HOME ETHANOL PRODUCTION

[benjaminbof]

I am in Angatuba , São Paulo, Brazil developing clean fuels. We discover from popular knowledges an alcoholic solution of riccinus communis leaves. This product added to straight ethanol used in many cars in Brazil acts like detergent cleaning carbon deposits in cylinders.
Regards, Benjamin
benjaminbof@yahoo.com.ar

[Fla._Deadheader]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Benjamin.

  There is a lot of interest for home brewing of Ethanol, here on the Forum.

  Can you tell us a little about the feedstocks and the approximate cost of producing a gallon or 4.5 litres of Ethanol, from planting the crop to filling the car.

  Here, there is a lot of mis information.  Any input is greatly appreciated.  Thanks

[benjaminbof]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum, Benjamin.

  There is a lot of interest for home brewing of Ethanol, here on the Forum.

  Can you tell us a little about the feedstocks and the approximate cost of producing a gallon or 4.5 litres of Ethanol, from planting the crop to filling the car.

  Here, there is a lot of mis information.  Any input is greatly appreciated.  Thanks

Dear friend ; thak you very much for your answer.
One ton of grains gives 400 liter of ethanol.
Energy for distillation is 34 percent included into fuel.
In São Paulo are winning 5 to 1 wood chips to sugar cane factorys energy supply.
One metric ton of wood chips caribea spp cost in factory yard 50 dollars.
Our project is to generate wood gas in gasifiers with chunkettes driving V8 motors generating electricity or mechanical source. Important question is waste heat.
With this we can distill ethanol from many raw materials.
Exist important number of products able to ferment using yeast.
Every place shows what is more profitable preferably dont taking products useful to eat both humans and animals mammals.
benjaminbof@yahoo.com.ar

[clousert]

I have an ethanol permit and tried my hand at it a couple years ago - pretty much failed.  I'd like to hear from a successful home-brewer.  I think I successfully fermented the beer - not sure what alcohol content it was ----- but had a difficult time distilling.  I was using an 8 inch column about 12 feet tall.  Had a steam input at the bottom and trickled beer into the resouvoir with that.  Tough time controlling heat.  The whole process seemed kind of cumbersome, and expensive in terms of heat input.  I got interested in biodiesel and have been successfully making that.

I'd still like to get the knack of this ethanol though.

[Ianab]

I have a small scale still that we use for making spirits (legal in NZ as long as you dont sell the stuff)

This is a cheap off the shelf unit that consists of a 6gal stainless bucket with an electric element. The lid clamps on and seals and there is a small reflux tower on top with an attached condenser.

To run it you just fill it up with the fermented 'wash' and turn on the power. It heats the whole batch up to boiling ( less than 100C due to the alcohol) You turn on the water flow through the reflux column and condenser and adjust the flow so it's producing a steady trickle of product. As the alcohol is removed the temp in the distillation column rises and you can tell when all the alc is removed.

My unit only has a tiny reflux column so it will only distill to about 75% alc. With a better (bigger) column and running the product through twice you can get 98% ethanol.

You are right that it takes considerable heat input to run a still, you have to heat all the wash to boiling and maintain it there for a couple of hours while the reflux column does it's job. On a small scale it's not a big deal, but as you scale things it up becomes significant. Your steam idea (from burning waste wood?) sounds like a good plan. But I think you need to heat the entire batch to boiling and hold it there while the still does it's thing.

Cheers

Ian

[clousert]

Ian,

My concern was the energy cost of holding about 200 gallons of beer at the boiling point for hours.  So my model was a scaled-up version of the Charles 503 still. Here is the link
http://www.elektro.com/~audi/fuel/running_on_alcohol/
This one page is worth a look, the hand written diagram tells it all.

My goal was to trickle cold beer into a 10 gallon boiling mass of water, at the bottom of the column.  Alcohol vapor went up, and water overflow flowed out of the 10 gallon resourvoir on a continuous action.  Temperature was to be controlled by the flow of cold water through the coils at the top of the column.

I did burn wood to make the steam.  But since I am a farmer and sawyer, not a steel fabricator, my setup was about a primitive as it gets - a real Gyro Gearloose.  I did get alcohol to come over, but it was well watered because of too much heat, and everything was leaky - I had steam and alcohol vapor coming out of every crack and crevice.

I turned to biodiesel and have only recently began looking back.

Do you actually run the ethanol in an engine, and how much modifications did that require?  Newer vehicles have fuel ingection, which I know little about.