New sub-prime crisis on its way

[Brian Ellis]

High interest rate loans offered to fill your gas tank

[The PIT]

With a free gas tanker thrown in. APR 18.5% Only for one month.

[Dr Mordrid]

If you have a flex fuel vehicle you get a free residential ethanol production license from the Feds (ATF Fuel Distiller's Permit form 5110.74), use industrial sugar/corn syrup and/or waste sugar water from a pop bottling plant (they'll sell it very cheap vs the disposal fees) to make your own. Sugar + enzymes + water + yeast, distill and filter through Zeolite (3 angstrom (pea sized) - cheap).

<$2 a gallon if you source your sugars right, and you get to apply for the Alcohol Fuel Tax Credit on your tax return (form 6478).

Only real limits on the part of the Feds are that you don't place the device in your house, make <10,000 gallons/year and that you denature it (2-5% gasoline).



Starting to happen around here. Of course there are folks down south who have been making their own ethanol for hundreds of years, and from what I hear it works quite well when mixed with a bit of unleaded.

[Technoid]

"No sir, ahm not moonshining, ahw got myself a 'Flexfuel' vehicle!"

[Brian Ellis]

And the daft thing is that the gas bottle contains more energy than the alcohol you get out of the system! Put the gas bottle in your car and you will go 15-20% farther (suitably modified engine) than you would with your alcohol generated from the same amount of LPG, and with less overall CO2 emitted -- and that's not counting the heat losses from such a burner under the still, without a proper and adequate heat exchanger. If you count that, it's more likely to be 25-35% farther!

Not to mention the fire risk of a hundred litres of EtOH denatured with motor fuel next to an open flame.

Mind you, I could use that kit here just now. Too late for the apricots, but I could use it to make Pfirsichwasser right now with a bumper crop, more than we and all our neighbours can eat. The same next month with a bumper crop of grapes to make zivania and figs for Feigewasser. Plenty of compost for next year, though!!!! The trouble with these summer fruits is that you have 2-3 weeks to consume the whole crop. I estimate we got ~150 kg of apricots from a single tree and about the same with the peaches. Neither of them are much good for freezing and if we consume 2 jars of jam in a year, that is all.

[Dr Mordrid]

That quoted $2/gallon of ethanol includes the cost of the propane to distill it, so it's still more economical than gasoline at $4+ per gallon. Since alcohol evaporates at a relatively low temperature (173.12 °f/78.4 °c) not much propane is actually needed per batch with a good kit.

Also: the boiler is typically far from the distilled fuel tank, and some people even use electric heaters, so no open flame.

As for running a car on propane: that's only possible if you pay $2k for a dual-fuel propane kit, which by the way there are very few of for port injected vehicles like the 3.3 liter+ Chrysler V6's. They're mainly made for throttle body injection or carburettors.

That said there are several gas stations here abouts that dispense propane for vehicles, including several of the huge Meijer department stores that are giving WalMart fits in the midwest. Many of them carry E85 too.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm not talking about cost, I'm talking about energetic efficiency. The laws of thermodynamics make it quite clear that burning LPG directly in an engine will give you a higher efficiency than using it (or electricity) to distill a fermented water mixture and burning the resultant alcohol in the same engine. If you get, say, 250 km out of the alcohol you distil from one gas cylinder, you may easily get 300 km or more burning the same cylinder's worth in your engine.

Then, don't forget you are not distilling pure alcohol but an azeotropic mixture of 4% water and 96% EtOH, which has a boiling point lower than that of EtOH (78.17°C instead of 78.32°C). This is absolutely inevitable and the energy needed to vapourise that 4% of H2O is much higher than that of an equivalent mass of EtOH, increasing the losses. If mixed with petrol/gas, under some circumstances, the water can separate out in the bottom of the tank, which does not improve the performance of your engine if sucked therein (not to mention rusting of your tank)! To rectify the alcohol to eliminate the water is also lossy and complex. This kind of game is playing the sorcerer's apprentice and could cost a lot more than $2/gallon in the long run.

Another point that should be considered. Fermentation stops at ~14% EtOH. For every litre of alcohol, you have about 7 l of still bottoms containg water, sugar, yeasts and residual alcohol plus a few other fermentation by-products, such as aldehydes. The EPA will not like you to send large quantities of this into a sewer and your POTP would raise merry hell to receive it, so how are you going to dispose of it?

[Dr Mordrid]

Screw the micro levels of efficiency, people right now are more concerned with $/mile.

Also: a few percent water in the fuel mix can actually be beneficial. One form is water injection and it has been used for ages up until the advent of intercoolers, but it is still in use both in cars and aircraft. In alcohol it's almost inevitable, which is why FFV's use anti-corrosion fuel systems.

[Marshmallowman]

Use a solar water heating for the distillation

I would also think the ambient temperature and a lot of other small details will effect the amount of heating (via lpg) that is required, to the point your argument about using the lpg as a fuel is a bit facecious.

But I have to say using sugar to make biofuel ethanol is vary wastefull, other organic waste I could understand. But using a cheap food product is a bad idea for a lot of reasons.
It might be cheap fuel for you , but it would have been economical food for some one else.

I think there are quite a few crops that be grown in mariginal areas not suitable for normal food production that could be used for biodiesel (eg hemp seeds in semi desert not, palm oil in tropical jungles)

[Dr Mordrid]

A lot of waste sugar water from bottling plants etc. just goes down the drain otherwise, so what's wrong with scamming some for a real use? Also understand that we're not talking food sugar but the far cheaper grades used in industry.

[DukeP]

Water injection is/was solely used for cooling - injection water into a modern wellcooled car does in no way improve your efficency. It might reduce knocking tho. But knocking should not be a problem with a modern car either.

There is a way to make ethanol efficient, but it requires a desert, lots of space and some patience.

Passive evaporation controlled heating and fermentation, with low heat distilliation can actually be rigged to be near automated (well, I guess unmanaged is a better word).

Its still a toss wheter the growing and havesting and delivery of the carbohydrates used (be that corn, wheat or potatoes) can be done for less energy, than what even this type of still produces.

But: In a world where taxes arent adjusted properly, market economics goes out the window. Dr. Mordrids simple high energy requiring still might make economical sense for the end uses, if less sense for the nation/enviroment.

Lorry drivers and fishermen strike, all over the EU. Prices for diesel have reached 2$ a liter.

Instead of searching for other ways to deliver energy to their vehicles, they demand that "something is done" about the high prices.

Everyone knows, that lovering prices will only hinder development of alternative ways of producing/delivering energy to the transport sector.

I guess people forgot to think about the "fallout", the casulties of this war of enviroment and economics.

~~DukeP~~