[OT - US/Canada] E-85

For the North American audience
60 Minutes will present a segement on E-85 (Ethanol) fuels,

Sunday May 7 (19:00 EDT, CBS).

I halfheartedly apologize for the OT posting, but you know how sensitive
I am on this topic.

E-85 is 85% ethanol. The vehicle must have a fuel mix sensor and
controls. This is a growth trend area in North America which, while it
doesn't reduce consumption, it at least displaces it with a renewable
fuel that burns cleaner than gasoline.

Cheers,
Alan
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Bill wrote:

Alan Browne wrote:


For the North American audience
60 Minutes will present a segement on E-85 (Ethanol) fuels,

Sunday May 7 (19:00 EDT, CBS).

I halfheartedly apologize for the OT posting, but you know how sensitive
I am on this topic.


It's not OT - I intend to photograph the TV show.

I apologize. I won't put OT there ever again ...

;-)

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That's good. You can set-aside some money to cover the engine repairs
you'll need
when the wear caused by the "scouring action" of ethanol fuel takes its
toll.

RW+/- wrote:


Then since it only costs about 75 cents a gallon to produce at home I guess
you are already running a still? NO?

I'm not really sure of the "at home" costs as you need feedstock (find a
local brewery and "take" or buy the ruined stock, spills, etc.), the
heat to evaporate the ethanol out of the mash and a few other things.

You can buy ($30) plans for an efficient homemade reflux still (that
produces 160+ proof ethanol at about 5 Gal/hour with no evaporative
loss) and build it for about $50 worth of material (the thermostat for
the water control is not in that...).

http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/index.html poorly written, but lots
of info.

It's a lot of labour feeding the evaporator, cleaning, etc. too. Makes
darkroom work look downright lazy.

In the US you need a licence from the ATF to run a still and you need to
show that it is denatured immediately after manufacture (15% gasoline is
a good "denature"). Not sure about Quebec/Canada, Europe.

If you had a farmers supply store for molasses (make sure it hasn't had
most of the sugar removed which is the case with some molasses supplies)
and you bought (and transport) it in economical quantities, you could
probably save a lot of money as long as you don't count your own labour
time.

If you could run the still in closed loop mode (eg, use the waste heat
to pre-heat the mash for the next batch); immediately recycle the
"waste" distallate (low proof) back into the mash evaporator in real
time to recover its ethanol, etc., it would get very efficient.

(OTOH, the waste distillate has some poisonous compounds, so maybe
better not to "pollute" the mash but instead feed the aftermash to
livestock).

I don't have energy figures for the mash evaporator. If I did, I could
compute the cost efficiency of using electricity (5 cents/kWh and 97%
hydro based here in Quebec) to run the mash evaporator.

"Home" brewers of ethanol often use scrap wood as a fuel for the
evaporator, so they are adding pollution to the air in making their
fuel. I would want to use electricity or the ethanol itself as the
evaporator energy source. In sunny climes you can cook out the ethanol
with solar power (dishes).

My car is not E85 capable, however. I could probably run 10-15%
ethanol, maybe a bit more. So it would be a long capital/effort recovery.

Cheers,
Alan

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-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

RW+/- wrote:

On 6 May 2006 17:17:49 -0700, RichA wrote:


That's good. You can set-aside some money to cover the engine repairs
you'll need
when the wear caused by the "scouring action" of ethanol fuel takes its
toll.


Actually the cars get too drunk and crash before wear n tare sets in, it is
just being covered up by the gov't as evidenced by the Kennedy crash this
week.

Shh. It's a secret.