Making Alcohol

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Comment by Dude One on October 16, 2009 at 8:24am

I attended David’s recent Ithaca/Cortland/Dryden, New York workshop. After reading through various comments, it appears that people are in various stages of the process. Chapter 12 of the ACBAG book, David outlines what a micro-distillery could look like. His example is a plant processing 1.15 tons of corn and producing 100 gallons of alcohol per batch. Has anyone been able to obtain anything near this type of capacity, or even smaller?

Comment by douglas trinkaus on June 28, 2009 at 1:59pm

any body close to delaware making gas

Comment by DMMc on June 27, 2009 at 9:54am

Does anyone know if it is possible to use tomatoes as a base for a mash or would it be too acidic?

Comment by John Monty on February 15, 2009 at 8:42am

Was wondering if anyone here knows any more detailed information on the process that Dave mentions on page 137 in the book about using ethanol/weak acid in a tall column to dissolve the lignin & convert cellulose to a fermentable liquid. That technique could be very useful to know more about...

Comment by Tinkerman on November 21, 2008 at 1:15pm

I'm unfamiliar with an Apollo 7 still. Care to elaborate?
Also. I'm in the playground construction buisness. I have extra 6 in. dia. steel tubing froom the platform posts... can steel rather than copper or stainless be used for fuel ethanol? How about aluminum coils for the inner cooling?

Comment by JT on October 30, 2008 at 11:13am

I'm surrounded by nay-sayers that like to quote me things like this:
Cornell University professor of agriculture David Pimental calculates some very disturbing figures. According to Dr. Pimental, it takes more energy to produce a given amount of ethanol than there is energy available in that ethanol. According to his calculations, producing corn and processing it into 1 gallon of ethanol requires 131,000 BTUs of energy; but 1 gallon of ethanol contains only 77,000 BTUs. So producing ethanol actually creates a net energy loss. And since farmers are using fossil-fuel-powered equipment to plant, maintain and harvest the corn and are using fossil-fuel-powered machinery to process that corn into ethanol and then transport that ethanol to collection points (ethanol can't run in underground pipelines because it picks up damaging impurities), the ethanol industry is actually burning large amounts of gasoline to produce ethanol, and that ethanol contains far less energy than the gasoline they consumed to produce it.

Ozone, sometimes referred to as photochemical smog, is formed in the air when
hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides react in the presence of sunlight. It is more
of a concern on warm, quiet, summer-like days when "smog" fills the air creating
a brownish haze in the lower atmosphere. This ground level ozone causes
human respiratory stress, and can cause plant damage, sometimes reducing
crop yields. This ground level ozone does not increase the ozone that is in the
stratosphere, and does not block the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Several U.S.
based studies conclude that, overall, the ozone forming potential of ethanol
blends, which vaporize at lower temperatures due to higher volatility, is about
the same as gasoline. "

What is the standard response?

Comment by D.Thomas Laskowski on October 10, 2008 at 9:47pm

Maybe check into one of the steel buildings like:
http://www.gensteel.com/
http://www.premiersteel.org/
http://www.steelmaxbuildings.com/?gclid=CNWhgPaunpYCFQS7sgodegeX6A
http://www.steelbuilding.com/buildings/buildings_main.htm?source=google_october
http://freedomsteel.com/lp/quote4.php?source=892&gclid=CIeXltSunpYCFQa6sgodthPE5w
There's a couple I've looked at, good luck with your project.

Comment by Glen Kadelbach on October 4, 2008 at 10:12am

We are looking at building a still that produces about 10,000 gal/year. We are in MN and run 144 acres. Does anyone have any idea, rough estimate, on what building a still of this size would cost? Would like to know before I get in to deep.

Comment by Kevin Koch on September 29, 2008 at 8:40pm

In response to Mr. Kyte's question about calculating the feed rate of the column based on the desired production rate, consider the following:
If you want to produce 1 gallon per hour, and your beer is 10% alcohol, then you need to feed the beer into the column at a rate of 10 gallons per hour. More generally:

[Feed in gal/hr]=[desired output in gal/hr] divided by [beer's % alcohol] divided by [100]

Comment by Erik Weaver on September 2, 2008 at 10:56am

I would certainly advise "cash flowing" any small start up. Avoid debt! If you need a bigger pile of money perhaps you can drum up enough interest to start a coop with an appropriate $ buy in. This forces you to really think out your Plan and get it on paper. (Which is a Good Thing.)

I say this because debt is said to be one of the biggest killers of small business. I count myself in that unfortunate group to experience this first hand.

But that is only my opinion. Free and worth at least half as much! :)

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