My other hobby-moonshine/ethanol

[dragonov_elite]

This is very cool to see people doing this type of backyard survivalist work. good for you for having a b.o.b and a plan if things go to @#$%.

 

[david buschur]

Popcorn was only 62. Yes, you can do this in the city limits (well I guess some city may have a problem with it) but you can NOT do it in a building attached to your home.

 

[urmomsaniceguy]

Ok so I watched a video on how to make ethanol, and I was wondering if its kinda the same type and can be made to use on out cars?

http://m.youtube.com/#/profile?user=SHTFSurvivalist&v=vkxNu6aSP-w&view=videos

 

[david buschur]

Double check your youtube link, I don't think it's right.

 

[urmomsaniceguy]

Sorry that was the second part. Here is the first.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=LWXn10GGLAY

 

[Bud92gsx]

So did you build the whole system..Or ordered most of it?

 

[david buschur]

In the video I built everything except for the column which is what the ethanol is flowing out of, into the jug. The picture in the first post I have about 20 hours in fabricating and built/designed all of it.

The new 4" tower I ordered showed up Thursday. Unfortunately it was built wrong, so I had to cut/modify and change it. I got it done Friday and worked Friday night on it and then all day Saturday, about 11 hours.

I ran the new operation Saturday night and the output sucked. The final percentage was the lowest I've ever seen, 67% and only ended up with 2 gallons. A lot was going on. I'm pretty sure it was all screwed up in the actual fermentation so I have two batches I started tonight. Cold as hell here so I have to use tank heaters in the barrels to get them to ferment.

I'm going to run the new operation once this is fermented and then test it back to back against my old column, I have a feeling my old column is better for actually making fuel than the new one.

 

[urmomsaniceguy]

What do you use to test the percentage?

 

[david buschur]

A hydrometer.

 

[urmomsaniceguy]

Do you dilute it with premium or just run pure 100% ethanol?

 

[RipperXX]

DB, Would you be willing to post a link to where you bought your hydrometer, tower and other needed supplies? I never gave DIY ethanol production much thought, but this is excellent! And since I have never lived anywhere near a fuel station that sells E85 it's never been an option, but this might just change things.



P.S. Thanks for posting this!

 

[tkelly27]

I've been looking into this, glad I'm not the only one!

I have a few novel ideas, and some questions.

First is sugar beets. I think the yeild is much higher, I've heard up to ~800 gallons of ethanol per acre, and an average of ~400 gallons per acre. The other cool part about sugar beets is the crop you rotate out with is barley. I think in my area you can get an early spring barley in, then let the sugar beets grow in the summer, and get a final barley harvest at the end of the season. I believe if you malt the barley you can get ~200gal/acre per harvest. I think you'd be better off selling it as organic barley to beer making shops. When the "SHTF" I'd like to be the guy with the fuel AND the beer : D

I think you can reduce the amount of energy required to evaporate the ethanol dramatically.
"The system utilizes natural means (gravity and atmospheric pressure) to create a vacuum under which water can be rapidly evaporated at much lower temperatures and with less energy than conventional techniques."
Redirect Notice

As I think about it, it may not work as well as well as I would hope, but definitely consider concentrated solar and or more passive systems.

As far as questions, do you run it at the 96% aezetropic limit? If so, how does the 4% water effect tuning or performance. If not, how do you remove the 4% of water? How many times do you have to run in through the still to get useable fuel?

I'll definitely be back to this thread!

 

[david buschur]

Do you dilute it with premium or just run pure 100% ethanol?

The fuel I have made is still on my property and doesn't have to be denatured until I take it off my property, so it's just "pure" ethanol now. When I do denature it, it will be with gasoline.

 

[david buschur]

DB, Would you be willing to post a link to where you bought your hydrometer, tower and other needed supplies? I never gave DIY ethanol production much thought, but this is excellent! And since I have never lived anywhere near a fuel station that sells E85 it's never been an option, but this might just change things.



P.S. Thanks for posting this!

The place I bought the towers from is:

Moonshine Still | Alcohol Stills | Mile Hi Distilling

Right now, to be honest, I am a bit ticked off over this last tower I bought. I need to run another batch through it to make sure I am justified or not but the production/design of this new unit I don't feel is nearly as good as the first one.

The problem with milehidistilling is their primary purpose is making drinking alcohol and my primary purpose is making fuel. So asking questions about fuel leads to answers like, "I'm not sure, our customers all make alcohol to drink." That is the case with this latest tower I bought I think, the first tower, when I bought it was advertised more as a "fuel reflux column". Even though I told the owner what I had and what I was doing he said this new column was better. When I talked to him after they built it incorrectly he asked what I was using before, when I told him he said, "Uh, oh, well, we don't make that one anymore, I didn't realize that's what you had...." My thought is the new 4" tower I just bought has a higher output in gallons but the purity is suffering because of the design. This is fine as anything over 60% will burn in a car and it takes less energy in to get fuel out but for me I want it as pure as I can get it. Maybe my mind is just stuck on that because that's been my goal I've worked at for over a year now.

There service is good, their quality is good, the products they sell have all worked. I'm just not going to be happy if this new column isn't as efficient as the old one.

As a side note............I am probably going to start building towers based on some ideas I have and the fact that I want to produce towers for making fuel and not sippin' whiskey.

If you are interested in a tower I will have one of my current towers to sell or I can build a new one.

 

[david buschur]

I've been looking into this, glad I'm not the only one!

I have a few novel ideas, and some questions.

First is sugar beets. I think the yeild is much higher, I've heard up to ~800 gallons of ethanol per acre, and an average of ~400 gallons per acre. The other cool part about sugar beets is the crop you rotate out with is barley. I think in my area you can get an early spring barley in, then let the sugar beets grow in the summer, and get a final barley harvest at the end of the season. I believe if you malt the barley you can get ~200gal/acre per harvest. I think you'd be better off selling it as organic barley to beer making shops. When the "SHTF" I'd like to be the guy with the fuel AND the beer : D

I think you can reduce the amount of energy required to evaporate the ethanol dramatically.
"The system utilizes natural means (gravity and atmospheric pressure) to create a vacuum under which water can be rapidly evaporated at much lower temperatures and with less energy than conventional techniques."
Redirect Notice

As I think about it, it may not work as well as well as I would hope, but definitely consider concentrated solar and or more passive systems.

As far as questions, do you run it at the 96% aezetropic limit? If so, how does the 4% water effect tuning or performance. If not, how do you remove the 4% of water? How many times do you have to run in through the still to get useable fuel?

I'll definitely be back to this thread!

You did a lot of research and reading, problem is most of it doesn't apply to guys like us with home production systems, same trap I fell into when I was reading/researching and for the first few months of actually producing fuel.

First sugar beats are a great idea on paper. Here is the problem. You and I don't have huge farm equipment (at least I assume you don't). So while beats can be planted easy enough with basic equipment you then have to dig them up, once dug up you have to clean them all as they are covered in dirt, then you have to process them fairly quickly as they are too wet inside to store......it's not a viable crop for a home producer. Corn on the other hand can be put it the ground and planted with basic equipment like I have. I have a Kubota diesel tractor, rototiller, plow, disc 2 row planter etc., etc. When it comes time to harvest it you can pick it by hand as I don't have a combine or a small picker. This year myself, my son and my neighbor hand picked the acre of corn I put in. You still have to have a place to store the corn, it has to be dry or it's going to mold and go bad. I can go on and on, bottom line is, for a home producer it's not real simple.

There isn't a cheap solar system and the systems you are referring to are complicated and expensive. There is no cheaper way to produce the fuel than I am doing it. The batch I ran this weekend I heated my boiler, entirely, from home trash, Christmas paper/boxes etc., left over from Christmas day. I have enough paper/trash in bags right now to do another batch. That stuff costs me nothing at all and saves it being put in a land fill somewhere. I feel great because I am actually using trash to make useful fuel. When I don't have trash I use wood, which I have plenty of with the woods I have. Most home producers use propane and a flat burner plate like you'd use on a deep frier for turkeys.

It isn't possible to get 96%. The upper limit, in a vacuum and a commercial facility is about 94%. The reflux still automatically distills the vapors over and over making it very pure. My best run has been in the high 80% range. You can run it in an engine (would need to be tuned/jetted appropriately) down to 60%. Taking the remaining water out can be done a few ways, I've tried more than a few and my success has been limited, actually my success sucked. We've tried Zeolite, which is a molecular sieve, no success and that is suppose to work the best. We tried an RO system, again all bullshit it doesn't work. I did double distill some and that did work, double distilling got me to about 90% but it was a lot of time spent and in the end not 100% pure of water. I decided that for now and the future as far as I can see it, I will just store what I have run and accept the percentages I am getting.

As I get better at regulating everything the percentages will rise.

A lot of guys claim big percentages of purity, I say they are full of it. Most of them don't even compensate for temperature which is critical when measuring. I have a laminated spread sheet I use to calculate exactly what the actual percentage is, I take temp and a reading and then combine the two to get what I am making. Most of these guys have a hydrometer is 130 degree ethanol with it floating high and read it, they get some bogus high number. If they'd let it cool to 60 degrees where it is is suppose to be read they'd find that number dropped drastically.

 

[H@xtGSX]

Heck yea! I've been doing little runs of mash in a test I'm conducting at home... I'm totally into the self sufficiency stuff. I also love doing alternative energy projects.

I've been working on a solar distilling boiler that uses a cold plate condenser instead of a column. It works small scale, but the efficiency and temperature control is a real problem. Solar heat isn't consistant enough, so I've been trying to figure out a way to bank it on a small scale, sort of like they did at the Solar One concentrator power plant in CA. I just don't think I should have molten sodium nitrate sitting around the yard, so I'm working on something a bit safer. My best run only produced about a quart from 8 gallons (maybe a bit more... eyeball measurement from looking in a bucket), and the concentration was only at 79%. It'd have to be run multiple times to make fuel, and for that small of an amount, it's a little too much effort. It is fun though.

Nice work on that column. I may have to break down and just build a column myself one of these days... I notice how much fermentable stuff we waste on a daily basis and have seen fuel in it for a while. Now, if only cellulose fermentation were simpler... That would be great... you can do it by pressure cooking it first, but then you're wasting more energy to make a fermentable substance than it could ever possibly return in fuel. 90% on a double run is plenty good, I think. I'd run it. It's fuel and water injection all in one. Is it legal on your permit to make a double column? That'd be the easiest way to do high % runs in 1 cook.

Edit: Now that you mention it, I think my 79% is high too. I would guess the alcohol was room temp @ ~70-75F or so when I checked it, as it had been sitting in a mason jar in my kitchen for a while before I stuck the hydrometer in it. Champagne yeast at 78F has yeilded some really good quality mash for me so far. I've been using a big canning pressure cooker to sterilize it, and putting it in sterilized 7 gallon buckets with a water lock. As long as they have enough sugary stuff, 12% hasn't been hard to get.

 

[urmomsaniceguy]

The fuel I have made is still on my property and doesn't have to be denatured until I take it off my property, so it's just "pure" ethanol now. When I do denature it, it will be with gasoline.

What ratio of ethanol/fuel?

 

[tkelly27]

Thanks for the reply. I've got a small tree farm and with that, a decent sized tractor. I was figuring I could just rip them up with a U shaped device and pluck them out of the ground. If not, corn it is! If that does work, I was looking into scythes for hacking down the barley. I have a lot of free time.

The passive/solar system would be for a first run. I figure if I can get rid of 1/3rd to 1/2 the water, that's a ton of heat energy that won't have to be made. It is really cool this is both fuel and a garbage disposal. We're so green up here everyone would frown on me doing that.

Just for discussion sake, the system I'm thinking of uses a pump and a column of the condensed liquid to draw a vacuum on the fermentation pot. I've also seen it used with large weights drawing the vacuum down on the column. Just need to have the fermentation pot in the sun or under slight heat, and the vacuum column in the shade. Supposed to work at night too.

I was really concerned about having to use a mollecular sieve. Did you evaporate through it, or just dump the stuff in there? I'm under the impression that the sieve works best at pulling out water vapor during a distillation. There are cheap organic materials that are supposed to act as sieves including sawdust, straw, and corn meal especially. This seems to have useful info, but I'm having a hard time navigating on my computer, maybe someone else can figure it out
Anhydrous Ethanol a Renewable Source of Energy

 

[david buschur]

Yes, I can install a double column but my column, the first one, acts basically like a double column. It is tough to do a double reflux column. I'm trying to keep my operation on a small foot print so it doesn't take up a lot of room. Right now everything fits in about a 5'x5' area. I may even load it all in my truck for the shootout and bring it to the shop to run it, depends on the interest.

Zeolite is meant to have the fuel poured into it and it then sucks the water out of the fuel, it's a 3A sized sieve. I've also tried rock salt which is suppose to work, it doesn't.

 

[urmomsaniceguy]

David, how would you redistill it? Are you boiling the ethanol after collecting it with some kind of diluting or adding it to another batch that's been fermented? Or just taking the almost pure ethanol and just boiling it and collecting the vapors/remains?

 

[H@xtGSX]

Second run distilling (like a 2 stage column) is usually just the condensate alcohol/water mix from the first stage mash. Although, 2nd run mash is commonly done too, usually as a back fill for a new batch while its still hot, so you don't lose as much time heating. You recover a little more alcohol that way also, but not much.

I have seen a farm out here that the owner built a double column on. It was a system that went: Mash column, thump barrel, condenser coil (truck radiator), condensate column with a reflux stack and a top drawn feed to the final condenser coil. The 2 columns were side by side and heated in the same flue, and the other stuff was suspended off of the pipe columns or what ever was nearby. It is actually a pretty effective unit, for looking like a pile of scrap. I'd say the working foot print of the whole thing is 8'x10', eyeball measurement. The end product is usually around 90%. Not bad for just messing around. He doesn't even have any of his equipment converted for etoh use yet... I think he got a grant from DOE to participate in an algae sluice farming experiment for biodiesel. I'm guessing he'll opt for diesel over alcohol, considering his equipment.

It is nice to see people trying this stuff out though.

 

[david buschur]

David, how would you redistill it? Are you boiling the ethanol after collecting it with some kind of diluting or adding it to another batch that's been fermented? Or just taking the almost pure ethanol and just boiling it and collecting the vapors/remains?

I took my finished ethanol that was 76'ish% and put it back in the boiler and ran it again. Adding it to other fermented mash/wash wouldn't be effective.

 

[david buschur]

Second run distilling (like a 2 stage column) is usually just the condensate alcohol/water mix from the first stage mash. Although, 2nd run mash is commonly done too, usually as a back fill for a new batch while its still hot, so you don't lose as much time heating. You recover a little more alcohol that way also, but not much.

Running the alcohol/mix from the first stage mash would be a waste of time and energy, there shouldn't be much if any alcohol left in the wash after it's been distilled. I know I personally run my boiler right to the edge of 212 degrees at the very end to get all the alcohol I can out of it. This last batch I ran this last weekend had no signs of alcohol left in it. There was a LOT of sugar though and I have it fermenting now better than ANY batch I have ever fermented in the past, which has me really thinking. The fermentation has been the biggest ass kicker in all this since I started.


The local farmer you were talking about sounds like he's got a nice set up!

 

[H@xtGSX]

What I meant on 2nd run mash was when someone's doing many consecutive batches, they will leave some of the hot mash that has been distilled from the previous batch in the boiler to help heat up the next batch of mash. It just helps retain heat and speeds the process up a bit... And for people with sloppy control, it helps extract that last little bit of alcohol. Guys using campfires to fire a still generally have a better overall recovery if they 2nd run mash.

Back brewing sweet mash has always produced good results for me also. I'm not sure what the difference is, because I have basically been autoclaving my wort. I would've assumed it would be the same, performance wise, but it isn't. I have no idea why. Something is lost in that process though that, for some unknown reason, allows my champange yeasties to go apepoop and make "power mash".

 

[dragonov_elite]

Zeolite is meant to have the fuel poured into it and it then sucks the water out of the fuel, it's a 3A sized sieve. I've also tried rock salt which is suppose to work, it doesn't.

Have you ever thought about freezing the water out of the fuel/alcohol. I know they do this with some types of beer to increase the alcohol content. I know beer is a different ball game all together, Just out of curiosity how well do you think this would work if at all?