Automated production of traditional liquor by cooling method

Abstract

An automated production of traditional liquor by cooling method is presented in this paper. Thai traditional liquor is a product of One Tombon One Product (OTOP) and it was refined using traditional method. That is, boil the fermented rice that obtained from fermented sticky rice with leavening and then condense the steam in coolant tank until receive the 35 degree distilled liquor. The entire production process is mainly base on worker’s experience, which cause the uncertainty of production time and the alcohol percentage is not constant. In this paper, we have developed the automatic distillation by using microcontroller to control the production process. The digital thermometer and limit switch are used to check temperature and water level (maximum-minimum) inside coolant tank, respectively. And temperature in the coolant tank is controlled to vary slightly between 38-40 degrees. When the temperature inside the coolant tank is higher than a certain threshold, the microprocessor instructs to solenoid valve and water pump to drain hot water and to pump cold water into tank, respectively. So the temperature inside coolant tank is constant. An automated production of traditional liquor by cooling method was fabricated and experimented with community at Banlang, Mueang, Lampang. The results show that, the proposed method has the volume of liquor rather than the original method. In 100 minutes, the proposed method has distilled liquor 10 liters while the original method has 8.4 liters. And alcohol percentage is constant at 35 degrees.