Ethnol 42 cents/gal.

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Fiorelli

Well-known member
Yes you heard me right eathnol for 42 cents per gallon.

Ok here is my thinking. The ethanol plants are getting just under 3 gal of eathnol per bushel of corn. This fall at harvest I'm betting my local elevator will be bidding $1.25/ bushel for my corn. Last year it was $1.45. I need to figure out how to produce ethanol from my corn. I could use the eathnol to power the irrigation well, the tractor, my pickup and even the grain truck to move the corn around. The by product of the eathnol I could sell for more than I can get for the corn so it may accually pay for me to make moonshine.
 
A small co-op of like minded neighbors would make for an economy of scale beneficial to all, not to mention the division of labor. (I've often considered making my own fuel, but could easily see myself spending all my time making fuel, instead of working and making money. :? )
 
Co-oP great idea.

But what are your state laws concerning road taxes on fuel. Probably the same if Joe Farmer or John Chevron produced the fuel. A producer is a producer and a tax source is a tax source. :evil:
 
If you could dye them different colors, like heating oil and diesel oil? Moonshine brown, motor fuel clear or the other way around. Or -- go to the courthouse and ask where you can pay the tax. Bet that will set them reveenooers back a notch.
 
I've done a bit of research on small-scale ethanol production.

Hate to burst your bubble, but $0.42 is way low. You won't hit 3 gallons for one thing. 2 1/2 is optimistic.

Then there's the operation cost.

You've got to build the setup for brewing. On a small scale, that's gonna cost at least as much as your feed stock for the first year.

Then you have to run the thing. All that stuff has to be heated to produce the mash, and then distill the alcohol from the brew. You might could use the sillage for some of that, and some of the produced alcohol for the rest.

That said, if you can produce it for under $1.50/gal, you're doing well.

If your fuel is over 190 proof, you have to denature it with 1 gallon of gasoline per 100 gallons so no one will drink it. I've read, though, that anything over 180 proof (perhaps as low as 160 proof) will run fine, which means less effort and no denaturing (which has its own performance problems).

Then, as someone above stated, you have to deal with the Feds and the state. I dunno much about the taxes on ethanol fuels.
 
One more thing. Because ethanol has less energy content than gasoline it also burns at A/F ratios about twice that of petrol. You'll burn twice as much, getting half the mpg of gasoline, even if you bump the compression up to take full advantage of it.
 
During the last energy crunch (not this one) several ethanol plants werer build Some around New Iberia, La sugar cane country. Some in E. Colorado / W.Kansas sugar beet country. Price of oil had made it a viable proposition. So just as they are about to come on line the Saudis dropped the price of oil.

To day that may not be a problem, next year China will be the #1 importer of oil, in 2007 India will be #2. So it is now a matter of who pulls their thumb out and start really seriously developing alternate energy.
 
Fiorelli, you are charged with chargeing your car with alchohol, and not letting uncle sam share in the spoils.

Bad boy!

Potatoes, that's the answer. Vodka-Hol.

Make Mine a Murphy!
 
All

If you do a google search on "make your e85" you will tap into a wealth of info on alcohol fuel. If you have a farm do you have room to try setting up solar heating for the heating needed to convert corn to a fermentable product and to suplament your distilling process.

69.5mav
 
Look up some old Mother Earth News magazines from the late 1970's. They had designed a small alcohol still and offered plans for it. A group of us that worked together at that time started on one but never completed it. It really wasn't all that difficult to construct. Yes, more fuel is required, jet size was speculated at three times the size as for gas if I am remebering it correctly, it has been rather a long time.

However, them old hippies at Mother Earth indeed got it to work, Broin Enterprises here in the midwest built their first plant about 20 miles from where I live and it used the same design. They are one of the larger ethanol producers in the midwest today.

The Mother Earth prople even had a "wood powered" Chevy pickup they drove to Washington . I don't know if it was steam or something else. Wood gasification? Dunno. I'll try to find the article if I can, the pickup was a green stepside from the late 60s or early 70s and was on the front cover.

No, I'm not making this stuff up.
 
I too remember the wood-powered pickup on the cover of Mother Earth News. My Dad told about seeing similar wood-gasification powered vehicles in Germany during the days immediately after the war (he walked across France and half of Germany). The crude gases are very dirty and engine life is extremely short.
Joe
 
I have somewhere in a pile of old magazines gave to us by a neighbor the article from Mother Earth, on thet wood gasifacation chey pickup. It includes an article on how to build or convert a 4v carb to handle both gasoline which it needs to start on and wood gas (smoke) to run on when warmed up.

Later: I didn't find the article on the pickup, but did find one on a woodgas operated inline (looks like a chevy) six cyl motor thet powers thier sawmill. In issue 78 on page 158. (dtd November/December 1982) They refernce the pickup article as being in issue 69 page 126, and a woodgas generator in issue 70 page 182.
 
Thanks 3penny I've not had time to rummage through the archieves myself. I had forgotten about the sawmill motor. I think the article said it was a tired Chevy 250 inline wasn't it?

Hey, be the first on your block to have a wood powered 300 inline hot rod. Gives new meaning to the phrase SMOKY burnout.
 
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