doncarbone

iTrader: (15)

Its just moonshine! Lol

Ethanol = very high proof alcohol. E100 if such a thing in its purest form is basically some potent moonshine (hopefully treated to remove water...but knowing this is virtually impossible, that's why they say E98, not E100!!! The 2% is basically water.

nesraguy

I thought about making my own fuel. But it costs about $20 or more to make a gallon of shine. Look up copper moonshine stills, they sell a fuel still that puts out 4 gallons an hour. Getting a cheap supply of sugar is the hard part. It takes a lot of sugar. A very simple batch is 18lbs of sugar and 5 gallons of water. Lighter fluid! Still in order to get the most out of a still is to pack the reflux tower completly with copper mesh. The best you can make is 96.4%. Have fun.

doncarbone

iTrader: (15)

Yep - the cost of doing it yourself outweighs even the cost of buying it from a station far away and having them ship drums of fuel.

You can save money if you buy bushels of corn versus sugar, though; but it's a lengthier process as your mash needs to have fermented properly before you run it through the still and it can take multiple days for this to happen.

The reflux column stills with multiple sections as you described are definitely worth buying, but they'll run minimum about $1k so not cheap.

What put a halt to the whole venture for me was the extra chore of drying the ethanol (zeolite can do this, which is actually cheap to buy, and apparently does a good job removing excess water content), but the real kicker is needing to mix in Toluene (basically paint thinner) or another chemical to keep the Ethanol separating from gasoline should you choose to make your own blends of E85 or E50...

Once I discovered the requirement for an additive to prevent phase separation of ethanol and gasoline and then the costs of using these, I stopped caring about the whole thing basically. This is where you basically lose...