Fruit for fuel?

[BioHazard]

I was watching that "moonshiners" show on the discovery channel and it seems alarmingly simple for a country boy to make some high proof ethanol from bad fruit. Got me thinking about a bit of a research project with ethanol production for fuel use.

What I've wanted to do for a long time is find a source of waste fruit to ferment for fuel, I think I may be able to talk a local orchard into giving me bad fruit in the summer. Using some numbers I found on this website: http://fueldistillation.com/ethanol-for-you.html

A 55 gallon drum of "mash" can produce about 8 gallons of ethanol and takes about 8 hours to distill.

Lets say you're run an engine 8 hours per day at 1 gallon of fuel per hour. The engine heat is used to distill another 55 gallon drum of mash and 8 gallons of fuel. Electricity is produced as a byproduct. Repeat as needed.

If ethanol is as good as some like to claim it is, this should work, shouldn't it? It would take 55 gallons of mash to fuel the generator for 8 hours. Seemingly, if someone had a good supply of sugar, you could run an engine indefinately with only fruit as fuel. Also, the fermentation of fruit would give a large supply of CO2 and compost material, and maybe some excess heat, great for running a greenhouse.

Some things I wonder:
How much electricity can you generate from a gallon of ethanol?
How many BTUs does it take to distill a gallon of ethanol?
Would the engine make enough heat?
How much fruit does it take to make a 55 gallon drum of mash?
Is it feasible to make 55 gallons/day?
Is someone from "big oil" going to put me on a a hit list?

Just thinking outloud here, after partaking in a bit of ethanol myself. Has anybody here ever tried producing their own ethanol fuel? I know we have some biodiesel growers....

[dieselgman]

I just know that the commercial corn ethanol plants around here have been going bust! Without the government subsidy they likely would have never gotten into production in the first place. It seems that the inputs exceed to outputs... sadly. I hope that a small 55 gallon plant has much better economics, but I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe moonshine waste fuel heat inputs and by-products would cover the costs!

dieselgman

[billswan]

Well I have a neighbor also a farmer that was going to do that back during the gas crises in the 1970's decade. When he applied to the ATF for a permit he claimed they drug him through a paper work nightmare and he also claimed he was sure his phone was bugged............. Guess he felt he was being treated like a moonshiner. He never did finish his still as gas prices dropped so did his interest in turning corn into ethanol.
But he was building on the scale of about 500 gallon mash tank.

I hope times are different now but my guess is if you get a legal permit some govment man will show up unexpected to check up on your adventure..........

Would love to hear more on the subject.

Billswan

[billswan]

I just know that the commercial corn ethanol plants around here have been going bust! Without the government subsidy they likely would have never gotten into production in the first place. It seems that the inputs exceed to outputs... sadly. I hope that a small 55 gallon plant has much better economics, but I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe moonshine waste fuel heat inputs and by-products would cover the costs!

dieselgman

Yes when the price of corn gets as high as it is now it is hard for an ethanol plant to make money. But if good weather and a normal crop yield was to come around and the price of corn would go to say the 3 dollars bracket then an ethanol plant becomes a printing press for money. Back when corn was consistently under 2 dollars that is exactly what most ethanol plants did print profuse profits. Unfortunately too many plants were built to fast and to many weather events have cut the worlds corn and other crop supplies short.

By the way the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) credit ended as of December 2011 and I have not seen any local plants announcing shutting down.

Billswan

[DanG]

They've also eliminated tariffs on imported ethanol - Example: the tariff on Brazilian ethanol WAS 54¢ per gallon. (The Brazillions are ecstatically happy!)

Expect a high mortality rate on Co-op plants that don't use by-products, waste or spoiled crop as their primary feedstock.

We had an urban ethanol plant here (stinkly for a couple of miles downwind) that used primarily bottled sugar drinks whose sell-by dates had lapsed. Even with a near free product and the revenue from container salvage recycling they could not keep it running - and that was set up in an old reopened padlocked distillery with very low capital costs.

[Ronmar]

It takes a LOT of energy input to distill.  IMO, it only makes sense when you have an overabundance of some type of energy like I believe argentina(or maybe brazil?) does.  Ton of hydro power, but not much oil, so they convert that hydroelectric power into motor fuel with corn and sugar fermentation as the transfer medium, at a not so great overall conversion efficiency.  IRT Moonshiners, remember all those propane tanks and the really large homemade burner:) Me thinks you will need a lot more energy input into that 55 gallon barrel of mash to distill it, than will be provided by the waste heat of runing the 8 gallons from the previous batch thru your generator...  Someone correct me, but isn't it overall only 25% efficient?  IE: it takes 3-4 times as much energy to process than you get back out of it...

I also think the subsidies(and the EPA ethanol additive reguirement) pushing all these ethanol plants into production and having cash to buy corn are one of the reasons the price of corn went up.  More demand, same supply = higher price...  It dosn't matter that the subsidies have gone away, now that the "additive" has been mandated, the actual cost will be passed along to the consumer.  Right after that announcement of the subsidies running out, gas here went up 5 cents/gal...

The more ethanol you add to gas, the less BTU the fuel contains per volume, so the less work it performs.  Less work per gallon requires more fuel to perform the same work.  I don't in any way see how burning more of anything is good for the environment...  This also dosn't take into account all that is being "burnt" to produce the ethanol. If Alcohol was the best fuel, we would already be driving on it, without the government telling us to.  Political fuel, not practical fuel...  

Sorry for the diversion from topic, but ethanol economics/politics just pisses me off.  Alcohol should be for drinking not driving:)  

[cognos]

If you have a free, high-sugar content feedstock, your economics are looking less prohibitive...

If you have a free heat source, your economics may actually start to work out...

If you have 30 (thats THIRTY, one started every day, so their output is staggered) of these 55 gallon fermenters (which actually have to be about 110 gallons in size to allow for headspace during fermentation, and a really well-designed distillation column, which will have to be very carefully designed and operated for any efficiency at all... ) in service at all times, since it can take about a month for the fermentation to complete, then you are on your way to making (maybe) 8 gallons of ethanol per day to fuel your operation.

So... if you have a free captive labour force (ie. YOU... ) with nothing better to do than make ethanol, yer on yer way.

Never mind permitting. And the OSHA requirements for the operation...

Operation and cleanup of a distillation column that would use 55 gallons of frothy, fibrous mash, that would produce a clean, dry motor-grade ethanol is gonna eat up all your available time. Never mind the daily cleanup and disposal of the waste.

Oh, and the commercial ethanol makers breed their own genetically-modified high-output yeast. The yeast lab is usually high-security, they spend a lot of money making the stuff and keeping the good strains going. Regular, consumer-grade  yeast can get your batch up to around 12-17% ethanol. These custom designed yeasts can get up to 30% ethanol out of the mash. That's the only way the commercial producers are economically viable.

For energy production, I can't see the point, really. Learn to make yourself some good homemade beer and sell share it to your friends. Use the money to buy diesel. Probably more cost-effective...

(My brother and I make 300 litre batches from water, barley, hops and yeast - no extracts or concentrates - in one afternoon. 14 days later, we carbonate and keg it (20 litre kegs). Per-batch costs about $60 for grains/hops, $20 for propane. Whole setup - home-built stainless kettles, stainless piping, couple of reclaimed food-grade pumps from a scrapper, a commercial plate filter, and 3 old beer fridges - about $400. The fact that he was a brewmaster at Labatts' for 13 years helps, too... )

[fuelfarmer]

Almost anything will work if you put enough money and time into it.And if you have a lot of time and skill the money problem can go away.I believe the near future of affordable energy will be small scale farm based production. I hope there will be better things like hydrogen, solar, or whale blubber in the future. I would love to have a bumper sticker that says my car runs on whale blubber, just to drive people crazy.

One of several problems with home brewed ethanol is getting it dry enough.

     

[cognos]

One of several problems with home brewed ethanol is getting it dry enough.

     

... and keeping it dry enough. In the trade, we store it under a nitrogen blanket. An open tank of ethanol has the ability to absorb enough water out of the air to overflow the tank!

I think the future of biodiesel from oilseed is far brighter than ethanol from any source.

[Ronmar]

I think the future of biodiesel from oilseed is far brighter than ethanol from any source.

Yep, extremely high yield for energy input, sun energy notwithstanding.  If they can get it worked out, oil from alge may be as good also...

[BioHazard]

Me thinks you will need a lot more energy input into that 55 gallon barrel of mash to distill it, than will be provided by the waste heat of runing the 8 gallons from the previous batch thru your generator...  Someone correct me, but isn't it overall only 25% efficient?  IE: it takes 3-4 times as much energy to process than you get back out of it...

That's more of a political question that I'd love to solve. It depends on who's facts you want to believe, whether ethanol production actually makes any energy or not. I'd love to find out if there is enough engine heat to distill it's own ethanol on a continuous basis. It is unfortunate the amount of mash input that would require...but I guess that depends a great deal on the alcohol content from the yeast as well.

I guess I should just make some whiskey.  It seems small stills can be purchased on the internet legally for not too much money....I wonder how hard the "fuel making" permit is to aquire. There must be a reason the moonshiners don't make "fuel" and then drink it.

[fuelfarmer]

Another issue with making fuel out of food is with a little more effort the "fuel " could be worth a lot more money. We press oil seeds and make fuel that is worth 3 or 4 dollars a gallon. That new oil, if food grade, is worth 35 to 60 dollars a gallon. My math skills are not to good, but say I could sell 5000 gal. of new oil for $35, that would be $175,000.  So I am taking that 5000 gal. of oil, adding 75 cents per gal. of chemicals, and making $15,000 dollars of fuel. Me thinks I am not to smart.

Same could be said for ethanol. If 95 proof moonshine is worth $50 to $100 per gallon, That would make your 200 proof $4 motor fuel worth $100 to $200 per gallon.

Making food grade oil is a lot less hassle than making food grade ethanol.     

[vdubnut62]

Well, here is your fuel permit.  Have at it.
Ron

[LowGear]

Don't forget that these commercial enterprises often have a very sizable management team to support not to forget a formidable plant and equipment expense/capitalization dollar challenge to overcome. 

I just bought a pint of food grade palm oil for $8 on eBay.  Curiosity.  Some of the numbers I just read reminded me of my experience with American Seed Company back in '53.  I was eight and the nearest neighbor was about 1/2 mile away but I was still busy figuring out how to invest my new found cash flow.  Did you know that there are people that give their neighbors and friends seed?  Communists!

About thirty years ago I went to a "Mother Earth News" alcohol fuel seminar.  It showed how the worlds energy problem could be solved with the Jerusalem artichoke and distilleries.  I got screwed out of $75.  I keep sliding back towards Solar and Conservation.

Casey

[mbryner]

Forget "Mother Earth News".   "Backwoods Home" is much better!