[Stoves] Burning low quality ethanol

[adkarve]

Dear stovers,
making alcohol from cellulose has been a pipe dream for almost a century. A
lot of people have shown the process on a laboratory scale but it has not
been a success on a commercial scale.The organisms that degrade cellulose
into sugar eat that sugar, so that very little is left for the yeast to
ferment into alcohol. If you extracted the cellulolytic enzyme from the
cellulose degrading organisms, the enzyme shows very little cellulolytic
activity, becasue it gets denatured when not bound to the cell membranes of
the cellulolytic organism. Methane from cellulose is however possible. The
methanogens most probably eat the bacteria that convert cellulose into
sugar. The yeasts cannot do that.  Our own experiments showed that one gets
about 125 g of methane from a kilogram of cellulosic material.
Yours A.D.Karve
----- Original Message -----
From: William Carr <Jkirk3279 at beanstalk.net>
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 3:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Burning low quality ethanol


>
> 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.
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