Alcohol as a gas

The radio last night had a guy on there talking about how we farmers could build an alcohol still and produce our own alcohol in the 185+ proof range and modify our vehicles a bit run pure alcohol in the engines.

Fellow said that the whole point of prohibition was essentially to eliminate alcohol production and thereby get us stuck on oil, and further Ford's Model A was an alcohol-burning vehicle.

He mentioned that there are permits to be had, but that if you keep careful records of your stuff there's also an IRS rebate to be had for producing alcohol and using it for off-road purposes.

Anybody heard anything about this? A quick search wih Google found me plans from Mother Earth News on how to do it to a pickup with a carburetor.

All I know is that home made corn alcohol is worth $10 a quart,,,,, or so I have herd. Thats more than gas cost.

Dave

my late great grandfather was using "gasohol" before anyone even thought of it. back then it was called moonshine. run it in the truck or on the truck. "mighty mighty pleaesin, pappys corn squeezings.

Prohibition had nothing to do with alcohol as a fuel. I seriously doubt that Carrie Nation even considered the possibility of fuel alcohol as she rampaged through the bars of the midwest, breaking them up with her legendary hatchet.

Sure, the early cars could run on just about anything. Decent gasoline didn't come about until the '30s.

They were using alcohol to run the first cars only because the availablility of good refined gas was not available yet. Alchohol does not produce the horse power of gas and is even more volatile then gas, so way more dangerous to use. They use it in dragsters but they supercharge it with air to get that massive horse power out of it. Not sure how it all works but one of my mechanic buddies explained it to me and why it works that way but not too efficient compared to gas for passenger vehicles.

There were some farmers doing that back in the 70's. I remember the articles on it. Problem I see is can you do it efficiently enough?
To make your own fuel alky from corn you need two enzymes to convert the starch to sugar. I don't know were to get them now days. Was a few places that sold to the public back then.

Dollars ahead, less government poking their unwanted noses in your life and easier to make bio-diesel.
Grow beans, canola or sunflowers. Squeeze the oil out and feed the left overs to livestock.

I spent a lot of time researching that in the 70s. Very easy to make 80 proof "drinking stuff". very hard and very dangerous to make 180 proof (100 percent)with out the water. Regulations were not that bad.

It takes about 5% gasoline to denature ethanol, eg. to make it undrinkable. E-85 has 15% gasoline to make it start better in cold weather. 185 proof has some water that doesn't mix well with gasoline.

The newest ethanol plants use molecular sieves to remove the last bits of water at lower energy cost than distillation.

Ford's models T and A had dash board knobs on the carburetor main jet so they could use all kinds of fuel including ethanol and methanol. No computer to do it automatically, but a low enough compression ratio that a bit of pinging didn't do damage either when run too lean.

I wasn't around for prohibition so I don't know if it was to prevent alcohol being used as motor fuel. I don't recall any history of any significant amount being used as motor fuel, e.g. where were the big ethanol plants, all went for drinking with flavoring and aging?

Yes it is possible to brew and distill ethanol on a small scale, but its hard to be as economical as the large plant because the small plant has difficulty making eeconomical use of the side products, like the distillers grains (good cattle and hog feed) and the waste heat (good for growing hothouse vegetables). So its hard to compete.

Gerald J.

Seems like my last few posts have been negative, and for that I apologize. But, here's food for thought.

The July issue of the trade magazine, "Auto Body Repair News" had an absorbing, well researched article on E-85 as an automotive fuel. The prime issue is that, in contrast to gasoline, alcohol combines with water. So what happens when you try to put out a fire?

If you have a fire invloving a gallon of gasoline, and spray it with five gallons of water or foam, you've smothered the fire. If you have a fire involving a gallon of E-85 and spray it with five gallons of water, you have created six gallons of flammable liquid. Tests have shown that E-85 mixed with water 5 to 1 is still flammable. Also, ethanol attacks the bubbles in the foam used prevalently by current fire departments.

So, when there's a vehicle fire, how does the fire department put it out? How do they know how to put it out? How do they know what fuel a car has in it? Does an E-85 capable vehicle have E-85, or E-10 or regular 87 octane? Does a non-E-85 vehicle contain E-85 that some dork has put in anyway? Sometimes the only way to know is to ask the last person to fuel the vehicle, and he/she might be engulfed in a fire in the vehicle. There is a foam that will douse an E-85 fire, but it's expensive and in short supply.

This is just a short synopsis. The article did pose some interesting and disturbing questions.

Whoever wrote the article was clueless.

It's very rare to use traditional Class B (flammable liquid) foams on automotive fires. <-- note period.

The amount of water carried and the rate it can be applied will remove the heat and extinguish the fire. So you have a 30 gallon tank of E85. An engine showing up with 500 to 1000 gallons of water and applying it at 150 gallons per minute or better will put out the fire and dilute the E85 quite nicely.

I'm fairly confident most municipal departments, if they do buy Class B foam with it with the initials "ATC" or "AR" tacked on -- Alcohol Type Concentrate or Alcohol Resistant. Connecticut's 7 foam trailers carry 600 gallons of AFFF-AR that can be applied at 1% for petroleum only products, or 3% for polar solvents like alcohol.

AFFF stands for Aqueos Film Forming Foam. You will rarely see the right situation to take advantage of the Film Forming properties in a municipal fire service. On large, flat area like an airport tarmac or the top of a bulk storage tank it's the cat's meow.

In municipal situations normally too many things stick up and penetrate the fuel, and the topography of ditches and banks and all, interfere significantly with the ability to use the film to your advantage. So you need to fall back to making a mechanical foam blanket to cut off the oxygen from the fuel if you're gonna use foam. And for the amount of fuel in a passenger car or even the saddle tanks of tractor trailer unit...it just doesn't matter what the foam is. Class B, Class B alcohol resitant, or simply Class A (wood) foam will make that blanket.

Frankly, Class A is cheaper and more municipal departments can use it today, and works well to speed up the knock down on small Class B fires like from an automobile.

If you have a 9,000 gallon tanker of E85 or Gasoline roll over...you won't have municipal resources to do anything but watch it burn for a while. It would take hundreds of gallons of Class B foam concentrate to effect the extinguishment, and very few municipalities make that kind of investment in either foam or the equipment to apply it at a sufficient rate.

There are a number of Fire Department concerns with modern cars that didn't exist or where uncommon 20 years ago -- air bag locations, air bag inflators (can't just cut the columns anymore -- have to make sure there's no side impact curtain inflators there first, for instance). Electrics and hybrids with high voltage cables to be concerned about. CNG powered vehicles.

E85 is NOT a concern.