[Stoves] Burning low quality ethanol

[William Carr]

On Sep 1, 2007, at 9:12 AM, Philip Lloyd wrote:

> Dear Paul
>
> Making low grade alcohol is the easiest thing to do.  As you boil an
> alcohol/water mix resulting from fermentation, the first stuff that
> evaporates is a very low-grade alcohol, and all you have to do is to
> condense it to remove it from the system.  It will contain more  
> alcohol than
> the original fermentation liquor, but will still be real low  
> grade.  If you
> reboil this stuff, you will concentrate it some more - and so on,  
> all the
> way up to 96.4%


Hmmm.   I keep a jug of sourdough starter around for making pancakes,  
and I pour off alcohol on a weekly basis.   What percent alcohol do  
you think this stuff might be?

I just watched a fascinating TV show called "Bioneers:  How Mushrooms  
Can Help Save the World".

The speaker was an uber-genius named Paul Stamets.    One of his  
discoveries was the  invention of  "Myco-nol".

He uses fungi to decompose cellulose and lignin in straw, etc, into  
fungal sugars, and then uses yeast to convert those carbohydrates  
into alcohol.


He showed a slide of an alcohol lamp running on alcohol produced this  
way.