Automotive Grade Alcohol

[Got Honey?]

How would one go about brewing this? Would anyone on this forum know? I'm interesting in starting, but aside from a fermenter and distiler have no IDea what other materials I would need, or the modifications I would have to make to my carberator.

[Sundance]

You need to be licenced by the feds. Years ago I had plans for a still and all the laws. You probably check with ATF.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_...earth/me1.html

[iddee]

Any good moonshiner can tell you. Give you a few good hints on hiding it, too.
Never burn it, tho, gas is only 3 or 4 dollars a gallon. Good shine is 40.00 right now.

[Jim Fischer]

Ethanol, either as an additive, or as a fuel in
its own right, is a problem in my view, rather
than a "solution" to anything. Let's stick to
the case of gas with added ethanol, and look
at the inherent problems.

1) Moisture - alcohol of any sort in the gas
means water is also present in your fuel. Not a
good thing. Alcohol in gasoline attracts water,
something you can test yourself with a few
breakers and a gram-accurate scale. (The water
will be absorbed, and the alcohol/gas mix will
weigh more after being exposed to high humidity.)
Many cars will simply stop running due to water
in the gasoline, as happened when Brazil
tried to become self-sufficient, adding more
ethanol to their gasoline.

2) Surface Tension - Alcohols have higher surface
tension than gasoline. Adding alcohol results in
more "fuel wash", removing lubricating oil from
the rings and walls. More fuel gets into the
crankcase when the gasoline has alcohol in it due
to surface tension, and rings wear faster due to
"washed" cylinder walls.

3) BTUs - A gallon of ethanol requires about
130,000 BTU to be made. But that gallon delivers
only about 76,000 BTU, according to the Cornell
study.

4) Miles Per Gallon - Your MPGs go down when you
run on gas with ethanol added. Anyone who has
driven in Minnesota, and then driven the same
car back home to a state where gasoline is not
adulterated by mandate can see the difference.
Of course, you have to track MPGs, which takes
jotting down odometer readings and gallons of
fuel purchased, a slightly anal practice.
The farmers who produce the ethanol from corn do
not use ethanol in their tractors themselves,
because of lower MPGs, and the resulting
lower "miles per dollar".

My 1972 MG Midget can get over 40 MPG on regular
gas with no added ethanol. When ethanol is added,
the MPG drops by 25% to 40%. (Note that you have
to take the average of multiple tankfuls to get
an accurate idea of MPGs, as different pumps have
different stopping points for "full tank".) If
the mileage loss as a result of added ethanol
in gas was only 10%, then using 10% ethanol in
gas would imply zero reduction in net oil imports,
but as the mileage losses are greater than 10%,
use of ethanol in gas actually INCREASES the
amount of oil we must import, assuming that the
same miles are driven.

5) Pollution Per Mile - Ethanol does not lower
the pollution created by driving, due to the
lower MPGs, and the greater volume of hydrocarbons
that must be burned to travel the same distance.
Yes, their are less emissions PER GALLON, with
ethanol added, but this is swamped out by the
need to burn more gallons to get where you wanted
to go.

Minnesota will require gasoline to have 20%
ethanol in 2013. When massive numbers of cars
refuse to start in winter, the error will be
hard to deny, and the victory of politics over
engineering that is turning corn into "fuel"
rather than food will be exposed for the sham
that it is.

If you want better mileage, switch from a
160F thermostat to a 195F version, add
1 oz to 1.5 oz of acetone to each 10 gallons
of fuel, replace your plugs with the lowest
resistance plugs you can find (NGKs are good
ones to try, and also cheap) and swap those
spark plug wires out unless you remember when
you last replaced them.

If you are forced to run on ethanol-added fuel,
realize that you are now running much leaner
than intended, and without the acetone, you need
to richen the mixture just to put things back
where they were intended by the designer of your
engine.

[Hillside]

Minnesota has been operating on 10% ethanol for many years. During the transition, there was a lot of trouble with water causing the blend to seperate. The tank would have a layer of gasoline on the top and a layer of water/alcohol on the bottom. The engine would stall out. Bad news.

The problem was caused largely by old fuel tanks that contained water in the bottom of the tank. The stand pipe of a fuel tank is usually designed to not take fuel directly from the bottom of the tank to allow an area for sediment, water, etc to settle out. Once the tanks were cleaned, the problem nearly disappeared.

The type of pollution is also affected. Alcohol can decrease carbon monoxide emissions, but other types of pollutants can actually increase.

The requirement for ethanol in Minnesota is more of an attempt to prop up corn prices than a way to save fuel or prevent pollution, although there are those who will argue that it does both.

Personally, I believe it does save a little fuel, but not much. The btu balance is not in favor of ethanol, but if you also add in the feed value of the remaining proteins and oils, the overall energy balance is slightly positive -- but only slightly -- probably not enough to justify the over all investment.

If you want to make your own ethanol, it has to be dry. You will not likely be able to accomplish the needed water content without some complex, and expensive, seperation equipment. Once you get it dry, it isn't easy to keep it dry. You will probably have to clean any existing tanks that you want to use unless they are new.

The easiest way to increase fuel mileage is keep your tires inflated to the maximum level recommended by the tire maker and drive at, constant, reasonable speeds.

[Hillside]

I forgot to mention that blending alcohol was also found to increase the vapor pressure of the final blend.

You really ought to blend with gasoline that was refined specifically to be blended with alcohol or during hot weather you could have problems with vapor lock and during cold weather you could have problems with hard starting.

[BubbaBob]

Jim, good post, except...

<<The farmers who produce the ethanol from corn do
not use ethanol in their tractors themselves,
because of lower MPGs,...>>

Nope. They don't use ethanol because, for the most part, the tractors run on diesel.

BubbaBob

[Hillside]

BubbaBob,

A btu is a btu. It can come from diesel, gasoline, or alcohol. It doens't matter. Energy is fungible.

Just because farmers don't burn alcohol doesn't mean they don't burn an equivalent amount of energy.

[Michael Bush]

>A gallon of ethanol requires about
130,000 BTU to be made. But that gallon delivers
only about 76,000 BTU, according to the Cornell
study.

It would take a lot less BTU's to make if they would focus on an efficient system to use a solar distillery for a couple of stages before the final step up to 180 proof, but so far the distilleries are operating on subsidies from the government and have not had to be efficient.

[iddee]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought the cooler the heat, the higher the proof. Any temp. above the alcohol evaporation temp. starts evaporating the impurities.

[Michael Bush]

But you have less specific control of the heat with the solar still than with a burner of some sort.

[Hillside]

You could use solar to produce some of the heat. The process wouldn't really use less heat, but it would be less heat from petroleum. It would likely limit operation to times when the sun was shining.

Big commercial operations use a column condenser. It helps fine tune the process so the alcohol can be taken off at the most optimum temperature -- not too hot, not too cold.

[BubbaBob]

pssst....hillside...re-read my post. I didn't address BTU's...I simply pointed out that a DIESEL tractor will not run on ethanol. It will blow the engine up just like trying to run it on gasoline. A relatively smaller explosion, but not smaller enough to notice by observation...perhaps with measuring equipment...but either way the tractor would be either scrap or one big momma of a paperweight.

BubbaBob

[Hillside]

Ah, so you were just pointing out a triviality. Sorry, I thought you were actually trying to make some kind of a point.

[Jim Fischer]

> Nope. They don't use ethanol because, for the
> most part, the tractors run on diesel.

"Diesohol" exists. Diesel with ethanol added.
It certainly is not very popular, but it has
been available for some time in one form or
another.

If you put "diesel +ethanol" into google, you
can read all about it.

[BubbaBob]

Jim...I prefer bio-diesel. I've been making my own for about a year and a half. It costs me about 70 cents/gal, requires a total work time of about two hours (over a two week period) to make a batch, the engine runs cleaner than diesel, lasts longer, doesn't screw with warranties, no power loss. Shoot, the only downside is ya gotta work hard not to get fat...you smell like a french fry going down the road and stay perpetually hungry.

BubbaBob

[NHbees]

BB, How are you making yours, did you get one of those home refineries or have you devised your own. With #2 headed toward $3.00 a gallon I might like to make some here.

[Sundance]

BB please keep WVO under your hat!!! There is a limited supply of it and we don't want everyone to rush it. (tongue in cheek,,, kind of....)

[Sundance]

Bio-diesel is a better option than alcohol. The trouble is our small number of diesel vehicles as compared to the rest of the planet.

I drool at the options europeans have........ Something like 2/3 of their vehicles are diesel.

[Hillside]

Unfortunately, there have been some studies that have shown that the yield from current oil crops results in a situation where there isn't enough arable land in the US to supply bio-diesel for all automotive applications. The same problem occurs with alcohol from current crops. So it may work for some, but for everyone, it's not a good solution.

New plant oil sources could change that.