ALHILLDIRT
Bronze Member
Has anyone had any experience building and operating an ethanol still for homestead use.
ETHANOL STILL
- Thread starter ALHILLDIRT
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gordon21
Veteran Member
Don't expect a lot of replies to your question. Who knows which TBN members might be revenuer's.
If you are reading this and don't know what a revenuer is, then you will never understand.
Hint: If you ever come across a mountain stream and you see a PVC pipe appearing to pick up water and disappear into the woods, DO NOT FOLLOW THE PIPE !!!!!
If you are reading this and don't know what a revenuer is, then you will never understand.
Hint: If you ever come across a mountain stream and you see a PVC pipe appearing to pick up water and disappear into the woods, DO NOT FOLLOW THE PIPE !!!!!
scott_vt
Super Member
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AMP762 said:
Mornin AMP,
That was good
czechsonofagun
Elite Member
MMagis
Veteran Member
If I'm not mistaken, it recently became legal in Alabama to make ethynol for fuel use. That may be why he's asking.
RonMar
Elite Member
I don't have much direct experience(helped a shop teacher build an ethanol still back in high school), but understanding the processes involved in converting plant to alcohol, I think you are going to find that it is not very efficient once everything is factored in. You need very large quantities of material to yield a small quantity of alcohol. All this material needs to be harvested and processed, then you need a large ammount of heat energy to distill the final product. Unless you are harvesting with horses and using them also to drag in the wood that you are splitting by hand to fire the still, on a small scale you will most likley use more fuel than you produce. The only way to be reasonably efficient is on a massive(ethanol plant) scale where cost per pound of raw material goes down with quantity and the ability to recycle/process the stalks of the plants as fuel to help power the distillation process. Even mass produced, I think the production costs are in the 5$+ per gallon range. Probably the biggest bang for your homegrown buck if you have many farmable acres would be to grow Rape seed and process it into oil(Canola) and make Biodiesel. this of course requires the proper mower/harvester, thresher and press to make the base oil then the equipment to convert it to biodiesel. I think overall this requires less energy to accomplish and the yield of finished product per acre of crop will be higher. This of course is just my opinion from the research I have done.
gordon21
Veteran Member
RonMar: Your quotes are about right. $5 per gallon to produce 180 proof liquor, er, I mean politically efficient fuel. the laws concerning alcohol production are loosening up. 20 years ago, we didn't have microbreweries. now every major city has 5 or more.
OP
ALHILLDIRT
Bronze Member
Considering all the problems in today's world, I would probably be better off making moonshine than ethanol as a fuel. However, I have a good supply of home grown resources available (grain feedstock, scrap wood for fuel), and a decreasing budget due to higher gas prices. I read somewhere that you could get 2.7 gals of ethanol out of a bushel of corn. Considering today's market price for corn $2.50/bushel and ethanol with a value of even $2.00 per gallon would give an effective rate on the corn of $5.40 per bushel. Plus the remaining brewers by product would still have value as an animal feed. While I admit that buying your feedstock materials could make a small scale operation marginal, it seems to me that if you already have the feedstock on hand, it would make sense.
Highbeam
Super Member
There was a news story about it here in WA. They claimed that you still had to register the still with the feds but that you could use it for fuel. This company, named dogwood energy, was selling stills for 1600$ and they were using cracked corn claiming costs below 1$ per gallon. I'm sure they have a website that you could steal their design from since it would take lots of ethanol to get ahead of that high still cost.