Howdy, Sorry for the lag, I'm retired, says it all..
For no alcohol recovery, a 3 & 4 quart pots on a hot plate. The
distilling video shows the pots I use. 3 quart stainless steel mixing bowls will work too. Just make sure the top pan can fit and float in the bottom pan. This is my goto setup when the volume of isopropyl is not worth the trouble of recapturing. Controlling the temperature has been pretty easy. The magic is pairing the volume of liquids and the BTU output of the hotplate. I normally bring the bottom pan to a boil, then power down to the lowest setting and place the second pot on the boiler. At this point, the hotplate is only putting out X number of BTUs so it can only heat up so much water. My hotplate puts out 120,200,300 watts on the lowest three settings. Using this setup, I can easily keep the temperature at around 180f. The 2nd phase of distilling can be run on the lowest setting to maintain the temp. The bottom pan normally runs 10-20 degrees higher than the top pan so the water does evaporate off and may need some added to keep the volume of liquid constant. I did a distillation keeping the temp around 150f to save acidic CBD and it worked by having a larger volume of liquid to the same setting of the hotplate. This was all done empirically, I didn't calculate the exact BTUs and water volume to make it work. The boiling point of alcohol does help maintain 180f as it dissipates heat with the vapor. The temp will stay if there isn't excess BTUs being pumped into the boiler. You don't want to let the temp rise to 190 or above. Proteins go through a Salting-in/Salting-Out process at temperatures above 190f. This causes the proteins to unfold and expose non-polar undersides that collect oil. This is the problem with classic RSO being boiled down. The proteins turn gritty in the oil and burn.
For alcohol recovery, an
Alcohol Still on a hotplate is my goto setup. Stay away from water distillers, they run too hot. With a still, you pour in your solution, power all the way up and watch the temp gauge. Once it hits 150f, its heading fast to 180f, the boiling point of Isopropyl. Once at 150f, turn down the power to 300 watts and the temp will hold at 180f for 95% of this "Spirit Run" (Moonshiner term..). You can capture 95% of the alcohol at 91% (Ethanol at 95%). Once the temp starts rising, there's very little alcohol left, so this starts the 2nd phase. You can power down to the lowest setting for the next half hour. Ethanol, you have to drive all the way to 212f to remove it.
Oh, the Shop Manual is coming along, getting close to done..