I have some thoughts on using Ethanol as a fuel.
It maybe not overunity
but i am wondering if it's cheaper than gasoline to use for running a car and heating a house, i realize that if everyone started making this stuff then the raw materials would sky rocket but at the moment it maybe a viable way to save money.
Here's my thoughts.
Ferment, grain or sugar into 13% ethanol.
A quote from the net
To answer the question as directly as possible, 100 g of sucrose is 0.292 mol, and stoichiometrically 1 mol sucrose yields 4 mol EtOH, so you'd expect to get 54.0 g, which is about 68.3 mL.
1Kg of sugar will ferment into about 540grams which is 683ml
I can buy 1kg of sugar for currently 86p, so the approximate cost for 1L of methanol would be £1.26 assuming no other cost's
which there will be.
We are paying about £1.34 for a liter of gasoline right now.
There are cheaper raw stock for making Ethanol though, i could use potatoes or grain and malt the starches, i could also go around all the pubs collecting the slops they put down the drains and recover the alcohol that way i suppose.
From figures on the net i worked out that 2.6Kg of grain will make about 1L of ethanol.
Corn is about £200 per ton so 2.6Kg would be 57p, that's better, i maybe able to buy locally as well.
But i now realize gasoline has 1.5 times the energy and therefore we would need 1.5L of ethanol as opposed to 1L of gasoline this brings us to 85.5p equivalent.
That's a big enough saving if the costs can be kept down to turn the corn into ethanol.
Here's the process system i visualize.
Malt Corn and add any starch/sugar based material (Mashed Potato)
Add yeast an keep at 35 Degree's C while fermentation works.
monitor specific gravity until 13% is achieved
Vacuum down to 0.1ATM this will vacuum distill at 35 Degrees using the heat produced from fermentation and the condensate will be between 40-60% water ethanol
More importantly the liquor will be clean from solids.
Add Sodium Chloride to the mixture, this will salt out the ethanol leaving a water salt solution, decant top layer of pure ethanol.
There maybe a small amount of salt dissolved in the ethanol but no water should be present.
We can now vacuum distill @ 29 Degrees C again at 0.1ATM and separate the salt from the ethanol leaving 99.9% pure ethanol.
The water can be evaporated of and the salt can be reused, along with the fresh reclaimed water.
A percentage of the yeast/mash mixture can go back along with slops back into a new batch.
the main energy input would be creating a vacuum to 0.1ATM or 1.4 Psi
I am not sure if this system would yet work but maybe worth some investigation.
EDIT OK thought there maybe a cheap way of obtaining a vacuum, fill vessel with ethanol mixture and fill the rest of the vessel with carbon dioxide, then find a compound that would absorb the CO2 leaving a vacuum.
Author
Topic: ethanol as a fuel (Read 20422 times)
