Using Alcohol Fuel how to

[Arlene]

Using Alcohol Fuel is not a new idea.

Henry Ford’s Model “A” was designed to run on either alcohol or gasoline... because Gasoline wasn't readily available.

This photo, taken in April 1933, shows a Lincoln Nebraska gas station of the Earl Coryell Co. selling "Corn Alcohol Gasoline." The test marketing of ethanol blends was common in the Midwest at this time, but it did not succeed due to the market dominance of the major oil companies.

Many countries around the world have millions of vehicle running on alcohol today. The idea of using alcohol for fuel is not new but becoming more attractive to the public as our dependence on gasoline becomes increasingly more expensive.

Most gasoline cars can be converted to alternative fuels with no need for a new or replacement engine. Other benefits include total elimination of smoke. It also contributes to a quieter and smoother running engine. Besides the environmental benefits, Flexfuel combines high performance with economy, making it the best current alternative to gasoline fuels.

Best of all ... Grain alcohol (ethanol) is a renewable fuel, and it is pretty much pollution free, since the by-products of combustion are only water and CO2. Furthermore, it is economical to make, and your car will run cooler, faster, and better on ethanol. It is a home grown fuel and we don't have to import it from the Middle East.

You can legally make fuel alcohol in the privacy of your own home. Many people are doing just that, and running their vehicles on clean-burning alcohol instead of gasoline.

You'll need a still, and you will need to ferment beer, or wine, from corn, barley, kitchen scraps, or even molasses.

You can build your own still. We have excellent information available to help you learn what you need to know.



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What if there was a fuel capable of heating millions of homes, businesses and schools in the United States, Canada and elsewhere?

What if that fuel was already here in North America… not half a world away?

What if it was renewable, economical and sustainable and

What if we had the know-how to make it work?

What if it burned as cleanly as any of the fossil fuels?

What if the use of this fuel was as much a boon to regional economies as it was to the environment?

How much would you be willing to pay for this amazing fuel? Well, what if we told you that you would pay less for it than you would for oil, coal, propane or natural gas?

This miracle fuel is wood pellets.



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Building Your own alcohol Still



"American Freedom Fuels"
PO Box 292
Lynchburg, TN 37352

Phone/Office hours 9 AM to 4 PM CST Monday through Friday
1-931-759-6674
Anytime FAX [phone]

[e-mail]


www.ethanolstill.com/

;D

[Arlene]

here www.ethanolstill.com/building-Your-own-alcohol-Still.html
pics there

Yes You Can Do It!

You can make fuel alcohol in your own house, garage or yard. Many people are doing just that!

Why Ethanol

You'll need a still, and you will need to ferment beer, or wine, from corn, barley, kitchen scraps, or even molasses.

You can build your own still or buy one already assembled. We have all the information you need to manufacture your own fuel. You can build this reflux still.

Here is what happens in a reflux still:

When the alcohol, which is in a vapor form, hits the cold water it will turn some of the alcohol back into a liquid and it will drop back into the boiler to be reheated and will rise again. The vapor that got through will be of a higher percentage and a more pure form of alcohol. You are able to produce sometimes close to 100% or 200 proof alcohol. Those people who want to produce this quality should buy or build this kind of unit.

Most still makers make the same mistake: they have the reflux column and condenser permanently attached (and therefore thermally coupled) to the boiler. This means that the only way to control the temperature (which is what controls how high the proof is) is by means of raising or lowering the temperature of the boiler.

This works OK for making small amounts of drinking alcohol, but if it is fuel your are after, you want to burn scrap wood, or anything you can get cheap or free as a fuel source, because you have to minimise your costs and also be adaptable.

Controlling a boiler pot is a huge problem, and nearly impossible. This still overcomes this problem, it has the distillation column as a separate and easily controlled discreet component.

This particular still is a very efficient design. It has an automatic temperature control valve, and graduated heat loss via internal water cooling, both of which are keys to consistent proof. It produced 180-proof ethanol on the very first run! It can make 5 gal/hour of 160 to 180-proof, which is a great fuel.

You can order the blueprints for building the high proof, high production alcohol fuel still shown on this website. When you order you get over 40 pages of clear and detailed instructions immediately by email. You will also get step-by-step photos not included in this website. Also, you get a large blueprint by mail.

It will cost you about $400 to $500 to build the still, or less if you're good at scavenging parts and components, such as hoses, etc. You can scavenge a lot of the other materials on the list, but if you want the still to work right, you need to build it exactly as shown on the blueprints. This is a precise design, and it is very efficient.

You'll need 5 feet of 3-inch-diameter copper pipe, with various copper fittings as listed in the plans, costing around $125.

The key piece of technology is the automatic temperature sensor/controller valve, which precisely regulates the optimum temperature for separation of condensed alcohol from the water vapors. This ensures consistent production of 180 proof ethanol.

An old gas water heater can be cannibalized for the gas burner, if you want to use propane or natural gas to heat your boiler to run the beer through the still. Or you can make a wood burner out of some concrete blocks and an empty 55-gallon oil drum turned on its side. Use scrap wood for fuel.

© 2005 All designated trademarks, copyrights and brands are the property of their respective owners.

Our Stills are only for vehicle fuel. They are made with lead connections which is ok for fuel, but unsafe for human consumption. Also, any fuel manufactured must have a small amount of gasoline added to make it undrinkable.

"American Freedom Fuels"
PO Box 292
Lynchburg, TN 37352

Phone/Office hours 9 AM to 4 PM CST Monday through Friday
1-931-759-6674
Anytime FAX [phone]

[e-mail]

[Arlene]

You can ferment any starchy or sugary foods or waste products into a mash that you can distill into 190 proof alcohol.


If you are resourceful, you may even find stuff you can use for free. Once fermented, it is not so hard to distill it to 190-proof with a modern still.

The real good news is that you may not have to do any mechanical work or changes to your car or truck. It may already be factory ready for E85.

Just about all modern cars have fuel injection instead of carburetors, which are controlled by a computer chip getting its information about the type of fuel being used from an O2 sensor, so it makes adjustments accordingly. Even though the chip may not be factory programmed for E-85, it can be replaced with a chip programmed for E85 or a Flex Tek convertion system. More on this, later.

The real big change, however, is that over 2 million cars/year in the USA are now factory ready for E85. So, you may already be driving an E85 car and not know it.

Using dry corn to make ethanol

Corn is the predominant crop for ethanol. It is quite economically advantageous: it is 72 to 74% starch, and the spent grain after fermentation and distilling can be fed wet or dry to cows and other livestock. Corn is quite available without causing a shortage in food supplies, since the protein content is a valuable end product earning more than the original corn. Even so, the total US corn crop could only supply about 20% of our gasoline needs, which are massive. However, if we switched to higher mileage models, we could meet perhaps meet 40% of out fuel needs with corn. The U.S. produced 1.4 billion gallons of ethanol in 1998, and over 3 billion gallons in 2003, 90% of which is made from corn. U.S. ethanol production has been growing 12 percent each year since 1980.

In Canada, barley is the predominant grain used for ethanol production. While the starch content is only 50% as opposed to 72% for corn, the price is 20% lower, and the resulting DDG has a higher protein content and therefore yields a higher price. Canada grows more barley and wheat than corn, so it makes sense to use this as a fuel source, just as Brazil uses sugar cane, since this is a major crop in Brazil.

OK, lets look at the basics of making your own E85 from corn. If you are buying it in 100 lb sacks, you will be paying a rate probably 2 or 3 times higher than what the big distilleries are paying; size is everything. They pay anywhere from $2.30/bushel to $3.30/bushel. A bushel is 56 pounds. So this is a variation between $4.10 per 100 pounds (cwt) and $5.89/hundred pounds.

The following analysis is courtesy of USDA, (2003) when Ethanol was selling for $1.37/gallon and gasoline was about the same.

Corn to ethanol:
Corn 1 bushel= -$2.11
Ethanol 2.8 gallons= +$3.85
Byproducts,DDGS= +$1.20
CO2(can be sold or used)= + __?_
Value of ethanol & byproducts= +$5.05
Value-added (profit)= +$2.94

Grinding the corn will require some type of grain mill. It needs to be big enough to do the job. Don't try to use a flour mill unless you can change the grind setting--if you grind it as fine as flour, it will tend to clump up when you add water. The big corn to ethanol producers recommend a screening mill with a 7/64th inch screen. In other words, a coarse grind, like corn grits (not flour) is best. Then you need to add water and bring it up to the temperature that is right for the liquefaction enzyme you need to add. If you dont use enzymes, a lot of the 72% of the starch in the corn will not be converted to sugar. Yeast eats sugar, not corn.

The big, 40 million gallon per year producers of ethanol normally buy their enzymes by the tanker load. The one company which will sell a smaller volume is Novozyzme, but the minimum amount is still 264 gallons. On their website, www.novozyme.com they say, "While other enzymes are delivered in bulk in tankers, Liquozyme SC DS can now be delivered about once a month in a handy tote containing 1,000 litres (264 gallons). This particular enzyme no longer therefore needs to be transferred into a storage tank."

Drying the alcohol and blending it with gasoline

Mashing and fermentation is covered in other areas of this web site, and how to run the still is covered in the 40 plus pages of instructions I send out with the still blueprints. So, the thing you need to know next for making E85 is that you will need to remove the last 5 or 10% of water by a process called a molecular sieve. I know this sounds technical, but it is pretty simple, and cheap, too. A sieve is a strainer. The finer the screen, the finer the final product will be, as when you are sifting flower to remove any clumps or large particles. You can buy Zeolyle, which is a granulated product that will absorb water but not the slightly larger ethanol molecules. You need to specify that you want to buy the 3 A size (3 angstrom), as this is what you need for making 200 proof ethanol. Buy Type 3A in 10lb bags (looks like a small pea gravel) it is only a couple of bucks and it works very well to dehydrate the ethanol. We mix about 5 lbs in a 5 gallon can and let it sit with the ethanol overnight and pour the dehydrated ethanol through a screen, into another can the next day. To get the water out of the zeolite we just broil it on the backyard grill - it is reusable indefinitely. Or, you can dry it in the sun by spreading it on a tarp in the summer months. Lyme can also be used for this procedure.

Finally, you measure that you do really have 200 proof with a hydrometer. If you still have some water in your alcohol, it will separate out and settle to the bottom when you mix it with gasoline. Also, you should strain your 200 proof through a fine screen just to make sure you don’t have any zeolite particles that will clog up your fuel filter.

Because of ATF regulations, you will need to add a little bit of gasoline to denature any alcohol you have sitting around. Just 2 to 5% is enough to do the trick. This way, if you ever do get a surprise visit from the ATF (since they know about your still because of the Fuel distillation permit you took out), they can see right away that you are making fuel, not drinking alcohol.

Now, as for adding the gasoline to the ethanol to make E85, even if the car you are driving is listed an this website as an E85 flexible fuel vehicle, be sure to check your owners’ manual or with your dealer to make sure you got the model with the right computer chip that will handle E85. I suggest you just wait until you have exactly one half a tank of gasoline in your car, then fill up the rest of the way with the denatured 200 proof you made. This is because it may take a full tank of fuel for the car’s computer to fully adjust to the new fuel mix. In the summer you can measure and blend your fuel so you have exactly 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, but in the winter, I suggest that you do not run greater than 50% ethanol so that you don’t have any problems starting your engine on cold mornings.

That’s it. You are on you way to fuel independence.

You can order the blueprints for building the high proof, high production alcohol fuel still shown on this website. When you order you get over 40 pages of clear and detailed instructions immediately by email. You will also get step-by-step photos not included in this website. Also, you get a large blueprint by mail.

It will cost you about $400 to $500 to build the still, or less if you're good at scavenging parts and components, such as hoses, etc. You can scavenge a lot of the other materials on the list, but if you want the still to work right, you need to build it exactly as shown on the blueprints. This is a precise design, and it is very efficient.

You'll need 5 feet of 3-inch-diameter copper pipe, with various copper fittings as listed in the plans, costing around $125.

The key piece of technology is the automatic temperature sensor/controller valve, which precisely regulates the optimum temperature for separation of condensed alcohol from the water vapors. This ensures consistent production of 180 proof ethanol.

An old gas water heater can be cannibalized for the gas burner, if you want to use propane or natural gas to heat your boiler to run the beer through the still. Or you can make a wood burner out of some concrete blocks and an empty 55-gallon oil drum turned on its side. Use scrap wood for fuel.

[superchicken]

Hard on your engine though

[Arlene]

why? just curious !

[superchicken]

Has to do with the way it burns--I think it burns too hot.Of course this may have been only in the older cars,don`t know about new ones--always check with the owners manual or call a dealership of the type of car you own.

[Arlene]

it prob is harsh.. shine will rot your gut hahaha! tee hee.. nasty stuff there.. nasty.. you should see it made at a still when the people don;t take care of it.. some people make clean good stuff but some make nasty stuff!

[superchicken]

I use to buy mine from a judge indirectly when I was in West Virginia.He didn`t have any competitors--wonder why?

[Arlene]

I am shocked! !! no competition.. understandable! I could go on and on! . guess it just makes them human .. sort of hahaha!