[Gasification] OT Gasification and ethanol production frombiomass

[Peter Singfield]

They have to deliver it from the refineries to the tanker boat using lines
evacuated to a near vacuum first just to assure that the humidity in the
air in that delivery pipe does not contaminant the "entire" shipment!!

That is how pure it must be to be mixed with gasoline or diesel.

The making of anhydrous ethanol is difficult -- and keeping it that way is
difficult.

Even making alcohol stronger than 80% -- is difficult.

I believe it take four times the effort to bring alcohol from 80% to 90% --
then four more times the "effort" to get it to 95% --

That is 16 times more effort to get to 95% than 80%!!

As I am mechanically inclined -- and avoid difficult repetitious tasks --
it makes more sense to raise the compression in -- change the camshaft --
valves -- valve seats -- one time -- that extend 16 times the effort always!!

Of course -- it would be an even simpler deally to get any IC engine maker
to run off engines so adapted -- if the market was there for them.

On the other hand -- a 16 or 17 to one ratio diesel makes for an excellent
aguahol engine.

I tend to avoid plumber's nightmares -- especially since living in 3rd world.

Peter

At 09:13 AM 6/1/2007 -0700, Mark Ludlow wrote:
>Harmon & List:
>
>I've made anhydrous, not in my back yard but at the pilot plant scale and
>while it's not rocket science it's not a no-brainer either. First you need
>the alcohol/water azeotrope which is 95% ethanol. Typically this is done at
>reduced pressure of there is a suitable heat sink available to cool a
>condenser or more likely with a distillation column.
>
>>From here you can employ a molecular sieve such as zeolite to absorb the
>water. Problem is, zeolite adsorbs only about 20% of its mass in water and
>its desorption energy requirement is significant (due to its high cost, it
>must be regenerated a number of times). Better have some high-grade waste
>heat handy.
>
>The other method that I am familiar with is to use something like toluene
>(methylbenzene) which, while hardly soluble at all in water, forms a lower
>boiling point azeotrope with it allowing it to be stripped from the alcohol.
>
>Most stills use some form of reflux so the process becomes multiple pass,
>bleed-and-feed.
>
>Now surely all this could be done in the woods with a coil of copper pipe
>and an iron mash kettle, but if there is some magic kludge that makes
>200-proof easily I assume that the ethanol industry would have heard of it.
>Maybe suitable membranes for ethanol will be devised. I think that the exist
>for isopropyl alcohol.
>
>Mark
>
>