Distillation @ MindSay

Can you put whisky in your car?Technorati Profile

I remember watching an episode of the A-Team where B.A. (as played by Mr. T) poured a moonshiner’s distillate into the team’s signature black van after he had run the engine bone dry. Hannibal (George Peppard) was very relieved when the whisky worked just fine and the motor started right away. Unfortunately that only happens in the movies (and on TV). Most commercial whiskies are only about 100 proof and would make very poor fuel.

In case you were never told the definition of proof, 200 proof is 100% alcohol, 180 proof is 90% alcohol, etc. About the most anyone can un-comfortably drink is 100 to 120 proof. The strongest spirit I’ve ever seen for sale is 150 proof Jamaican rum. Could that be used as fuel? It would make a poor alternative, but yes.

 

Brandy might be 120 proof, or 60% alcohol, and could be used, but it would have to be a pretty warm day, or the engine already pretty hot from running previously on gasoline for it to work.

 

But make no mistake, ethanol is alcohol, but its 200 proof - absolute alcohol

 

Ethyl alcohol, or grain alcohol, is, according to the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a "clear, colorless liquid with a characteristic, agreeable odour." Ethanol has been used since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient in alcoholic beverages. Dried residue on nine thousand year-old pots found in China imply the use of alcoholic beverages among Neolithic peoples.

 

Ethanol once served as lamp fuel in pre-Civil War United States. Automotive history mentions that it was used to power Henry Ford’s first Model T’s. What happened? As an energy source, ethanol couldn't compete with the low cost and availability of petroleum. By 1865 crude oil had been discovered in both the eastern and western United States – but there was still no demand for it anywhere. In the 1870s, when Rockefeller entered the game, the oil refineries in Cleveland were only bottling the kerosene which was sold as a cheaper alternative to whale oil. They would dump their gasoline directly into the river.

GreenField Ethanol has valuable information on their site http://www.greenfieldethanol.com/en/ethanol.html#q3

about how to convert automobiles to consume bio diesel and proper fuel mixtures for most North American cars.

Every adult has no doubt tasted really strong whisky, but unless its 200 proof, or absolute alcohol, I wouldnt recommend using it as fuel.

 

My Grandpa made ethanol. Technorati Profile

Grandpa built a distillery in the basement of his farmhouse during the first energy crises in the 1970s. After more than five years of tinkering he entered his design into the 1980 Calif. Dept of Agriculture‘s Alcohol Fuel Plant Design Competition. He didn’t win, but his work was mentioned in all the publications of the day.

 

Even though it was illegal in Canada, Grandpa kept his still in good working order for twenty years. That’s how he powered his car all through the nineteen eighties and nineties. After adjusting the carburetor to allow more oxygen into its V8 engine and swapping out the rubber hoses, Grandpa burned a clean fuel that gave almost no emissions. And his basement distillery reduced his fuel bill to little more than time and labour.

Once a month the old man would 'borrow' a pail full of dried corn from his neighbor’s feed barn. There were no rollers or mashers in Grandpa’s ethanol plant, he did the smashing himself in a depression in the stone floor. His preparation wasn’t much more evolved than the ancient Incans’.

Grandpa added brewer’s yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) to the mash and let it settle in white plastic pails that employed these funky rubber valves to vent the carbon dioxide. When the mixture was ripe, Grandpa distilled it.

 

Grandpa’s distillation apparatus was a tinker’s masterpiece. He’d fashioned an airtight mash cooker out of a huge copper kettle that was nearly the same size as the old camp stove upon which it sat. When he brought the corn mash to a boil, it yielded alcohol rich vapour as steam. This gas collected in a series of copper condensing tubes above. Each coil ended in a metal reservoir which was subsequently boiled again. At the very back of the distillery, on the end of line, Grandpa used a strange device he called a ‘molecular sieve’ to get pure alcohol from the 96% alcohol / water distillate.

Then there were some mysterious additives, which I can't remember, and the mixture of ethanol to gasoline was about 5:1. Each bucket of corn made about two gallons of ethanol. 

Before he passed away in 1994, Grandpa told me that ethanol was going to be ‘the next big thing’ and that very soon everyone would burn corn gas in their cars and even use it to heat their homes. I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime, but now, almost ten years later I can see he was right. Ethanol refineries are popping up all over Canada, and the smartest and best managed firm appears to be GreenField Ethanol http://www.greenfieldethanol.com

 

GreenField Ethanol, formerly Commercial Alcohols Inc., has been a leader in the industrial alcohol and ethanol business since 1989. The company produces 215-million liters of ethanol a year at its plants in Chatham and Tiverton , Ontario. Grandpa would be satisfied.