[Gasification] OT --- Ethanol in non "flex-fuel" vehicles.

[Peter Singfield]

At 08:15 PM 6/2/2007 +0100, Ken Basterfield wrote:
>How on earth are you going to make homebrew ethanol for pennies? Wishfull
>thinking or even perhaps, not thinking.
>Having produced brewed and distilled ethanol, I know you don't have a
>chance.
>Ken
>

I have to done that in the past -- ergo my comments on the difficulties of
achieving better that 80 percent strength.

The Chinese diesels we use here -- some of them are just "vat" cooling.

The top of the vat is a flat square hole with four bolts at the corners.

One bolts the simple -- plain jane -- fractionating column there.

Raw cane juice self ferments rapidly -- to about 6% alcohol content.

Filter that and use it as coolant in the diesel -- 

With a 195 model -- about four gallons per loading -- but hey -- easy to
build an extension tank to go 10 gallons -- 20 gallons.

Insulate the vat and tank ---

Now -- while your making electric power -- run off 80% rum.

When all the alcohol has passed over -- stop engine for a short period --
open bottom drain under motor -- refill tank with more mash -- start motor
-- run out your next batch.

You probably need to produce at least 4 or 5 gallons per day in such manner
to fuel your power plant. This for 3rd world style power supplying -- we
use "little"

The Vat cooling diesel running light loaded will normally boil off one
gallon of water per 2 hours -- so the BTU is there for distillation -- of 5
gallons of strong rum --

At 6% -- 80%/6 = 13.3 gallons of raw cane juice to make one gallon or 80%
strong rum.

So to make five gallons you would need 66 gallons of cane juice.

My small crusher requires a 5 HP diesel engine to operate and squeezes out
5 gallons of raw cane juice in 20 minutes with two people operating it in a
most "brisk" manner.

So -- just making cane juice for this process will require a diesel engine
running 4.4 hours -- and two people working full out -- 4.4 hours.

This does not count tending to the fermentation vats -- and most important
-- going out into the fields -- cutting the sugar cane -- and hauling it
back to the "operation" -- plus tending to the distillation process for 14
hours per day!!

Oops -- figure at least one gallon strong rum to run the diesel powering
that crusher for 4.4 hours to -- oops -- six gallons a day - -rework those
figures again!!

As for making alcohol to fuel one's own car/truck/tractor on top of all
that -- your talking major enterprise!!

Hey -- gasifying bagasse to make power -- bio digesting the raw cane juice
to make bio methane -- suddenly looks a lot better -- eh??

A further plus then is you do not need grind out raw cane juice -- the
mennonites have developed a simple apparatus here using an old truck tire
and a standard power lawn mower blade that very rapidly chops and fluffs
large amounts of cane - -which can then be directly fed to the digester as
"food" -- and probably yields a much better sludge for fertilizer after.

But still --talking major labor!!

However -- some say soon comes the time that true slave labor will return
for one and all -- then no problems accomplishing all the above -- you can
hold a few specialized slaves just for making your required amount of
alcohol per day -- say 3 -- at the very least -- fopur with the slave in
the field working to supply the food to feed them.

Till then -- I will stick with my biodiesel from coconuts plan -- thank you
all -- to run diesels -- car/truck/tractor.

Which is still so labor intensive -- but about by half as much!!

One day -- probably soon -- your all going to learn what that old saying
meant:

There is no such thing as a free ride!!

Soon as the world realizes deficit spending actually can't work forever --
you will find out about free rides and all!!

Peter/Belize