acid and hexanoic acid, are opposite to that of
ethanol.
Fig. 3 shows the dimensionless concentrations of avor
compounds (C
1
) in the distillates obtained from different
distillation stages. The dimensionless concentrations (C
1
)
reect the changes of the concentrations of avor compounds
Fig. 2 Effect of the steamowrate (q
m
) on the liquor yield
(m) and quality.
food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398 395
Table 1 Effect of the steamowrate on the concentrations of the avor compounds (g/L).
Compounds Steamowrate, q
m
(kg/min)
1.20 1.60 1.90 2.30 2.50 3.30
Ethanol (%v/v) 61.008 66.322 65.875 62.322 59.123 53.324
1-Propanol 1.144 1.645 1.922 1.498 1.287 1.132
1-Butanol 2.425 2.584 2.816 2.676 2.380 2.128
Isobutanol 0.393 0.513 0.473 0.413 0.362 0.397
1-Hexanol 2.668 3.290 3.127 2.644 2.226 1.903
Ethyl acetate 17.367 19.167 18.815 16.024 13.128 10.255
Ethyl butanoic 5.591 5.844 5.713 5.523 5.213 4.804
Ethyl hexanoate 39.290 42.042 40.126 38.930 37.747 35.834
Ethyl lactate 52.759 44.233 50.081 55.438 58.785 63.811
Acetic acid 4.302 4.250 4.350 4.422 4.5061 4.679
Butanoic acid 2.844 2.858 3.011 3.165 3.297 3.350
Hexanoic acid 6.566 6.504 6.960 7.898 8.929 9.058
Values are presented as mean of three replicates.
during the distillation process. As can be seen from Fig. 3,
the dimensionless concentrations of alcohol-soluble com-
pounds gradually decrease during the distillation process,
indicating the concentrations of alcohol-soluble compounds
increase gradually during the distillation process; while
those for water-soluble compounds exhibit increased trends,
implying increased concentrations during the process. Also,
the different decreasing/increasing rates for these alcohol-
compounds/water-compounds can be attributed to different
compatibility with ethanol. The result implies that the varia-
tions of avor compounds during the distillation process are
closely related to their dissolving properties in ethanol.
3.2. The relationship between the bulk density and the
yield and quality of the liquor
The fermented grains are compressible to a certain extent.
Different loading modes result in different bulk densities. The
effect of the bulk density on the liquor yield m and quality is
presented in Fig. 4, in which
1
,
2
and
3
denote the bulk den-
sity of 389.7, 443.2 and 557.6kg/m
3
, respectively. The increase
in the bulk density leads to a steady downward trend of the
liquor yield. The quality attributes including taste, smell and
aftertaste, also exhibit gradual reduction tendency with the
increase of bulk density. This may be due to the fact that the
increase in bulk density leads to the increase of the resis-
tance for steam ow, and the decrease of the areas of heat
and mass transfer, which is unfavorable for the diffusion of
avor compounds.
Fig. 3 Variations of the dimensionless concentrations of
the avor compounds during the distillation process.
Fig. 4 Effect of the bulk density () on the liquor yield (m)
and quality.
The concentrations of avor compounds in the liquors dis-
tilled at different bulk densities are analyzed and the results
are shown in Table 2. It can be seen from this table that the
concentrations of avor compounds gradually decrease with
the increase of bulk density, which can be attributed to the
increase of diffusion resistance. The decrease of the concen-
tration of avor compounds may explain the degradation of
the quality. The results indicate that the operation of loading
the fermented grains should be aimed at forming loosely bed,
which is an important consideration for the design of loading
equipment.
Table 2 Effect of the bulk density on the concentrations
of the avor compounds (g/L).
Compounds (kg/m
3
)
389.7 443.2 557.6
1-Propanol 1.645 1.535 1.280
1-Butanol 2.584 2.403 2.052
Isobutanol 0.513 0.440 0.326
1-Hexanol 3.290 2.897 2.338
Ethyl acetate 19.167 16.555 13.525
Ethyl butanoic 5.844 5.669 5.104
Ethyl hexanoate 42.042 39.324 36.016
Ethyl lactate 53.902 48.367 44.233
Acetic acid 4.585 4.432 4.250
Butanoic acid 3.281 3.046 2.858
Hexanoic acid 8.953 7.604 6.504
Values are presented as mean of three replicates.
396 food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398
Fig. 5 Effect of the bed height (H) on the liquor yield (m)
and quality.
3.3. Effect of the bed height on the yield and quality of
the liquor
At different bed heights, the amounts of the fermented
grains used in the distillation are obviously different (183kg
at 600mm, 214kg at 700mm, 245kg at 800mm, 280kg at
900mm, 312kg at 1000mm, 347kg and 1100mm and 397kg
at 1250mm). For reasonable comparison, the liquor yields
per 100kg fermented grains obtained at different bed heights
are shown in Fig. 5(a). The increase in the bed height from
600 to 1250mm leads to steady enhancement in the liquor
yield (Fig. 5(a)). This may be due to the fact that higher grain
bed provides longer ow-path for steam, which benets for
the accumulation of ethanol to produce effective products
(ethanol concentrationhigher than45%by volume). It canalso
be observed from Fig. 5(a) that the increasing rate of liquor
yield is slowed, especially after 1100mm. This may be due to
the fact that as the ethanol accumulates in steam, the differ-
ence of ethanol concentrations between the fermented grain
andthe steambecome smaller, sothat the transport of ethanol
fromthe grains to the steambecomes slower. The liquor qual-
ity is continuously enhanced with the increase of bed height
from600 to 1250mm(Fig. 5(b)). When the bed height increases
from the present 800mm (the bed height currently used in
industrial operation) to 1250mm, the yield is enhanced about
30%, implying that there exists great potential for the improve-
ment of current distillation equipment. It should be pointed
out that high bed height leads to labor-intensive operation of
loading the fermented grains. To reduce the labor intensity of
loading operation, it is essential to explore suitable mechani-
cal equipment to achieve the loading process.
Table 3 shows the concentrations of avor compounds
in the liquors distilled from different bed heights. The
alcohol-soluble compounds present a positive growthwiththe
increase of bed height, while the water-soluble compounds
exhibit a negative growth. The results once again show that
the variations of avor compounds during the distillation
have close relationship with their dissolving properties in
ethanol.
3.4. The cross-steaming technique and its effect on the
yield and quality of the liquor
Five levels of edible alcohol with the volume of 0, 2, 4, 6 and
8L were added into the steam boiler to investigate the effect
of the cross-steaming technique on the yield and quality of
the liquor. The liquor yield m is positively correlated with the
Fig. 6 Effect of the cross-steaming on the liquor yield (m)
and quality.
increase of the amount of added edible alcohol (Fig. 6(a)). The
changes of the quality attributes (taste, smell and aftertaste)
with the addition amount of edible alcohol exhibit two differ-
ent trends: the quality of the liquor has inconspicuous change
whena small amount of edible alcohol (<2L) is added, while an
excess amount of added edible alcohol results in sharp degra-
dation of liquor quality (Fig. 6(b)). Adding 6L edible alcohol is
found to make the quality unacceptable.
To nd the reason for the quality degradation, the dimen-
sionless concentration (C
2
) of avor compounds in the liquors
obtained with different addition amounts of edible alcohol
is presented in Fig. 7. When a small amount of edible alco-
hol (<2L) is added, the dimensionless concentrations of avor
compounds have not obvious change, suggesting that the
concentrations of avor compounds keep almost constant;
while for further increasing the addition amount, the dimen-
sionless concentrations decrease remarkably, indicating sharp
decreased avor compounds. The insignicant changes of
avor compound concentrations may explain inconspicuous
change of liquor quality when a small amount of edible alco-
hol (<2L) is added, and the degradation of the quality can be
attributed to the remarkable decrease of the concentrations
of avor compounds when excess amount of edible alcohol
is added. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the cross-
steaming technique could enhance the liquor yield and the
key is to determine appropriate addition amount of edible
alcohol.
Fig. 7 Effect of the cross-steaming on the dimensionless
concentrations of the avor compounds.
food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398 397
Table 3 Effect of the bed height on the concentrations of the avor compounds (g/L).
Compounds H (mm)
600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1250
1-Propanol 1.042 1.187 1.254 1.376 1.492 1.569 1.645
1-Butanol 1.680 1.925 2.016 2.173 2.407 2.525 2.584
Isobutanol 0.221 0.290 0.337 0.372 0.414 0.476 0.513
1-Hexanol 1.904 2.584 2.760 2.947 3.149 3.206 3.290
Ethyl acetate 9.362 11.603 14.452 16.332 17.565 18.769 19.167
Ethyl butanoic 4.668 4.903 5.337 5.557 5.640 5.752 5.844
Ethyl hexanoate 33.324 35.644 37.685 39.020 40.373 41.830 42.042
Ethyl lactate 58.756 55.788 53.081 49.446 46.648 44.580 44.233
Acetic acid 4.804 4.674 4.550 4.473 4.382 4.275 4.250
Butanoic acid 3.487 3.246 3.116 3.068 2.945 2.887 2.858
Hexanoic acid 9.568 9.158 8.264 7.782 7.050 6.643 6.504
Values are presented as mean of three replicates.
3.5. The liquor-vapor leaking and its effect on the yield
and quality of the liquor
The liquor-vapor is found to commonly leak from the water-
sealing in the liquor distillation process, especially in the
initial stage. The distillates obtained in the initial stage have
been veried to possess high quality (Li et al., in press), so
the liquor-vapor leaking may leads to the loss of high qual-
ity products theoretically. However, study about the effect
of the leaking on the yield and quality of the liquor has
not been experimentally reported. Even until now, there is
still not effective method to eliminate the leaking. The exist-
ing method of reducing leaking is to turn down the steam
owrate once the leaking occurs. This method is just a reme-
dial measure andcannot fundamentally eliminate the leaking.
Experiments show that regulating the steam owrate during
the distillation process not only signicantly affects the yield
and quality of liquor, but also leads to instability of the distil-
lation process.
Based on long-term experiment and analysis, we believe
that the main cause for leaking is the temporary rise of pres-
sure resulted fromthe trapped air in the distiller. The trapped
air is in static state initially and incondensable, which gives
large resistance to the ow of liquor-vapor. Because of the
large resistance, the liquor-vapor cannot ow smoothly into
the condenser and will accumulate in the distiller so that the
pressure in the systemincreases temporarily until the liquor-
vapor arrives to the condenser at some time later. When the
gas pressure inthe distiller surpasses the capacity of the water
sealing, the liquor-vapor will leak. According to the analysis,
we have used a blower to suck the trapped air in the distiller
at the initial distillation stage. This blower is connected to the
outlet of the condenser by a transparent plastic tube. Once
the liquor distillate appears at outlet of the condenser, the
trapped air can be considered to be completely sucked out
and the blower will be shut off. Then, the distillates at the out-
let of condenser will be collected until the end of distillation.
Experiment shows that the method is effective to eliminate
the leaking.
Fig. 8 is the comparative experiments results, which is
used to explore the quantitative effect of the leaking on the
yield and quality of the liquor. When the leaking is elimi-
nated, liquor yield increases dramatically from (the average
yield of) 6.07kg to 6.36kg. It reveals that the leaking would
lead to the yield of the liquor decreased by 5%. It also can
be seen fromFig. 8 that the liquor obtained in the no-leaking
Fig. 8 Effect of the liquor-vapor leaking on the yield (m)
and quality of the liquor.
possesses much better quality, compared with the liquor pro-
duced in the leaking one. This result suggests that the leaking
results in remarkable degradation of liquor quality. In con-
clusion, the liquor-vapor leaking is observably unfavorable for
the liquor distillation, and eliminating the leaking can signif-
icantly enhance the yield and quality of the liquor.
4. Conclusions
Comprehensive experiments were carriedout inanindustrial-
scale distiller in order to optimize the distillation process
of Chinese liquor. It is found that there exists an optimal
steam owrate for efcient distillation of the liquor. For the
experimental distiller, the steam owrate of 1.60kg/min (bed
height =1250mm; bulk density=389.7kg/m
3
) results in max-
imum liquor yield and best liquor quality. The yield and
quality of the liquor obviously drops down with the increase
of bulk density, implying that the fermented grains should
be loosely packed. Increasing the bed height from 600 to
1250mm enhances the yield and quality of the liquor, indi-
cating that current distiller (commonly used bed height from
700 to 900mm) has great potential of improvement. Adding
appropriate amount of edible alcohol in the steam boiler
can increase the liquor yield, but excess addition makes the
quality degraded sharply. The liquor-vapor leaking dramati-
cally brings down the yield and quality of the liquor. The main
cause for the leaking is temporal rise of pressure resulted from
the trappedair inthe distiller anda simple methodis proposed
to eliminate this leaking. The variations of avor compounds
398 food and bioproducts processing 9 0 ( 2 0 1 2 ) 392398
during the distillation process are found to be closely related
to their dissolving properties in ethanol.
The industrial-scaled experiments in the study offer an
important direction for the practical production, especially for
the enhancement andimprovement of distillationprocess and
equipment.
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