brew your own fuel

Homebrew ethanol fuel still - interesting article

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/27/business/27proto.php?page=1

 

Interesting. I have my doubts that it will catch on, but interesting nonetheless.

 

I'm not sure I buy it. Something like this would quickly drive the price of sugar through the roof and quickly make it uneconomical to operate. I can't even imagine how many people would burn their house down with this or kill themselves trying to drink it...

 

getting the permits for home distilling for fuel can be difficult, hopefully they help people with that. Additionally, a great idea... distilling left over alcoholic drinks from bars. Left over beer, left over mixed drinks etc all in one barrel.

Has anyone ever heard of allsorts?

 

Now if someone will make one that uses yard clippings instead of sugar, we're in business

 

and food compost. seriously.

but, I couldn't imagine making it economical - 14 lb of sugar for one gallon of fuel + heat & water? cheaper to buy gas at that rate.

 

One of the best ideas I've seen so far for ethanol production is growing algae to use as your stock material. Even then, I just don't believe that ethanol is the solution to the energy problems.

 

I have looked into Jerusalem Artichoke for this purpose as they are reputedly one of the best yielding per acre for Ethanol production. Thing is, you need tons to make it feasible. And with my own personal consumption of fossil fuel being far beyond the amount I could make, it doesn't make sense. Now, if hypothetically speaking things got so bad you couldn't buy fuel at all...well then that's a different story. I'd probably go the BioDiesel route though, it seems easier and isn't as volatile as Ethanol. Plus Ethanol produces worse greenhouse problems than Gasoline, because it produces Nitrous Oxide...I wonder if Brazilians are happier because of this?

 

Actually a lot of research has/is going into Methane production from Sewage and other organic waste materials. They even farm landfills. And it all kind of depends. Brazil has it down because they have an ideal environment for Sugarcane, use the chaff to fire the distillers and have a good system for it.

 

It's actually a very clever idea. One of the biggest hurdles (after the permit PLUS the cost of the permit) if you want to do it solo, is the equipment. The process itself is not all that difficult, but you need the time and effort to go along with it. So I could see something like their "micro-fueler" having a chance...that is if we can get a better fuel for it. Which kind of brings me to another point....we have to remove subsidization of the crops to produce it or the true cost will always be hidden. Sure the sugar may cost $x up front out of pocket, but say sugar became highly subsidized as a result of things like this invention and the increased interest in alternative fuels (namely in this case, Ethanol) and as a result, we'd be paying increased taxes to offset the apparent cost.

 

As much as I love the ideal of distilling since I'm a homebrewer, I have to point out that using ethanol or any hydrocarbon fuel in an internal combustion engine is going to cause problems. the only way to fix this is to harness solar more directly than using it to grow plants to ferment into to alcohol to distill into pure alcohol to burn in a horribly inefficient engine. and of course the over population of humans doesn't help.

 

Ive looked into this a fair bit but decided the amount of **** Id be putting in the air wasn't worth it for me. Not to mention the other factor already mentioned.

 

We already cannot supply our own demand for sugar, and as a result it is subsidized.

 

I've thought of this, but realized there's a lot of economical issues:

1) the quantity of sugar required is high
2) I suppose you don't have to boil the wort, but you'd want to disolve the sugar. If you were mashing something, you'd have to heat the mash, and sparge, which takes heat and water
3) the brew you get is too low in alcohol, and it takes energy to get the alcohol out (sounds like they solve this problem, a bit, by using a microfilter, maybe reverse osmosis??? to seperate the alcohol from water)

too bad we can't make an engine that'd run off of something w/relatively low alcohol - like 5%

oh, yeah, that engine is me...:fro:

 

Along those lines, think about that it takes all that effort to get 5% abv. So in 5 gallons you have the mere potential of 0.25 gallons of Ethanol. And you still need to run the still Of course to be fair, most people do rather large batches of Ethanol, and bottle off the CO2 and use the waste for feed.

 

I think I'll walk, and enjoy the beer myself.

 

We might have better, more efficient engines available if the oil companies didnt buy up all the patents on new technology that could decimate the oil industry. //end conspiracy theory rant :cross:

 

Whoa man, did you hear about the carboratur that runs on water, man? The government bought up the patents for it man.

 

I know of farmers that do this now, They have to ad a red dye that makes it undrinkable. this would be very good for boats. mainly cause there would be less toxins out of the exhaust. but you gonna get that hillbilly that thinks he can power his boat on beer LOL

 

depends on how much beer the hillbilly drinks.