Home made Ethanol

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clivees

Well-Known Member
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Somewhere in deepest darkest Hampshire
Has anyone distilled there own ethanol?

I was thinking that the Diesel boys are making there own fuel and i was wondering what the pitfalls and hurdles i would need to pass, to brew my own petrol.
Is it practical and economic?
Is it leagal (In the UK) do you need a licence?
Do 2.25 run OK on it?

Or should i just swap out my original petrol engine (Perfect working order) and pop in a diesel?
 
IIRC you need a licence for heat distillation but not for freeze distillation.
 
Ethanol is ethyl alcohol, and that's the alcohol in beer and whisky and stuff like that.

Chemically it is C2 H5 OH.

You will get jailed for setting up a distillation device for ethanol unless first you try to register with the tax-grabbers. They can make you keep a tax-grabber **** on the premises at your expense. It's a pain.

Why not hunt the chemicals suppliers for METHANOL, methyl alcohol C H3 OH which is just as good and you ought to be able to get it 20 litre cans or 210 drums for 50-60 pence a litre, or maybe less.

methyl alcohol is intoxicating like the real stuff, BUT ....

it takes five times as much to get the same effect
it is five times more TOXIC than ethyl alcohol
it makes you go blind, and may kill you before they find you and save you.

But it makes your car run nicely if you set it up properly.
 
YUP ..... half-in-half with petrol and it will go fine.

By the way, methanol is probably LESS dangerous than petrol to keep around.

CharlesY
 
Indeed you do ideally. It's a bit like running on LPG, you need to advance your ignition and increase your compression ratio to get the optimum, but by doing that your engine will detonate when running on petrol.

Methanol, litre for litre, has less calorific value than petrol (essentially iso octane C7 H15 CH3), so more is required to get the same power, but it also burns slower so ignition timing needs advancing to get the best out of it. Running on 50-50 mix, just twiddle your distributor a few degrees advanced and it should be fine - allegedly...
 
i was thinking of running my GT40 on biofuel (ethanol) but still cant get it easily enuf to warrant the mods required.

I believe that a power increase (and cost reduction) are the result of using biofuel.
 
clivees said:
The Mad Hat Man said:
i was thinking of running my GT40 on biofuel (ethanol) quote]
So do you want to go 50 50 on a some Ethanol to try it out (If i can find a supplier)?
You could run old Dibnah on it as a tester?
Click to expand...

Ethanol is ethyl alcohol, and that is completely NOT suitable for a diesel. You might as well try running your diesel on Coca-Cola.

In a spark ignition engine you would need to make big modifications if you wanted to run on neat ethanol.

It has some advantages - you can run high compression ratios for a start - but there isn't as much OOOMPH per gallon from ethanol as there is from petrol, so you would use a lot of it to get anywhere.

I thjink you would get away with mixing 1 part of ethanol with 2 parts of petrol, but would that be worth the effort?

CharlesY
Click to expand...
 
Sure, you CAN get more power, but that's because the engine can consume VAST amounts of alcohol (like Slob) using no more AIR that it uses for petrol.

If you are looking for more power by running on neat methanol, think about using TWICE as much of it as you were using on petrol. We found that when we played around with methanol in the good old days.

Then there's nitro-methane ..... and nitro-benzene ... and they could make an old series 2.25 fly!

CharlesY
 
You don't want to do this -really. Unless you make it a commercial enterprise, in which case do tell HMRC about it first. Yes it is easy (homebrew + pressure cooker, thermometer and microbore pipe) but going to prison for it isn't worth it.
If you want to try running on ethanol - check out the Californian websites for E50 etc.They use it for drag racing here.

If you want a way of saving petrol, You could always co-fuel with Hydrogen.
The new rotary Honda engine is being designed to burn Hydrogen with Petrol, and seems a viable solution.

Look up hydrogen vehicles for those experimenting with similar.
I have even designed a set-up the size of 3ftx1.5x1.5ft, which will produce clean hydrogen on demand automatically from old beercans! - you can't get much cheaper than that.
 
Originally Posted by Rowan Clearwater
I have even designed a set-up the size of 3ftx1.5x1.5ft, which will produce clean hydrogen on demand automatically from old beercans! - you can't get much cheaper than that.


gramor said:
Was this before matron took the crayon's away:D
Click to expand...

So does this mean that Slob and Yella could fit a box like that in the back of their Series Landies and instead of tossing their empty tinnies out the window they could toss them in the tank and drive from here to Hell and back for free?

Oh, wait a minute .... drink driving ... BUT!!!!

Would it work on soft drinks cans, or does it rely on alcoholic beverage ones?

CharlesY
 
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