Are there any peeps who have succeeded at making thier own ethanol? The reason that I am asking is because of the rediculous cost of petrol. Here is my advantage. I am a trash hauler. I have an account that makes corn tortillas. Once a month I haul the bad product from the place. This product is spoiled corn, or spoiled corn tortillas. When I haul it...it's already far into the fermentation process. Now, I am not talking a small amount. The last time I hauled it... It was 7 tons of fermented maze (corn) You catch my drift...? Now all that I have to do is build me a still and start brewing. From what I am told...A car will run on 100% ethanol if it's converted over. The only reason that the goverment is pushing a 85% ethanol to 25% gasoline mixture is to stop peeps from drinking it. Anyone..????
the reason people aren't making it is because the government can hit you with a huge fine altough i am currently trying to convert my sisters diesel to run on 100% veggie oil
Last I heard Moonshinin' was still illegal. Dangerous too. If you got neighbours close by, they might have a slight objection to the potential fire hazzards.
You can buy a still for fuel making purposes, but it must be licenced by the ATF. Go to www.atf.gov and search for it, it can be a bit tough to find. The easiest way to get info would be to write your local ATF represenative.
The laws for making alcohol (less than 10000 gallons a year) have changed. You can actually get a tax credit for making alcohol. You have to write to the BATF to get the permits. You need to build a reflux still and it would be easiest to built a batch reflux. Temperatures in the stack have to be closely controlled but you can easily get alcohol suitable for fuel with a single run through a well built reflux still. Depending on where you live the conversion can be easy or complex. In cold weather you need to have some way to vaporize the alcohol until the engine warms up. You can run up to 14:1 compression with alcohol. You will have to either get a carburetor made for alcohol or heavily modify your existing carb. If you are going to run EFI then you need to get the EFI that is flex fuel compatible. There are many sites on the web with info on the mods required and some good sites on how to build and run a backyard reflux still. The biggest problem that you will have is that if you run out of alcohol you are stuck - you can't run gasoline in an engine that is completely converted to run alcohol. It is posible (though not efficient) to run dual fuels with a flex fuel EFI. You will lose power while running alcohol and milage will go down by 30% or more. If you make the mods to get all the power out of alcohol your compression will be too high to use gasoline. I could do it but I haven't the time to watch a still and I travel distances that would require a 40 gallon tank for a round trip. Good luck - it can be worth it in some cases. Paul
Putting some yeast in that corn mash will make the fermentation go much quicker and produce a higher yield. Then you drain out the wart (water alcohol mix about 10% or so) from the mash. Put that in your still and viola! Instant booze! You don't need much heat to distill alcohol. A sunny day will do most of the work for you, but it'll go faster with a heat source. Whatever you do, DON'T BOIL THE WART. You'll get too much water vapor in your condesor column. Most of your distillation efficiencies come from how much surface area you have in your condensor. Broken glass in the condensation tube adds lots of surface area. Word to the wise, you can only get about 98% alcohol (with a really really good stil) without adding benzene. Alcohol also sucks water out of the air, so find a way to store it so water can't get to it. That also means a sealed fuel tank. Adding some kind of petrol to the mix will help to keep the water out (another perk for E85).
