What is the easiest way to make pure ethanol?

It would cost more to make than you'd save.

HTH.

Yes, you can go to 96% alcohol using distillation iirc.

Yes.

Yes but not if it was for drinking. Such items would form methanol, which is poissonous.

Wrong: the biggest issue is quantity. The proces of fermeting stops around 15% alcohol which leaves you to extract the alcohol or in other words: you need to get rid of 85% water.

In order to get a tank of 50 l alchol you will have to distillate 380 l of "brew". Getting rid of 330 l of water costs energy too.

South America fuel is blended with alchohol (out of fermeted sugarcane). Their cars do not have special mods for it.

Alcohol , biodiesel etc are -on cost analysis- no substitute for normal petroleumbased carburants. Even without them being taxed (in Belgium 70% of the fuleprice are taxes) biodiesels / alcohol are more expensif tham petroleum derivates.

Tom De Moor

Depends. Animal feed is very cheap. At some auctions, "horse" carrots and potatos are pennies a sack. very rich in sugar. It should be possible to grow your own yeast for fermentation. "beer" or "wine" as a base would be suitable, wine better than beer due to the higher initial alchohol.

Depending on how seriously you want to take it, that would depend on the cost. As an experimental project initially it might be do-able. Even declaring duty on it, it would be as a fuel, not a drinking spirit. something small like an early corsa, a Felicia, or a Polo.

Simple injection engine, known conversion process to a megasquirt and easy to source bosch injectors.

It seems to be quite a popular conversion on US cars with carbs in states where they have no emission controls, and sensible booze duty. they sometimes even distill store bought beers to make ethanol.

Ethanol is about 110 octane but like LPG, has a lower calorific value so requires more to richen the mixture enough. Unlike LPG it doesn't require massive pressurisation and careful handling.

Hmm, in the UK aftertax, biodiesel tends to be about 5-10pence a litre cheaper than petrochemical diesel, depending on the markup the retailer wants to make.

Home making it, and paying the VAT and Duty can be be about 20p a litre cheaper than petrodiesel.

Don't know about ethanol, because while it is available, it is dearer than super unleaded because of the economies of scale with there only being something like 15 outlets in Morissons supermarkets in the south east and only 1 volvo, 1 saab model, and 1 ford model available in the UK can use it as standard.

Cheers. Hmm, other sources thanks.

It'll probably just end up as a research project for a while. something to make notes on, and try to work out what changes would be required.

Eventually though I would like make at least one batch to see how the process of production works, then experiment on getting a simple small car to run it with minimal bolt on modification, and then tuning.

I'm thinking about how you're going to distil tens of gallons of the mix to get enough ethanol out to make it to the shops and back.

It's the distillation that's going cost you lots - especially at current energy prices.

Aha, I have seen that age a few years back when the chip fat craze started.

"It will cost about $1.10 to $1.20/gal to make the alcohol from various feed-stocks like corn, barley, potatoes, or Jerusalem artichokes. " looks interesting. Jerusalem artichokes are dead easy to grow, like spuds. But they keep growing and coming back. once you start you will get more and more. Which is ideal for fuel.

I'm thinking solar energy. at least as a partial source.

A butanol reference that I bookmarked

As others have said distill>>

I like it. Thaks. Never thought about the vacuum idea. Although I have seen it used in Phasechange PC cooling to reduce the boiling point of ammonia within a heatpipe to draw heat away from the CPU slug where it is cooled at the top of the heatsink by a fan.

Using pressurisation to make it boil, then using heating cooling creates the phase change and makes it a natural cycling heat pump.

Elder wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net:

What's wrong with just drinking the bloody stuff, eh?

From your other posts I have the feeling you are a Google Gary, who knows very little about vehicles, tuning or engineering of any kind................

This drivel really does prove my feeling is quite correct, as it does strongly suggest your knowledge is sadly lacking, and in common to the idiots that have responded you are not averse to making a fool of yourself on here!

Finally how do you "remap" an ECU for the requirements of a specific engine, without a programmable ECU, and extensive dyno testing? Do you actually believe the bollocks in the chav "chippers", blurb I wonder?

Nothing....................if you would like some and are also a smoker, I will send you a gallon!

One wonders if you have any direct experience of testing engines running on fuels with high ethanol content?

Perhaps you would be able to overcome the problems encountered by "re-mapping" the ECU?............lol

Why not pipe what comes out of your mouth in to a holding tank, and use the resulting gas as a fuel?

That works fine with you, but not normal people

Mike

I read somewhere that methylated spirits was ethanol with "poison" added to deter people drinking the stuff ? Coloured blue to warn the thirsty ?

H.