I want to make my own ethanol for making Bio, is there any certain mash I should use? I'm assuming ethanol would be the same as moonshine or am I wrong? I want to see how long I can make it without having to go to the MAN.

Yes its the same as moonshine but the best you can probably do is 180-190 proof moonshine..not quite good enough. You'll need to use some 3A molecular seive or some chemical means of getting most of that last 4.4% of water that makes an azeotrope bond with the ethanol out. I'd say if you can get to 198 or 199 proof and keep it that dry you'll make as good of biodiesel as you can with ethanol. 200 proof would be best. I've thought of setting up a still without going to the ATF but they'll assume its for drinking and possible distribution if they catch you, and unfortunately sometimes the penalty is prison or a fine in the thousands of dollars. It sounds like they pretty much give away the permits if you can make a secure still away from the house and don't brew more than 10,000 gallons a year. I have no experience here though. I have made ethanol based biodiesel, and its tough to get a good conversion, its unlikely to pass ASTM muster, but for your application it may not be necessary to make high conversion fuel. What are you driving?

I recommend working "backwards" for your project -- first buy a gallon of pure anhydrous ethanol from a chemical company (Pharmco/Aaper would be good), bite the bullet on price (you'll have to pay the beverage tax), and get comfortable making ethyl esters on a micro scale. Be sure to measure your yield, cuz it's usually not good.

Then try to make your own anhydrous ethanol -- as IHdiesel says, you'll need a fancy still and some zeolite (and a way to regenerate the zeolite).

Then, if you haven't gotten discouraged at that point, think about putting the whole process together...

So My best bet would be to make a fractioning Columb still. I have read that kind of still keeps recoving until its 100%. ( my spelling sucks!) I just run the bio in 91 N/A Jetta, I would run it on urine if I could. And My powerstroke runs wvo. The still I just made woks good for methanol recovery. Whats zeolite?, can I make it?, do I need it? I'm just tring to find a cheaper way to make bio. Thanks for the help.

No, your best bet is to buy some ethanol and make several small batches of ethyl esters first.

Don't worry about stills or zeolite until you can make the reaction work dependably at high yield.

I make bio out of methanol all the time making it with ethanol can't be much different

quote:

making it with ethanol can't be much different

Famous last words...

Just give it try, and let us know your oil specs, recipe, and results regarding 3/27 and yield.

Yeah they could be my famous last words....
But I ain't skered. I need to make some ethanol 1st.

You can make biodiesel that is good enough to run in that Jetta with ethanol. However these guys are right the yields are going to be lower than with methanol in terms of conversion to esters and in terms of absolute yield of useable stuff. You'll probably have to use some water or glycerine to force the biodiesel layer to separate from the glycerine. If you want to brew your own ethanol, you need a really good still, I don't know enough to know if the methanol still works or not...I don't see why not...but you're going to have to use the zeolite 3A to dry your ethanol. I'll call BS on any still that says it can get 200 proof ethanol, it ain;t happening with out chemical treatment of some kind, either using benzene or hexane to scarf up the water or the 3A zeolite. I like the idea of using the molecular seive, since I don't want Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. If you want to try this a little cheaper you could buy some E85 and simply adjust for the volume of gas in there. Its the same as with methanol except its much harder to get the catalyst to dissolve, you have to force separation and usually you can't get 3/27 pass of the resultant esters.

More practical would be to buy another old gas engined VW and burn the ethanol directly in it, spark engines run fine on alcohol with even up to 10% water. Do a web search for "alcohol as fuel" or similar versions, lots of info on this.

I am running my old 1974 dodge V8 van just fine on a 50/50 blend of regular gasoline and E85 methanol with absolutely no changes done to the carborator.

So whats the zeolite? Can I make it or where do I buy it. I bet a 16v with a 8v head would scream on ethanol. It would probally have a little blue flame coming out of the tail pipe! So If I ran ethanol in my 73 mach 1 what do I do up the jets and retard the timing?

Zeolite - I have never used it myself but from what I have read on other discussions Zeolite is a brand name for a granular processed material that will absorbe water but not alcohol, it can be heated to drive off the water for re-use, there are several "grades" of this stuff sold under several brand nemes. A general web search for Zeolite will find you more info.

Spark engine on ethanol -- No flame, just power. Increase the jetting by 30-50% and screw the idle air bleeds IN until it idles normal, only need a bit more than half the amount of air for alcohol. Timing will likely be fine as-is, or probably could even run more advance than normal as E85 is usually listed as being 105 octane, higher amount of alcohol will likely be over 110 octane. This links to a discussion about running my lawn tractor on 100% E85, it likes it A LOT.