Lets keep the political stuff out, and if you dont want to know how to make fuel yourself, just dont read this. It is not about if ethanol is good or bad, its about how to make it yourself and use it effectively in your vehicles.
I grew up on a farm and I used to ask why we never made fuel since we grew all sorts of stuff we could use to power cars, trucks and our equipment. The problem was nobody knew how to do it, they tried in the 70s but couldnt figure it out. So it sat in the back of my head for years, couldnt find much info on it anywhere before the net. Nothing in libraries and not many books written on the subject either. In 2005 I found a website with a wealth of information about ethanol and a whole mess of other stuff, and it got a bit more interesting and I started collecting parts, tools, and information. Then the gas prices went nuts in 2008 and that year hurt financially because I am on a fixed income and I didnt get anywhere near enough money to get around in any car I had. So that kicked it off, poverty is the mother of invention just as much as necessity is.
You can easily make ethanol fuel from pretty much anything with starch or sugar in it. Yeast are the little buggers that make if for us, they eat sugar and if they are in an anaerobic environment (no oxygen present) they will produce ethanol and carbon dioxide. Common yeast cant eat starches and make ethanol, the sugar chains are too long for them so we need an enzyme to break up the chain into bite sized bits for the yeast. There are other ways to make ethanol such as from cellulose and with other microbes but they arent exactly easy for the average joe like us to utilize.
Starches are things like wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, etc. Things made with starches like bread and donuts can be used to make ethanol too. The enzymes we need are abundant in nature, every seed has some of them in it, because the seed itself is stored starch for the new plant to grow on until it can take in sunlight and CO2. The plant cant use the starch as is, it needs to make it into sugar first, that is where the enzymes come in. When the seed sprouts it releases those enzymes and then uses the starch to grow. We can use some of those enzymes in some seeds, but that takes a bit of knowledge and preparation.
Sugar is pretty easy stuff to find, its everywhere. Getting enough to run your car might be a bit of a problem here though, or so it would seem. Cane sugar works, so would candy waste, and anything else with a high sugar content rather than starch. You can use high sugar content molasses if its available, or if you have an overabundance of honey you can use that too, but with a bit more work because honey has properties that prevent yeast from eating it without working it over a bit first.
Some interesting things about ethanol. It has a boiling point of 173F at sea level, water has a boiling point of 212F at sea level. We use that difference to separate ethanol from water, because the yeast need the water to move around and eat the sugar, no water, not much yeast or ethanol. The most efficient way to get the water out of the ethanol is to boil it and use a column to separate the alcohol vapor from the water vapor. As long as the still doesnt go over 173F, you wont get much water out the other end.
If you run your car on straight ethanol, hydrous or anhydrous, you wont have carbon build up in the engine. That means when you tear it down you wont have black gunk or soot stuck to everything. Additionally your oil will last longer because it wont get choked with abrasive carbon particles. If there arent any particles stuck to things, and they dont get in the lubricating oil, then wouldnt that reduce wear on the engine because it doesnt have grit being rubbed on the cylinder walls and bearings? Hey how about that, yeah it does! Brazil runs most of their vehicles on ethanol, and taxi cab engines routinely go 500,000 to 1,000,000 miles on it. At 500,000 miles there is often no appreciable wear in the engine. How would you like to have your engine run just as good at 500,000 miles as it did when you first built it?
E85 is rated either 105 or 106 octane depending on who you talk to. Straight ethanol is quite a bit higher around 116 or so, depending on who you talk to and the method used to determine the octane. E85 is quite often not very good gasoline mixed with ethanol, because it has a very profound effect on octane rating when mixed with gas. Mix 67 octane gas with ten percent 110+ octane ethanol and you get 89 octane, it isnt linear due to a bunch of reasons. With E85 or neat ethanol you can run very high compression ratios or boost for two reasons. First it has a high octane rating and resists detonation. Additionally it has a high latent heat of vaporization so it pulls the heat out of the intake tract creating a denser mixture. E85 is more sensitive to cylinder pressures because it has that bit of gasoline in it, but it is still far and away much better at both these things than premium pump gas. Most people compare 87 octane pump gas to E85 for price comparison and say its a wash, when really it is more like VP red or C16 as far as octane is concerned than 87.
Running ethanol in a low compression engine with the intake tract sized for gasoline will result in reduced mileage. The engine is not optimally configured for ethanol use. Flex fuel vehicles are still limited to using less knock resistant gasoline, so the mileage will suffer a bit. Not nearly the 30% that is claimed by most people though, it depends on the vehicle as to how much of a difference there is in mileage. Most of the people I have been working with have seen no more than a 15% drop in mileage, and often it is a 2%-10% difference. At higher ratios such as E40 some vehicles are seeing better mileage than on straight gasoline, particularly in working vehicles that have increased loads from towing or climbing steep grades. If you are burning it in an engine that will run with any ignition lead on 87 octane, you are missing out on what ethanol can do for you.
Its 0230 and I need some sleep. I'll give more info later. Got any questions as far as use or production? Post em up.
I grew up on a farm and I used to ask why we never made fuel since we grew all sorts of stuff we could use to power cars, trucks and our equipment. The problem was nobody knew how to do it, they tried in the 70s but couldnt figure it out. So it sat in the back of my head for years, couldnt find much info on it anywhere before the net. Nothing in libraries and not many books written on the subject either. In 2005 I found a website with a wealth of information about ethanol and a whole mess of other stuff, and it got a bit more interesting and I started collecting parts, tools, and information. Then the gas prices went nuts in 2008 and that year hurt financially because I am on a fixed income and I didnt get anywhere near enough money to get around in any car I had. So that kicked it off, poverty is the mother of invention just as much as necessity is.
You can easily make ethanol fuel from pretty much anything with starch or sugar in it. Yeast are the little buggers that make if for us, they eat sugar and if they are in an anaerobic environment (no oxygen present) they will produce ethanol and carbon dioxide. Common yeast cant eat starches and make ethanol, the sugar chains are too long for them so we need an enzyme to break up the chain into bite sized bits for the yeast. There are other ways to make ethanol such as from cellulose and with other microbes but they arent exactly easy for the average joe like us to utilize.
Starches are things like wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, etc. Things made with starches like bread and donuts can be used to make ethanol too. The enzymes we need are abundant in nature, every seed has some of them in it, because the seed itself is stored starch for the new plant to grow on until it can take in sunlight and CO2. The plant cant use the starch as is, it needs to make it into sugar first, that is where the enzymes come in. When the seed sprouts it releases those enzymes and then uses the starch to grow. We can use some of those enzymes in some seeds, but that takes a bit of knowledge and preparation.
Sugar is pretty easy stuff to find, its everywhere. Getting enough to run your car might be a bit of a problem here though, or so it would seem. Cane sugar works, so would candy waste, and anything else with a high sugar content rather than starch. You can use high sugar content molasses if its available, or if you have an overabundance of honey you can use that too, but with a bit more work because honey has properties that prevent yeast from eating it without working it over a bit first.
Some interesting things about ethanol. It has a boiling point of 173F at sea level, water has a boiling point of 212F at sea level. We use that difference to separate ethanol from water, because the yeast need the water to move around and eat the sugar, no water, not much yeast or ethanol. The most efficient way to get the water out of the ethanol is to boil it and use a column to separate the alcohol vapor from the water vapor. As long as the still doesnt go over 173F, you wont get much water out the other end.
If you run your car on straight ethanol, hydrous or anhydrous, you wont have carbon build up in the engine. That means when you tear it down you wont have black gunk or soot stuck to everything. Additionally your oil will last longer because it wont get choked with abrasive carbon particles. If there arent any particles stuck to things, and they dont get in the lubricating oil, then wouldnt that reduce wear on the engine because it doesnt have grit being rubbed on the cylinder walls and bearings? Hey how about that, yeah it does! Brazil runs most of their vehicles on ethanol, and taxi cab engines routinely go 500,000 to 1,000,000 miles on it. At 500,000 miles there is often no appreciable wear in the engine. How would you like to have your engine run just as good at 500,000 miles as it did when you first built it?
E85 is rated either 105 or 106 octane depending on who you talk to. Straight ethanol is quite a bit higher around 116 or so, depending on who you talk to and the method used to determine the octane. E85 is quite often not very good gasoline mixed with ethanol, because it has a very profound effect on octane rating when mixed with gas. Mix 67 octane gas with ten percent 110+ octane ethanol and you get 89 octane, it isnt linear due to a bunch of reasons. With E85 or neat ethanol you can run very high compression ratios or boost for two reasons. First it has a high octane rating and resists detonation. Additionally it has a high latent heat of vaporization so it pulls the heat out of the intake tract creating a denser mixture. E85 is more sensitive to cylinder pressures because it has that bit of gasoline in it, but it is still far and away much better at both these things than premium pump gas. Most people compare 87 octane pump gas to E85 for price comparison and say its a wash, when really it is more like VP red or C16 as far as octane is concerned than 87.
Running ethanol in a low compression engine with the intake tract sized for gasoline will result in reduced mileage. The engine is not optimally configured for ethanol use. Flex fuel vehicles are still limited to using less knock resistant gasoline, so the mileage will suffer a bit. Not nearly the 30% that is claimed by most people though, it depends on the vehicle as to how much of a difference there is in mileage. Most of the people I have been working with have seen no more than a 15% drop in mileage, and often it is a 2%-10% difference. At higher ratios such as E40 some vehicles are seeing better mileage than on straight gasoline, particularly in working vehicles that have increased loads from towing or climbing steep grades. If you are burning it in an engine that will run with any ignition lead on 87 octane, you are missing out on what ethanol can do for you.
Its 0230 and I need some sleep. I'll give more info later. Got any questions as far as use or production? Post em up.
Comment