Alcohol fuel.
 

Someone recommended I do this. Grow some sort of vegetation. Mash it up and put yeast in it to ferment it. Then distill out the alcohol. From what I've heard it is pretty easy to run a car on pure alcohol. You can also run small devices like a generator on it as well.

I've done some research and it appears to be a proven and time tested technology. In the early 1800s most farmers produced their own alcohol with farm waste products. In fact the internal combustion engine was invented to use alcohol. Henry Ford's model T was designed to run on fuel grown by farmers.

I am curious what you guys think of it. Anyone doing it?

Re: Alcohol fuel.
 

It's difficult. If you build or buy a still for fuel alcohol, you can get it approved by the BATF, provided you poison the fuel once you make it.

You will want to start by fermenting your mash with "turbo yeast", and you will want a "reflux still" to distill it further.

Re: Alcohol fuel.
 

care to elaborate? I assume you are referring to gasoline

Re: Alcohol fuel.
 

You don't make alcohol from "waste", you make it from sugar. There are ways to make alcohol from plant fibers, but not any good ways. And there are ways to run engines on alcohol, but they usually involve starting it with gas and then switching to alcohol. You need to research the topic before trying anything.

Re: Alcohol fuel.
 

QWAK,Just saw a news piece about a man in Georga who is making Alchol fuel out of "CUTZU" which is working very well and at a cost under $1.00 a galon.:yes:

the DUCK

Re: Alcohol fuel.
 

Here is the beginning of a Mother Earth News series on using alcohol to power internal combustion engines. Modern engines won't burn alcohol efficiently, but flex-fuel vehicles will. While I didn't read the entire series of articles, it looks like if you modify your carburated engine to burn richer, you should be able to burn alcohol just fine.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_...earth/me1.html

Diesels, on the other hand, can burn a variety of oils, both hydrocarbon, and plant based, without too much issue, although pure vegetable oil is too viscous to burn in a cold engine.

Re: Alcohol fuel.
 

"Americans are addicted to oil"....F'n bollocks.

Nah, Americans are addicted to driving cars at a cheap price. Could actually give sh!t what fuel it runs on, as long as it runs...for cheap. This has always been my contention about Americans being addicted to oil to power their cars.

We have seemed to left the reservation when it comes to this automobile fuel issue.

Hemp, switchgrass, CUTZU, sugar beets, sugar cane, etc.... all can be made to produce fuel to power an internal combustion engine. Okay class, what is common amongst these items? sun, water, seeds...?

It is all here & available to us, but for whatever reason (there are many & we know most of them) we sit here in a circle jerk wasting countless lives & resources for what exactly?




http://www.naturalnews.com/023423.html
Biofuels from Switchgrass Offer 540 Percent Return on Energy Inputs
by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Biofuel produced from a fast-growing variety of grass can produce 540 percent more energy than is used during its manufacture, according to a study conducted by researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers grew switchgrass on 10 different farms, ranging between three and nine hectares in size, for five years. They calculated the energy used to produce the fertilizers, herbicides, diesel and seeds used in the switchgrass production. Because no large-scale biorefineries currently exist, the researchers used estimates to calculate how much biofuel could be produced from the switchgrass farms' output.

In contrast to an earlier study, which found a net energy gain of 343 percent, the researchers found a 540 percent energy gain from switchgrass.

The researchers did not include in their calculations how much energy used to ship the switchgrass to a refinery. In order to keep these costs low and the energy output high, they recommended that biorefineries be constructed near the fields on which switchgrass is grown.

"A biorefinery will have a feedstock supply radius of about 25 to 50 miles, so the feedstock of any biorefinery needs to be localized," said co-author Ken Vogel, of the USDA's Agriculture Research Service.

The United Nations and other organizations have criticized the biofuels industry for taking arable land out of food production and using it to produce fuel instead. According to Vogel, one of the advantages of switchgrass is that it can be grown on marginal cropland.

"The intent is to have energy crops being grown on marginal cropland, so it would not be in competition with food crops on our best land," he said.

Another advantage switchgrass has over other oil crops, such as corn, is that the entire plant and not just a seed can be used to produce ethanol, leading to much higher yields per ton.