Fuel Alternatives

Download Movies Players Here.

Les has lived on the same piece of land in the heart of apple country his entire life, and so has his father before him. He took one of my earliest classes several years ago, and built a still which he's been refining ever since. Nothing stops Les Shook, he has more energy at the age most men retire than many of my contemporaries, and he's not afraid to try most anything. I know few other men who would even try to build a farm tractor from scratch, let alone succeed. And he's designed an extremely efficient wood boiler for heating his house, but still maintains solar panels, on principle. Les was one of the first farmers to grow Jerusalem artichokes in California, and a pioneer in experimenting with the fermentation of Jerusalem artichoke stalks.
There was so little information on that feedstock back then, that no one knew how to modify a potato planter for tubers. Having no seed cutter or planter, Les bought a ton of tubers and spent a few nights with his wife cutting them up by hand. He hired a couple of farm workers to plant the pieces in furrows he dug with his tractor. It took a day or so to plant two acres. Calculating his costs for the entire planting it came to far less than renting a potato planter and seed cutter would have. I really appreciate people like Les who remember that technology only helps make things a little easier, not necessarily cheaper. Les cut his stalks down as what literature he could find instructed and discovered that the stalks don't fill back in as thick as was claimed. The next winter (1981-82) was a devastating one for chokes. An incredible amount of rain deluged California, and the muddy conditions didn't allow him to harvest his tubers. The following spring the chokes came up sporadically, and in a losing battle with grass. "It was certain that cutting the stalks weakens the tubers a great deal, and they aren't able to survive heavy rains and muddy soil." He had held some tubers aside from his main field and planted them for a food crop for his wife and himself. That crop was so prolific he was able to save them for seed for a second try this year. Les was disappointed in his experiments with stalk fermentation--he was able to produce just barely enough alcohol to run his still before going to low wines. His yields indicate he was getting over 90% efficiency fermenting the 4% or so sugar in the stalks. He learned the importance of having access to be able to clean his packing, and baffling the entrance to the column when he distills his mash. "At first the alcohol came out nice and clear, and suddenly the pressure started rising in the still and all kinds of brown color and actual stalk mash was coming out of the condenser. I guess I had what you'd call a severe foaming problem."
LES SHOOK'S PERSONAL STILL: Wood-fired, pump-agitated, 6” column distillery with a smallish 200 gallon tank. The brick firebox is very energy efficient.
Les has salvaged three large tanks and uses a brake cooling water tank from a logging truck as his still tank. The quality of Les's workmanship has been well tested: once when he forgot to open the valve to his fermentation lock and the carbon dioxide couldn't escape, his homemade hatch (see photo) withstood 15 psi, without any leaks. His crop has shown no noticeable insect damage. When I asked if he had any trouble with rodents (gophers, etc.) eating his Jerusalem artichokes, he answered affirmatively with a straight face. "They must have gotten at least a couple of dozen plants." His field supports perhaps 25,000 plants. Les values his stalks as an excellent source for compost. He uses little or no chemical fertilizer on his farm, and certainly none in his incredible garden. He credits the vigor of his 15' tall Jerusalem artichokes to his organic soil. "Usually chokes don't have fertile seeds. Mine did. Two of my downwind neighbors had them sprout up in their yard. Luckily they were tickled, and are encouraging them to grow." Les has found several great feedstock resources in his area. Several apple cider and vinegar production facilities a few minutes from his site have offered to provide sweet lees and vinegar lees, both of which contain sugar--the vinegar lees also have alcohol in them. Because Les is a great scrounger, self-sufficient, and a talented craftsman (he built a fine wood shed around his distillery from scratch, cutting the lumber in his mill from local trees), he's only invested a few thousand dollars in his plant.
Making Glycerin Soap from Bio diesel By-Products by Terry McGleish Click here to purchase Alcohol Encyclopedia.
A byproduct from making bio-diesel is glycerin. In a process called transesterification, waste vegetable oil (WVO) is broken down into esters (bio-diesel) and glycerin. This glycerin can be filtered to remove any food particles or impurities, and used as an industrial degreaser in its raw form, composted and used as a fertilizer, or made into bar soap. Bar soap made from your glycerin byproduct is excellent for use in the shop because of its degreasing abilities, but can also be used as a household soap for everyday use. Adding fragrances and dyes will make household use more appealing to other members of the household. The soap lathers well and cuts grease and dirt easily. Ingredients used in making bar soap from glycerin are, glycerin, water and lye. The amounts of water and lye used will effect the lathering abilities of the soap.
I have found that the more water used, the more lather the soap will produce. And using more lye will produce a soap which is very strong and cuts grease well, but also dries out the skin. To begin, filter the glycerin to remove any unwanted impurities, you may have to heat the glycerin back to a liquid state in order to strain it. A good strainer is a restaurant type strainer used for vegetable oil or an old pair of panty hose works well. The amount of lye and water used will depend on the amount of glycerin you are processing. I have found that one quart of water per gallon of glycerin (or 25%) works well, producing a soap with good lathering and cleansing abilities. On the lye, I use 38.5 grams per liter or 5.5 oz. per gallon of glycerin. I have used these quantities on several batches of glycerin, even when the glycerin is from WVO from different sources.
Heat the glycerin in a stainless steel or aluminum pot (or your bio processor) to 150 degrees F. to remove any excess methanol (if you used ethanol, heat to 175 F.). Measure the proper amounts of water and lye to be used, heat the water to 100 degrees F., add the lye and mix until all the lye is dissolved. Be sure not to breathe the fumes. Pour the water/lye mixture into the glycerin. Continue to heat the glycerin for another ten minutes while mixing. Allow to mix for an additional ten minutes (20 min's. total) at slow speed. The mixture may foam up slightly and form soap bubbles. After mixing is complete, the soap can be poured into a container and allowed to cool. A good container to use is a Tupperware type container available at any Wal-mart for a couple dollars. You do not need to add any type of release agent using these type of containers, and removal is simple. You will need two 28 qt. containers for 3 gallons of soap at 1 1/2" thick. Pour the soap into the containers at the desired thickness and cover with a piece of cardboard or plywood to help hold the heat in, and let set for 24 hrs. As the soap cools, it will start to solidify. After the 24 hr cooling period, the soap should be ready to be removed and cut into bars. Using a butter knife or putty knife, slice around the inside edge of the container to release the soap from the sides. Quickly turn the container upside down over a piece of newspaper or cardboard. You may have to tap lightly on the bottom of the container to help it release and drop out. You now have a nice evenly shaped "slab" of soap which can be cut into individual bars. Each slap will produce about 45 bars of soap measuring 2" X 3" each. Allow soap to set in a cool area for approximately 4 - 7 days before using. When first cut the soap will appear dark in color, but will lighten to a tan color as drying progresses. The resulting soap is a long lasting bar with good cleansing abilities leaving no greasy residues. Soap can be stored in plastic zip lock bags or placed in plastic tubs in layers with waxed paper in between each layer and kept in a cool place.	Plastic "Tupperware" sweater box used to hold soap while cooling. The hardened soap easily is removed from the container and is ready to be cut into individual bars. Lay the bars of soap on a piece of waxed paper or newspaper to allow for further drying.
Fermentation Click here to purchase Alcohol Encyclopedia.
This chapter on the Fermentation of your Feedstock in Preparation for distillation is from the 1983 book, but little has changed since then! FERMENTATION The key players in the process of fermentation--changing sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide--are yeast. Yeast is sort of plant and sort of animal, and in the capacity of fuel-maker, loyal and hardworking. While you may feel justifiably proud of having mastered two enzyme steps in converting starch to sugar, yeast is going to sail through eleven enzyme and co-enzyme steps in converting sugar to alcohol, without even giving it a thought. And the little creatures are going to love every minute of it. From the moment we introduce them to our wort until a moment two or three days later when they die, drunk and exhausted, all they do is eat, drink and reproduce. During their short life yeast go through two distinct phases. The first is called the aerobic phase: the yeast breath in oxygen, eat sugar, reproduce like crazy, breath out carbon dioxide--and don't really produce any alcohol to speak of. Once they've used up all their oxygen though, they shift to the anaerobic phase in which they breath in carbon dioxide, eat sugar, excrete alcohol and breath out carbon dioxide--without reproducing. You might say we run our cars on yeast manure. Different strains of yeast will tolerate different strengths of alcohol before they die. Baker's or Brewer's yeast for instance, can stand a mash of only about 8% alcohol before they fall over dead drunk. Distillers yeast holds its liquor better, tolerating up to 12% alcohol; and some special breeds can handle up to 14%. The top of the line, as you might expect, are the champagne yeasts, tolerating (under perfect conditions) 17% alcohol. As a practical rule you can expect most good distillers' yeast to handle about 10% alcohol. (It's important to know just how much alcohol your yeast can stand, in order to figure out how much of a sugar concentrate to feed them--yeast will use a little over half the sugar to produce alcohol, and half to produce CO2.) To keep your yeast happy and end up with a 10%-12% alcohol product, temperature, pH, nutrition, contamination, agitation and initial yeast dosages are all critical factors Temperature: Yeast prefers to work in balmy conditions. Optimum operating temperature is 80-90 degrees F. Below 75 degrees, yeast acts so slowly it seems nothing's happening at all. Bringing the temperature back up often revives yeast activity. Temperatures above 90-95 degrees for a long period of time will kill yeast. Clearly, some method of temperature control is in order. The problem of keeping yeast warm is not nearly as critical as keeping it cool since its frantic orgy of activity generates quite a bit of heat all its own. In fact it's common for vigorously fermenting batches to get so hot that the yeast dies halfway through the process. Cooling the mixture is accomplished with cooling coils or by spraying the outside of the tank so that evaporating water cools it. If you're going to try external spraying, it's a good idea to wrap the tank with burlap first to enhance the evaporative effect. Temperature changes due to fermentation are generally quite slow and really only need to be checked once or twice a day. If you want to make cooling or heating automatic it's easy to use a temperature controlled twin inlet solenoid valve to control tank temperature. Plumb hot and cold water to each of the solenoid valve's supply inlets, and set the upper limit of your thermostat for 91 degrees and the lower end for 84 degrees. The hot or cold water admitted to the cooling coils control the temperature nicely. PH Level: To operate at top capacity yeast prefers a pH level of 4.0-4.5. This low a pH inhibits the growth of most butyric and lactic acid bacteria. But too low a pH will inhibit yeast and reduce your yield. Yeast can tolerate low pH for a short time, but not when the alcohol level in the batch begins to rise. PH levels above 4.5 will cause your yeast to make acid out of some of your sugar, rather than alcohol. PH should always be the last thing you check before you add yeast. Nutrition: Yeast also needs a balanced diet of proteins and minerals. Grain mashes almost always are balanced enough. Fruit mashes sometimes need a little malt or ammonium phosphate (common chemical fertilizer) to provide the basic nitrogen which makes protein for yeast's life process to continue. Other common sources for nitrogen are urea and commercial "Yeast Food." I don't recommend adding nitrates, but phosphorus and potassium are okay from chemical fertilizer sources. Perhaps the best yeast nutrient source is "backslop." Backslop is what you've got left after distillation: spent mash full of cooked dead yeast which can provide exactly the nutrients that the new living yeast need. Using backslop instead of water for about 1/3-1/2 of your liquid when preparing your wort takes care of all yeast's nutritional requirements. The type of water you use in fermentation can sometimes affect the mash. Water containing selenium, cobalt or lots of chlorine, kills yeast. (Plutonium, Strontium 90, Cesium 137, and Cadmium are also toxic to yeast. But if this is what's contaminating your fermentation water you have bigger problems than getting your yeast to reproduce.) If you use malt instead of backslop, l0-l5 pounds per 500 gallons of mash is plenty, or 5-8 pounds of ammonium phosphate per 500 gallons of mash. Agitation: Understandably, once yeast actually starts producing alcohol as a digestive by-product, it experiences some difficulty in recognizing its food source. Basically, the yeast is staggering around in a cloud of alcohol and can't make contact with its food. Agitation will help. And slowly circulating the mash speeds up the fermentation process since the yeast is constantly faced with fresh sugar to absorb. With some of the thicker mashes, agitation can cut fermentation time in half. Mashes of Jerusalem artichoke tuber pulp or sugar beet pulp require slow constant agitation for the additional problem of trapped carbon dioxide. CO2 gets trapped under a heavy cap of solids in thick mashes. Its release is explosive and there's the potential for plugging your fermentation lock. Another danger in thick mashes is stranding your yeast above the liquid by a high floating cap of solids, which would be fatal to the majority of the little critters Agitation during fermentation doesn't take a lot of energy, it can be effected with a low power gear reduced motor (6-20 rpm is fine). Your agitator paddles should rise up from above the cap and slap down to continually break up floating solids. For l000 gallon tanks and smaller, the periodic circulation of the mash by pump is adequate if you don't want to build an agitator right away. Beware of contamination if you use a pump, though. Lines and pump will have to be flushed often to avoid introducing lots of bacteria to the tank. As an extra added attraction, continuous agitating allows you to fill your tank just a little higher with mash. Usually you'd fill a tank to 80% capacity--precisely to allow for the cap and foaming. If your agitator works well it may be safe to fill the tank to 90% with many feedstocks. Dosage: Calculating how much sugar to feed your yeast depends primarily on how much alcohol it can tolerate. For instance, if you have a 10% alcohol-tolerant yeast feed it a 20% sugar solution (remember yeast only turns half your sugar into alcohol). So 20% sugar should yield l0% alcohol. Providing an overrich diet of sugar, say 24%, 10% alcohol-tolerant yeast would theoretically yield a 12% alcohol level which 10%-tolerant yeast would overdose on. And the extra 4% of your sugar concentrate would be wasted since the yeast would die when it had digested 20% of the sugar. High initial sugar concentrations inhibit alcohol production for another reason. Saccharomyces cerviseae (scientific name for yeast) are not osmophilic (can't regulate their internal osmotic pressure). A high concentration of sugar outside the yeast tries to force them to burst. Consequently, high sugar content gives an advantage to many self-regulating bacteria. Since bacteria multiply much faster than yeast does, even low levels of initial infection can greatly impair your alcohol yield. Wasting sugar is a high crime in my book. If your sugar level is lower than ideal, your yeast will actually survive fermentation, and you'll have to use a little bit more energy in the distillation step to extract alcohol from the weaker alcohol mixture in your batch. Too little sugar is better than too much.With sugar concentration at the optimal level for your particular yeast you're ready to inoculate your batch with the little fellows. For a 500-gallon batch, add two to five pounds of dry yeast. The thicker the mash, the closer to five pounds you should add. Five pounds is expensive but usually results in a drop in lag time to less than six hours before fermentation becomes visibly vigorous. This higher inoculation rate in thick batches is because the yeast requires extra time to reproduce and spread throughout a very thick batch. To add yeast directly to the wort, first dissolve it in a few gallons of 100-degree water with a few ounces of sugar or malt for about l5 minutes. This conditions the yeast, gives it some practice, and helps it spread throughout the wort in the initial stages. Once you've added yeast, the wort is referred to as mash. Another, preferred method of inoculating your batch is by the preparation of a pitching solution (see Pitching the Yeast, end of this chapter). Fermentation takes one to three days. You'll know the process is complete by sampling some filtered mash with a sacchrometer (see Checking for Sugar Content) and getting a reading of 0%-2% sugar. Dissolved solids and other substances in the mash give you the impression that there's still a small amount of unfermented sugar left--a refractometer gives you a much more accurate reading. Some mashes, which are relatively free of dissolved solids, will actually register below 0% when complete because alcohol has lowered the liquid's density. Your first clue that fermentation is over comes from your fermentation lock. A fermentation lock releases the yeast's exhaled carbon dioxide and prevents oxygen and bacteria from entering the tank. The lock also captures alcohol vapors. For this last reason, water in the lock should be added to the mash just before distilling, since that water will contain some alcohol. By the way, if your mash is somewhat odiferous (it's not usually), you may want to add an activated charcoal filter to your lock. Activity in the tank and lock goes through definite cycles. In the beginning, while yeast is still inhaling oxygen, there is very little CO2 bubbling around. It takes a few hours for some slow bubbling to evolve. But as fermentation continues, quite a large volume of gas is expelled from the lock. For every pound of ethanol produced, the yield is 0.957 pounds of carbon dioxide. At the peak of fermentation, a 500-1000 gallon tank can produce over two cubic feet of carbon dioxide per second. At the end of fermentation the bubbles will have slowed to a virtual stop. FIRST STAGES OF FERMENTATION: Added dry, yeast go right to the bottom of the tanks and sit for a few minutes eating sugar and beginning reproduction. Notice the trapped CO2 in the yeast mass and the miniature explosions of escaping carbon dioxide and yeast. Initially yeast may actually pull a little air in from the outside (as seen in the fermentation lock). A few more minutes and almost all the yeast will be floating on top of the mash and pushing out remaining air with their carbon dioxide exhalations. Contamination: Following fermentation, don't let your mash sit for more than a day at the most. In its finished form mash is an invitation to dangerous bacteria which can turn your alcohol and remaining proteins and sugars, if any, into lactic acid, butyric acid, or more commonly, acetic acid (vinegar). If you must store the mash for some reason, add sodium bisulphite, or an antibiotic like penicillin. This will save your mash, but will add to the cost of your alcohol production. During fermentation, yeast protects your mash naturally: its carbon dioxide exhalations are heavier than air, and the gas creates a thick CO2 blanket over the mash, effectively sealing the tank against lactic, butyric or acetic acid bacteria. Butyric acid bacteria (identified by long, ropey strands in the mash) love sugar but hate cleanliness--an ounce of prevention is the appropriate measure of defense. In the course of fermentation, if your mash's pH suddenly drops to 2.0, you'll know that lactic acid bacteria have somehow crashed yeast's party. If this happens in your next batch, use lactic acid instead of sulphuric acid to balance the pH. Acetic acid bacteria will turn your mash to vinegar. As of this writing, I don't know any way to make your car run on vinegar. The best way to avoid bacterial contamination is to keep all tanks and equipment bacteria free. This is an impossible task. The best you can hope for is to keep bacteria at a minimum. Clinical sterilization isn't necessary, but cleanliness is. After each run all solids should be washed from the fermentation tank, especially from any nooks and crannies, from the inside of the fermentation lock, and around temperature probes. If you've used cooling coils, they should be washed too. After every second or third run, wash your tank down with a disinfectant--a 1% chlorine solution is safe and effective. Remember to rinse well after disinfecting since chlorine is toxic to yeast as well as bacteria. If you use backslop instead of water in making your wort, use it immediately after distillation, when the mash is virtually sterile. Don't let backslop sit overnight to cool, because it will be seriously infested with bacteria by morning. There are certain thermophilic (high temperature-resistant) bacteria which can survive the distillation process, but unless they've got a big headstart, they'll be killed off by a healthy yeast inoculation. If all this seems like a lot of hassle, it really sounds worse than it is. The minor inconvenience of preventing bacterial infestation of your batch doesn't compare at all to how it feels to dispose of 500 gallons of smelly, soured mash. BACTERIA INFESTED MASH: The small dark specks are bacteria. Note the difference in size between the yeast and bacteria. Courtesy Red Star Yeast, Universal Foods Corp. YEAST REPRODUCTION: An almost complete budding of a yeast cell. Each yeast cell will reproduce itself each hour, until the oxygen in the mixture begins to be depleted. (Courtesy Red Star Yeast, Universal Foods Corp.)
Click here to purchase Alcohol Encyclopedia. PITCHING THE YEAST One way to make sure fermentation gets off to a running start is to make sure that your yeast are primed for the "party" that will ensue. If yeast is added to the mash tank without preparation there's often a lag of 6-l2 hours before the fermentation really gets going. During this period bacteria can do a great deal of damage. Begin by making a solution of mash and yeast a few hours before the mash is ready to start fermenting. This starter batch is called the pitching solution. For every 500 gallons of mash, start a solution of 5-l5 gallons of wort (with some additional malt added). This equals 1%-3% of the total wort. Pitch can be spent, sterilized mash left over from a previous batch and mixed half and half with water. Add enough molasses or sugar to bring the mixture up to 10%-15% sugar. If you don't have any left over mash, add 2-3 pounds of malt or molasses to water. Check the pH (4.0-4.5), and bring this solution up to l00 degrees. Add two pounds of yeast. Hold the temperature at 90 degrees over the next 3-6 hours while you prepare your batch for fermentation. During those hours yeast will multiply up to l0 times, providing you a highly concentrated active yeast culture. Supply your yeast with lots of oxygen to encourage reproduction instead of alcohol production. The best way to supply yeast with oxygen is to slowly bubble it in through a tube at the bottom of the tank. The smaller the bubbles, the better. Oxygen stimulates the yeast to reproduce rapidly and is available through welding supply houses (see yeast breeder illustration). I like to start my pitching solution before I even begin to make the mash. If you're using a portion of the previous batch as your starting solution this method is cheaper than adding lots of fresh yeast, which accomplishes the same thing. Starting with 2 pounds of yeast, pitching gives you the equivalent of 8-25 pounds of yeast added dry. A massive inoculation of yeast from the pitching solution reduces lag time to an hour or two, and cuts losses to bacteria considerably. More exotic yeasts have to be bred. For instance, Kluyveromyces yeast, used with Jerusalem artichokes or whey, is not commonly produced, dried, and packaged due to lack of demand. You'll have to breed these yeasts from a slide, to test tubes, to quart-sized flasks, and finally to your pitching solution. Your local agricultural university should be able to get you slide samples of unusual strains if you wish to experiment. You can make twice as much pitch as you need and store half of it for your next pitching solution. Simply refrigerate the excess yeast-rich pitch at close to 34 degrees between uses. Next time you need a starter batch, add an equal amount of mash to the pitch, and slowly bring the temperature up to l00-ll0 degrees. Within 2-5 hours you'll have a double new batch of yeast pitch. You can again store half of it for the next preparation. To avoid bacterial contamination though, you should make your pitch from scratch every fourth or fifth batch. Keeping several flasks of the original propagation from the slide in a refrigerator will keep your strain fairly pure. But even they should be rebred fresh once a month if you're using an unusual yeast. Standard yeasts should be pitched fresh each time from dry yeast. A microscope is useful to determine if your yeast starters are contaminated (see photo). If you want to save a contaminated yeast flask because of difficulty in replacing the strain, drop the pH to 2.0 for one to two hours, then bring the pH back up. This should kill almost all the bacteria and not weaken your yeast too much. The pH should never be lower than 2.0 for no more than two hours.


The Qualities of Alcohol Fuel Click here to purchase Alcohol Encyclopedia. Debunking the myths attached to alcohol as a fuel is a tough job for those of us promoting it. Some of the common myths are that alcohol burns much hotter than gasoline and will wreck a car's valves, etc; that it's more polluting than gas; that it gets half the mileage of gasoline; that alcohol is corrosive and promptly ruins most of the various metals in a car's fuel system and engine, not to mention gaskets, seals, rubber and plastics; that alcohol's exhaust's higher amount of water will rust out a car's exhaust system; that crankcase oil is severely compromised by alcohol contamination wrecking bearings, etc; and that alcohol washes oil from cylinder walls, causing rapid bore and ring wear. It's true that if you ran a gasoline engine on alcohol without first converting the engine, the air/fuel mixture would be extremely lean and the engine would run very hot, if it ran at all. The same thing would happen, even quicker, to a gasoline engine run severely lean. At its proper air/fuel mixture, alcohol exhaust temperature should be 300-500 degrees F. cooler than gasoline exhaust at its proper air fuel mixture. Each engine is a little different, but in general, alcohol's exhaust temperature is in the 1000 degrees range, while gasoline's is in the 1400 degrees range. Water temperature stays the same on an in-dash gauge, but the thermostatic valve that releases water to the radiator for cooling opens far less often in an alcohol run car than in one using gasoline. Alcohol's high latent heat of vaporization cools a car's cylinders upon its induction stroke, reducing the need for engine cooling. Gasoline requires a great deal of cooling since its average latent heat is very low and can effect very little heat absorption. In a properly converted engine, burning alcohol in the cylinder is much more complete than with gas. There's much less flaming and less partially burned mixture leaving the cylinder for the exhaust manifold. Oil temperature can be as much as 50+ degrees cooler as well. Since much less alcohol fuel is wasted as heat you can get away with a few tricks you might not want to try with gasoline. If your car's cooling system is the standard type, directly driven by fan belts, the cooling fan draws from 5-17-horsepower from your engine. Since alcohol burns so much cooler than gas, in some cases you don't even need a cooling fan; and in hotter climates a low power electric fan can be retrofitted to provide the minimal cooling necessary. Electric fans draw only 1/3-horsepower or less if they're thermostatically controlled, which means they only come on to cool when the water temperature gets too high. Removing your fan can save you between 5%-11% miles per gallon in most cars, and 10%-14% in older vehicles with large inefficient radiator fans. Even in most gasoline cars, the cooling fan isn't necessary once the vehicle is moving faster than 25 miles per hour. Engine coolant running through an "oversized" gasoline radiator is often enough to cool an engine run on alcohol even at idle. Long hard climbs with a load though, or coming off the freeway into bumper-to-bumper traffic does generally require extra cooling with an electric fan. I'm not recommending you remove your fan belts, which would deactivate the water pump and cut off water circulation through the block and radiator. If you want to experiment with the no-fan approach, exchange your water pump's pulley for a smaller one to double or triple the pump's rpms and increase the coolant circulation rate. The theory that alcohol burns dirty is pure nonsense. In fact, alcohol burns nearly as clean as the dry gaseous fuels, propane, and compressed natural gas. Cleanliness is important for three reasons. One, the environment doesn't need any more pollutants than it already has. Breathing clean air should be a priority when it comes to choosing a propulsion fuel. Second, a clean-burning fuel means less carbon residue to wear down cylinders and rings, contaminate oil and block exhaust mufflers in some vehicles. And third, the less unburned or partly burned fuel you leave behind, the more work you'll get out of your fuel and the less waste. Gasoline, a mixture of straightforward hydrogen/carbon compounds, has no oxygen in its chemical structure. Alcohol, on the other hand, is referred to as an oxygenated hydrocarbon. Alcohol's extra oxygen along with its longer burning time contribute to its clean burning. Despite the facts, emission study statistics of alcohol's exhaust vary widely. Research done independent of energy corporations, including some studies by the Department of Energy and Department of Transportation, show dramatic reductions of regulated pollutants, especially carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrous oxides. Several energy corporation studies indicate alcohol exhaust contains high levels of hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrous oxides (NOX), with reductions in carbon monoxide (CO). However, the validity of techniques several of these organizations used to measure HC and NOX are disputed in the scientific community. An independent study done by Mother Earth News in cooperation with the New York City Environmental Protection Agency shows results that are representative of many other independent tests. New York City pollution standards are considered the strictest in the nation. Their test vehicle was a 1978 Chevrolet Taxicab with full pollution control gear, tuned to factory specifications. The gasoline results were 1 1/2% CO and 200 ppm HC (much cleaner than the average American car). The researchers proceeded to remove all pollution control equipment from the cab, except for the PCV valve; drained the tank and filled it with alcohol, and found that there was an incredible reduction in emissions: CO dropped to .08% and HC to 25 ppm. That's 95% less CO and 87.5% less HC in alcohol exhaust than gasoline. In a low compression average conversion, NOX (the brown agent in photochemical smog) is generally 50%-85% less than gasoline's emissions from the same vehicle. It takes very high cylinder temperatures to form NOX--cooler burning alcohol doesn't deliver intense enough temperatures to form large amounts. Extremely lean burning mixtures and high compression conversions are the exceptions. In these cases the reduction of NOX may only be 20%-50% less than gasoline emissions. It's unfortunate that more NOX can't be eliminated because it's about eight times more toxic than either of the other two major pollutants. Alcohol does give off three times as much acealdehyde as gasoline--which sounds like a lot, but most of the acealdehyde content of exhaust is included in the reading for hydrocarbons. Acealdehyde's role in air pollution isn't certain. It's thought to be mildly toxic, slightly irritating to the eyes in larger dosages, but it's not considered a readily reactive component of photochemical smog. So it's not that bad--comparatively. Still, who wants to add any new pollutants to the air? As it happens, a modern 3-way catalytic converter is quite effective at stripping almost all acealdehyde from a properly tuned alcohol vehicle. Even extremely toxic formaldehyde and methylnitrite released by methanol fueled engines into the environment are considerably lessened after a spin through such a converter. In developing countries where catalytic converters are not used, the possibility of polluting the air with acealdehyde (more importantly, formaldehyde) must be considered. Brazil has begun to notice the odor of acealdehyde in the air of Sao Paulo, although the overall pollution level in that city has dropped during the last few years as alcohol vehicles have replaced gasoline and diesel cars. Alcohol carries none of the heavy metals and sulphuric acid that gasoline and diesel exhausts do. And alcohol's evaporative emissions are a great deal lower than gasoline's, and not at all toxic (any more than a drunk's breath). The same cannot be said for the evaporative emissions of benzene, toluene, and other carcinogenic or mutagenic aromatic hydrocarbons found in modern gasoline. As of this writing, legal requirements for pollution control devices on alcohol-driven vehicles are ambiguous. Air pollution control laws are actually designed to enforce the placement of smog devices, they do not protect our air. Recent court victories in California and other states have challenged those laws--in these cases, vehicles that could document emissions within legal limits were allowed to dispense with emission control devices. If this is your situation and you happen to remove your air pump and deactivate your exhaust gas recirculation, please continue to use the catalytic converter to help strip acealdehyde. Alcohol is sold in bottles in auto parts stores, marketed as catalytic converter cleaner. The alcohol exhaust helps clean the catalyst of deposits from gasoline burning. The importance of reduced vibration in an alcohol engine is often downplayed in comparisons of the two fuels, though it's implied in alcohol's high octane/slow burn rate. Any motorcyclist knows that vibration is his engine's (and body's) constant nemesis. Alcohol's high octane rating (conservatively 106) translates roughly in alcohol's ability to tolerate high compression (and therefore high temperatures) without pinging. The net result, along with alcohol's high oxygen content and cooling effect, is to slow the burning rate of the explosion. Put simply, alcohol explodes in long, slow, steadier explosions than gasoline, which goes off almost all at once in a pop. Given this property, ignition timing can be advanced quite a bit in an alcohol-fueled car. Advanced timing allows fuel ignition to begin earlier and spreads the ignition over a longer period. Since alcohol's self-carried oxygen helps the burn continue longer (as long as there is unburned fuel), you get a quiet running, comparatively smooth ride. Some of my alcohol engines (slant 6-Chryler) have been so quiet that on frigid mornings when the unwarmed car stalled at an intersection I wouldn't know it had died, except for my alternator light signaling from the dashboard. One Harley Davidson rider I've spoken with insists that running his motorcycle on alcohol takes away half the fun since the traditional Harley rumble is severely reduced. Studies that claim alcohol fuel gets only half the mileage of gasoline are often put forth without any road tests. In these studies a simple analysis of the two fuel's energy content is the basis for low mileage findings for alcohol. It's true that alcohol's heating value is lower than gasoline's--about 84,000 Btu/gallon compared to 118,000 Btu/gallon. But heating value can only be roughly correlated to miles per gallon: candlewax has twice the heating value of gasoline--what do you suppose your mileage would be using melted wax in an internal combustion engine? Heating value has very little to do with a material's value as fuel--it's simply the amount of energy theoretically given off if a material is burned with an optimum amount of oxygen. Studies claiming gasoline's superior mileage assume the two fuels burn with equal efficiency in your engine. Nothing could be further from the truth. Very little of a fuel's energy becomes work (miles per gallon) in an internal combustion engine. Theoretically, 10% of fuel's energy goes into friction, 25%-30% becomes work, and the remaining energy is waste heat and exhaust. In reality, many cars on the road only get 15% or less gasoline energy converted into work. Alcohol, on the other hand, has achieved 48% work efficiency in the lab, and 35+% efficiency on the road. A miles per gallon comparison considering alcohol's higher efficiency is much closer than the difference in heating values seems to indicate. Field tests by my students and other independent studies commonly indicate reductions in mileage of 10%-15%. Greater losses are not usual except in very simple conversions. Losses are often less in high compression vehicles, or vehicles under load. Mother Earth News has done some interesting mileage studies on a 1970 Chevrolet 250 cu. in. inline 6-cylinder engine with some very good results. They lost 5% mpg while the truck was unloaded, but loaded with 2200 pounds the comparison swung in alcohol's favor--16% better than gasoline. With a load, alcohol maintained its mileage, while gasoline's dropped. Researchers had increased the main jet diameter by only 19%. Their first tests used a jet drilled out 40%, with a loss of only 12% mpg. It's around the same range with passenger vehicles. And you can improve this already acceptable level by removing your stock radiator fan and replacing it with an electric fan, by using synthetic alcohol-based lubricants in the drive train, mechanically raising the compression, super/turbocharging, or vaporizing the fuel. Several inventors and some major auto companies (Ford, Mercedes, etc.) and NASA have recorded mileages way above alcohol's expected heat value based mileage, by completely vaporizing the fuel and using a propane type gaseous fuel carburetion system. The highest verifiable figures are about twice gasoline's, with some specialized lightweight vehicles doing even better than that (see Vaporizing Alcohol). In Brazil, government licensed alcohol conversion shops are required by law to deliver mileages on alcohol no less than 25% lower than gasoline. There are over 100 shops in Brazil's capital that routinely exceed government minimums. According to many past private energy industry studies, none of this should be possible. Alcohol is cooler burning, cleaner burning, with less vibration, and a mileage just a little under gasoline's in most cases. What about alcohol's presumedly severe corrosion of fuel system metals--aluminum, magnesium, zinc, terneplate (the lining of many gas tanks), and pot metal? Such widely publicized presumptions don't specify which alcohol fuel will hurt which metals. Methanol is severely corrosive and will attack terneplate, aluminum (some alloys are immune), zinc, and magnesium. Methanol will also loosen rust from steel. Methanol is so nasty that even used as a 10% denaturant with ethanol, or an octane booster with gasoline, it will strip acrylic lacquer paint from cars. Acrylic enamel paint is almost unaffected though. And ethanol of 185+ proof has little effect on any of these metals or paints, with a few exceptions. At 190 proof all these metals are virtually unaffected by ethanol. Alcohol's water content has a lot to do with the corrosion of metals containing aluminum and zinc. Water sets up an electrolysis that draws out the less noble metals. At 160 proof, alcohol is quite capable of causing significant corrosion. Rusting does not readily occur at 185+ proof levels however. (Industrial 190 proof alcohol is sold in steel 55 gallon drums.) Mixing your alcohol with around 2% leaded gas, or adding alcohol soluble synthetic oil helps retard rusting in lower proofs. Corrosion inhibitors can be added to an alcohol fuel to eliminate any corrosion of any fuel system metal. The inhibitor I use is mixed 1-4000 with alcohol and raises the price of my fuel less than 1 cent per gallon. With a 12% or higher silicon content, aluminum should be fairly impervious to even low proof alcohol. There really is no point in using low proof fuel however; the stills I propose you build routinely produce the safe 185+ proof levels. Some carburetors--unfortunately, more of them all the time--are made of an inexpensive alloy called Zamack. Zinc and some other metals in the mix are susceptible to electrolysis and can be surface corroded. Corrosion appears as a white powder that will plug fuel orifices in the carburetor after a few months. Corrosion inhibitors, or synthetic oil, reduces or nullifies that effect. Or you may choose to take your disassembled carburetor to a plating shop and have it plated with electrolysis nickel. The springs in the power valve, accelerator pump, and any other non-stainless or non-brass parts should be plated at the same time. (Of course, you wouldn't plate rubber, leather, or foam parts.) In my area such plating costs about $35-$50. If you're concerned for your gas tank you may want to coat the inside of it as well, though I've only seen gas tank coatings corroded on very old vehicles (my 1953 Chevy fire truck, for instance) using low proof highly acid contaminated fuel. Electrolysis nickel coating of a gas tank is generally over $100. You might decide to replace the tank with a custom built one of tin plated steel, or stainless steel, or better yet, coat your present tank with spray Teflon. Some Teflon preparations are made to just be sloshed around in the tank. Having the tank boiled out and "pickled" at a plating shop is a good preparatory step for Teflon coatings. Check your J.C. Whitney Catalog or truck parts dealer for sources for this type of coating. Many people strip their old terneplate coating by using an hydraulic oil filter, or aircraft-type filter, in the fuel line to catch all the stripped, powdered plating. Once the plating is stripped the bare metal shouldn't rust significantly if you continue to use high proof fuel with a lubricant or corrosion inhibitor. Many corrosion stories are based on improperly treated alcohol. In bad fermentation batches invading bacteria may produce a high amount of acetic acid, which has a low enough boiling point to be distilled with the last part of the alcohol run. High acetic acid content and low proof is a deadly combination. In Brazil there have been similar corrosive problems; because of the large amounts of sulphuric acid used in the extraction of sugar from cane some of the acid would end up in the fuel after distillation. Alcohol itself is only very slightly acidic. If a pH paper test measures your alcohol from 5.5-6.0, it's too acid, and the batch should not be used as fuel until it's redistilled after you've added an alkali ingredient (lime or potassium hydroxide). If you've added sufficient base to your mash before distillation (which you'd want to do anyway if your mash is to become fertilizer), you should have no problems. Alternatively, a commercial corrosion inhibitor will generally suppress fuel with too low pH readings. High boiling point chemicals like acetic acid, some aldehydes and the various esters found in fusel oil enter your fuel at the end of a run. Acids and aldehydes may enhance corrosive electrolysis of wet fuel, while esters have a tendency to deposit a little gum or carbon on valves. It's wise to save the last part of your run (the low wines) in a separate tank until you have enough to run a full batch of them off. Add plenty of lime to low wines before distillation, and only extract alcohol for fuel during the first 60%-70% of the run, disposing of the remaining twice-concentrated low wines as heating or boiler fuel. This is an excessively conservative approach, but is a useful technique for beginning distillers whose first few fermentations will be less than perfect, with more noxious by-products than later better fermented batches. If you use high proof fuel with a little lubricant added to it, and you've made sure your mash was neutralized before distillation, the odds of you having a corrosion problem are slight. To be completely safe, a touch of commercial corrosion inhibitor will put any potential problem to rest. As far as rubber parts, plastics, seals, gaskets, fuel pump diaphragms, and floats in the carburetor and fuel tank are concerned, there are some materials to avoid and some to replace in older vehicles. Ethanol is not harmful to seals, gaskets, or normal neoprene fuel lines. In the United States most fuel pumps and almost all new fuel pumps have been alcohol safe since the introduction of gasohol. However, 1980 and later cars have been fitted with particularly cheap looking clear fuel lines instead of the traditional black neoprene. These clear lines can be softened by alcohol and will eventually collapse, cutting the fuel off to the pump or carburetor. Replace them with standard neoprene fuel lines. It's been noted that neoprene swells slightly with hot alcohol fuel. In my experience, this phenomenon does not reduce the line's life, and certainly hasn't caused me any trouble. On very old vehicles, 1950s and earlier, fuel lines were made of butyl rubber which doesn't stand up well to alcohol. These lines are only found on collector's vehicles kept in original condition--you're not likely to run into them often. Some common clear plastic fuel filters use paper filters held in place by an alcohol soluble glue. If the filter paper comes loose it can plug the filter and prevent your carburetor from getting its fuel. Replace with metal bodied fuel filters, or better, small can-type cartridge fuel filters. Fuel pumps generally work fine with alcohol, but those of you who have original fuel pumps from the '50s will run into a unique problem. The diaphragms used in old pumps, invented before modern elastomer technology, were made of cloth and varnish--easily dissolved by alcohol. Cut out a thin neoprene or silicone elastomer diaphragm and replace the cloth one. Similarly, the floats in old carburetors were made of cork coated with varnish. Remove the float and coat it with a thin layer of epoxy. (See Conversion for a more detailed description of modern floats.) Regarding exhaust system corrosion in an alcohol-fueled car: the high water content in alcohol's exhaust does rust the metal more than gasoline's. But alcohol's exhaust doesn't contain sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid is responsible for most of the damage to most cars' exhaust systems. Comparing alcohol fuel with gasoline, several studies completed in different countries all come to the same conclusion--there is almost no difference in exhaust system longevity. Alcohol's octane rating is signficantly different than gasoline's. In the simplest sense, octane is a measurement that indicates the point at which fuel will ping in an engine. The octane number refers to the ping resistence of a fuel, as compared to pure chemcial octane (rated at 100). As a fuel mixture is compressed, the fuel's heat also becomes compressed--and compressed gas sharply increases the temperature of the mixture. So as the piston comes up, the mixture approaches a temperature at which the fuel will explode by itself with no ignition from a spark plug. (The plug should fire shortly before the temperature reaches the autoignition point.) A gasoline auto ignition point can be as low as 430 degrees F. in unleaded regular--alcohol's auto ignition temperature is 685 degrees F. Your engine's compression ratio dictates the degree of compression on the mixture, and how hot the fuel will get. A fuel with too low an octane rating for your engine's compression ratio causes pre-ignition, or pinging. Stress put on the cylinder along with the incredibly hot temperatures of a pinging mixture, shortens engine life considerably. This is a problem for those of us who still drive late 1960's and early 1970's vehicles. During this period, in order to take advantage of premium fuel's 104 octane, many cars came off the assembly line with 10.5-1 and even 12-1 compression ratios. "Regular" gas was 94 octane and most cars had at least an 8-1 or 9-1 ratio. Nowadays "premium" has a lower octane rating than old-fashioned regular, and modern regular is a disgustingly low 84-88 octane. Alcohol octane rating is, conservatively, 106 and has been rated higher by many independent and foreign government studies (although some oil company studies in the l970s had the audacity to claim ratings as low as 84). Alcohol is able to tolerate a compression ratio of 15-1 in general and up to 18-1 in specially designed engines. This means that cars with high compression taking advantage of alcohol's octane rating can get more horsepower and mileage. Unfortunately, automobile companies have reduced the strength of engine parts because of the present low compression ratio designs of modern engines (to accommodate the low grade of modern fuel). An engine that doesn't have to stand up to the stress of a high compression application and quality fuel can be built much cheaper, for higher profits. I haven't noticed lower prices to match the lower quality. Low compression penalizes the driver in terms of mileage and in handling. It may not be possible to raise the compression ratio of a 1980's vehicle to the optimal ranges for alcohol, but you can take some advantage of alcohol fuel's high octane in a low compression vehicle by advancing the timing. In 1980 one popular alcohol myth suggested that blowby from alcohol fuel contaminates oil and forms highly acidic sludge in a crankcase. This would reduce lubrication, and bearings would be damaged or at least wear at a much faster rate. During the Fifth International Alcohol Fuel Technology Symposium, several papers referred to major problems in lubricating methanol fueled vehicles. The studies done on ethanol showed little or no effect on oil life. Some studies indicate ethanol fueled vehicles enjoy better lubrication qualities than gas fueled cars. During the symposium, Shell Oil's paper on lubrication made the following conclusions: "The bench and field trial results suggest that lubricants meeting API SE/CC and CCMC performance requirements satisfy the demands of vehicles running on HE 100 {hydrated ethanol} fuel. Using this fuel the engines were on the whole exceptionally clean, particularly in respect of piston deposits." They went on to say, "Other aspects of lubricant performance, such as wear protection, prevention of oil thickening, sludge and rust formation, were similar with HE 100 and with gasoline." Exxon's researchers admitted similar results: ". . . deposits should not be a problem with 100% ethanol fuel since sludge was virtually unchanged from the start of the test {initially due to graphite oil} and varnish was negligible." After 20,000 kilometers the percentage of hone pattern still on the cylinder walls was 65%. Exxon reported, "Ring/bore wear was not excessive even at extended drain interval." On a scale of 1-10, 10 being clean, the amount of sludge was rated at 6.9-7.3, and their studies used alcohol converted taxis run 15,000 kilometers on gasohol with a graphite impregnated oil beforehand. Piston varnish was rated at 9.3-9.5. Gasohol (which is considerably cleaner burning than gasoline) rated sludge at levels between 2.7-5.7, and varnish at 5.2 and less. Varnish and carbon are responsible for a great deal of ringwear and borewear in a gasoline engine. Their dramatic reduction results in longer engine life. Varnish and carbon deposits in the cylinder can be virtually eliminated using alcohol fuel and high quality (alcohol based) synthetic oil. (See interview with Gordon Cooper and Bill Paynter in Aviation for more oil consumption information.) To summarize: alcohol burns cooler, cleaner, and with less vibration than gasoline. It should extend engine life, deliver more horsepower, and it's ideal for hard working engines. With all that to recommend it you're probably anxious to know something about conversion. Click here to purchase Alcohol Encyclopedia.