Vacuum pressure

[Julian]

Not an expert but do any vacuum pumps compress as a function of creating a vacuum or do they run hot?  If you are going to use it to aid distilling Methanol, it may be worth checking because no matter how good your condenser, you'll probably have a percentage of Methanol vapour remaining.

I think some of the guys in the States use vaccum pumps for Methanol recovery, it may be worth having a trawl on infopop.

[Tony]

Presumably although reducing the pressure lowers the boil point it must also lower the condensation point - requiring a much colder condenser? I'd be interested to hear how you plan to recover the Methanol back to it's liquid state.

[Carrington]

I have a few ideas on cooling but if I get stuck then next door to my factory is commercial fridge/freezer scrap yard. The main engineer likes to come over for a chat and has offered help if I need it. This project isn't really for de-meth but bio distillation , I'm just going to try de-meth first as I see it as being a bit more straight forward

[Dickjotec]

I am probably missing something here but what is /are the advantages of distilling bio over the "standard" product?
Dick