How to make a home autoclave from a gas cylinder

Store-bought stew and canned food do not always have high qual­i­ty, pleas­ant aro­ma and good taste. There­fore, many peo­ple pre­fer to pre­pare prod­ucts for future use on their own. After all, then it becomes pos­si­ble to choose your favorite recipes, use only fresh, high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts.

To sim­pli­fy and speed up the can­ning process, it is rec­om­mend­ed to use a spe­cial device — an auto­clave. At the same time, it is not even nec­es­sary to buy it, since you can make an auto­clave from a gas cylin­der your­self prac­ti­cal­ly from impro­vised means.

How does a home autoclave work?

The device con­sists of sev­er­al key ele­ments:

• met­al case;
• devices for pres­sure con­trol — pres­sure gauge;
• ther­mome­ter to mea­sure tem­per­a­ture;
• safe­ty valve;
• air valve;
• cov­ers.

Stands are usu­al­ly locat­ed inside, and the lid is fas­tened to the tank with bolts and nuts. The device ster­il­izes prod­ucts placed inside. The oper­a­tion of an auto­clave is sim­i­lar to that of a con­ven­tion­al pres­sure cook­er.

How to use a domes­tic auto­clave:

1. Glass jars are pre­pared, washed. In accor­dance with the recipe used, prod­ucts mixed with spices are placed in them. It is advis­able to leave an emp­ty space (1–2 cm) at the top.
2. The con­tain­ers are rolled up with met­al lids using a spe­cial machine.
3. The con­tain­ers are stacked in rows on top of each oth­er inside the auto­clave tank.
4. Water is poured into the tank so as to com­plete­ly cov­er the jars. It is impor­tant not to fill it to the brim, you need to leave about 5–6 cen­time­ters of emp­ty space. It can be a lit­tle less, but you need to be care­ful not to have too lit­tle water. Oth­er­wise, the canned food may spoil.
5. The lid is installed and sealed tight­ly with bolts. The pres­sure inside the appa­ra­tus should be from 1 to 1.5 atmos­pheres.
6. The device starts heat­ing up grad­u­al­ly. As a result, the inter­nal pres­sure should reach a lev­el of 3–4 atmos­pheres. The desired pres­sure must be main­tained for the time required to pre­pare a par­tic­u­lar canned food. The exact dura­tion of ster­il­iza­tion is indi­cat­ed in the recipe. For exam­ple, for beef or pork, it will take about 40–50 min­utes, and for poul­try, 20 min­utes is enough.

After cook­ing is com­plet­ed, turn off the device to cool it down. When the tem­per­a­ture drops to at least 30 degrees Cel­sius, you can take out canned food. But before that, you need to slow­ly bleed air from the tank using the nip­ple.

How to make an autoclave from a gas cylinder

To make an auto­clave with your own hands, the eas­i­est way is to use an unnec­es­sary propane tank. A big plus is that it is already adapt­ed to inter­act with high pres­sure. In addi­tion, it has a con­ve­nient cylin­dri­cal shape and thick met­al walls.

You can use oth­er ana­logues such as an air receiv­er for a rail­way or an indus­tri­al fire extin­guish­er. But the gas bot­tle is the best.

If you use a tank with a capac­i­ty of 24 liters, then 14 half-liter cans can be loaded into it. For the man­u­fac­ture of a house­hold auto­clave, you will need a grinder, a drill and an invert­er-type weld­ing machine. Addi­tion­al­ly, you need to pre­pare mate­ri­als:

• low car­bon steel (sheets 1 cm thick) for flanges and man­hole;
• 5 mm steel sheets for the man­u­fac­ture of the neck;
• 3 mm sheets — for a pal­let;
• bolts with nuts — 6–8 pieces.

If you plan to install a pres­sure gauge and a ther­mome­ter, then you need to take care of cre­at­ing noz­zles for them. A safe­ty valve should be installed that will allow pres­sure to be released if the lev­el becomes crit­i­cal.

The flange can be made in a square shape, since it is eas­i­er to make at home. If you wish, you can give it a round­ed shape.

First of all, you need to dis­as­sem­ble the gas cylin­der, observ­ing all the rules:

1. Unscrew the valve and install the future tank ver­ti­cal­ly. Fill the con­tain­er with water.
2. Cut an open­ing in the shape of a square to cre­ate a neck.
3. Drill holes through which the valve and the tem­per­a­ture sen­sor fit­ting will be mount­ed.
4. Burn out the ves­sel with a burn­er or blow­torch. This will get rid of the smell of gas, which is impreg­nat­ed with the walls of the cylin­der. You can burn it on a reg­u­lar fire if there is no lamp or burn­er.

Then you can pro­ceed direct­ly to the man­u­fac­ture of the auto­clave:

1. Assem­ble a pal­let con­sist­ing of met­al strips. Fas­ten them by weld­ing.
2. From 5 mm sheets, form a neck and weld to a gas cylin­der.
3. Make a flange and hatch. Make holes for fas­ten­ers, as well as a pipe for a pres­sure gauge. Parts are rec­om­mend­ed to be fas­tened using a clamp.
4. Weld the flange to the neck. The thread­ed fit­ting is weld­ed to the cov­er. They are equipped with safe­ty devices.
5. To reg­u­late and con­trol the tem­per­a­ture, a hole can be made in the mid­dle of the met­al case for installing a ther­mome­ter.
6. Fas­ten the air valve.
7. Make a rub­ber gas­ket, which should be the same size as the flange.

Safe­ty devices can be mount­ed any­where on the cov­er and the air in/out valve must be placed above the max­i­mum water lev­el. This com­pletes the assem­bly of a home­made auto­clave from a gas cylin­der.

The com­pa­ny “Ukr­PromTeh” offers many mod­els of auto­claves with dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics. There­fore, you can always find a device with the nec­es­sary para­me­ters. It is absolute­ly not nec­es­sary to make the device your­self, because not every­one has the time, the nec­es­sary skills, knowl­edge, tools and equip­ment to assem­ble the device.

It is much eas­i­er to buy a ready-made device made by expe­ri­enced crafts­men. Choose the best mod­el and order through our web­site. Deliv­ery across all Ukraine.