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lucky123
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Other methods for extracting ethanol?
I was wondering looking online I see that there is a method of using castor oil as a means of extraction of ethanol from a crude beer or wine. How
much castor oil would you add before you distill (say you have 3 liters like the below methods). I think kings chemistry book had a process where 1kg
of sugar was added to 3 liters water with a packet of rehydrated bakers yeast and 3 to 4 days later it was distilled and boiled at 100 degrees celcius
for 3 to 4 hours. The resulting mix was then salted out by mixiing 200 grams salt and salted out mixture was then redistilled at 78 celcius. The
other method they dissolved 1 kilogram table sugar in 3 liters water. Heat sugar solution to 80 celcius and added 5 drops muratic acid or plumbing
sulfuric acid then continued to heat and boil for thirty minutes. Then 5 grams baking soda was added to neutraize and then fermented with yeast.
The mix was then distilled 3 to 4 hours (50 grams baking soda was added). Well this was repeated a couple of times. Anyways will these methods make
ethanol that would be clean enough to drink when done or will higher alcohols or impurities (as people call them) remain in the solvent? Does baking
soda help clean out impurities or is it just to get rid of smells?
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ScienceSquirrel
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You would be better off making beer or wine from a kit or if you really want to make something nice make some beer from malt and hops.
Home distilled spirits are a bit mank unless you really put some work in, they can be toxic and in most jurisdictions are illegal.
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condennnsa
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I thought it was only illegal if you sold it, not for personal consumption. At least that is my understanding from the many tutorials online about
making ethanol from sugar.
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ScienceSquirrel
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Legal basis of moonshining by country;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country
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The WiZard is In
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Quote: Originally posted by ScienceSquirrel  | You would be better off making beer or wine from a kit or if you really want to make something nice make some beer from malt and hops.
Home distilled spirits are a bit mank unless you really put some work in, they can be toxic and in most jurisdictions are illegal.
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Toxic?!
Experiments on the Human Subject on the Poisonous Properties of the Impurities
in Potato-brandy.
Brockhaus. Central. f. öffentl. Gesundheitspfl. 146, 1882 ; Chem. Central. 669,
1882.
In:—
The Journal of The Society of Chemical Industry
4 [2] 187. April 29, 1883.
The experiments were made with six of the substances constituting the chief
impurities of potato-brandy — aldehyde, paraldehyde, acetal, propyl-, isobutyl-,
and amylalcohols. The author took these substances in moderation, either in the
morning, mixed with water, or in the afternoon or evening, with wine or god old
cognac. The aldehyde acted, first, as a violent irritant on the mucus membrane,
and, secondly, upon the nervous system. The symptoms pass away quickly. The
slightly-intoxicating effect of young wine seems to the author to possibly arise
from the presence of aldehyde. The action of paraldehyde and acetal is of a
similar nature, but not so transitory. The effects are felt on the following day. The
above-mentioned alcohols caused a burning sensation in the mouth, heat in the
head, pain in the forehead, a suffocating sensation, sickness, and intoxication,
the intensity of the symptoms increasing with the molecular weight of the alcohol.
Amyl alcohol showed its self to be very violent poison,. Altogether the
conclusions was arrived that the impurities of potato-brandy exerted a much
more active influence on the human organism than ethyl alcohol. From his
experiments, and the arguments entered into fully in the original paper, the
author believe that the bad effects of the use of alcohol appear most intensely
and most quickly from the misuse of bad brandy, and that it is the impurities of
the latter which play the chief part ; but that at the same time solutions of ethyl
alcohol, such as we have in beer, wine, and good brandy, when taken in excess
during a considerable period, injure the human frame, and the more rapidly and
violently the stronger the solution. The practical lessons to be drawn from the
observations are that (1) the sale and retailing of impure brandies should be
forbidden. (2) Since the present known methods of purifying cheap brandies are
imperfect, and since, further, pure ethyl alcohol in a concentrated form is
injurious to human organism, the use of potato-brandy as an article of food or
luxury should be opposed.
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bbartlog
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| Quote: | | I see that there is a method of using castor oil as a means of extraction of ethanol from a crude beer or wine. |
Where do you see it? Ah, google lets me know even though you didn't:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/eth_separate.htm... (second proposal, though the first is also interesting)
If you want to produce ethanol via fermentation, get some better instructions; the ones you give are underspecified.
Anyway the proposed method sounds rather interesting not only for ethanol but as a general separation technique. However, I would expect it to fail as
an industrial process (and likely be frustrating even in the lab) because the need to avoid boiling the lower phase means that it will be dog slow,
limited both by heat transfer needed to vaporize the ethanol and by the speed with which ethanol migrates into the castor oil phase.
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ScienceSquirrel
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Hopefully he will be working from something better than potatoes.
If I wanted to make my own spirits I would use a wash of cane sugar with some molasses calculated to produce an ABV of about 5 -7% and a good low
flavour yeast.
This would be low in protein but would contain nutrients for the yeast so a smooth and vigorous fermentaion would take place at about 17 -22 C.
Working with a good base, low concentration and controlling the fermention temperature produces a copper wash that is low in congeners.
Distillation of this would produce a white rum like spirit, I would take the specific gravity and dilute with spring water.
There is some science but a lot of art to making a good drinkable spirit.
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Melgar
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You can get a permit for making ethanol for fuel, as an alternative energy source. At least in the US, here is some information:
http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id10.html
You will also need a reflux still. I built one for about $150 in parts. There are plenty of plans online for them. My still typically output at
90%, but if you collect really slow, you can get up to 95%. To get the alcohol, you can just ferment corn syrup or cane sugar combined with
distiller's yeast and get a fermented liquid which sucks for drinking, but has like 20% alcohol in it. Distiller's yeast is easily available online.
If you want a cleaner product, it's better to go for 15% alcohol though, otherwise you get more cogeners.
[Edited on 2/4/11 by Melgar]
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Regolith
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I'll save you the googling. I produce significant pure ethanol solvent of my own manufacture Birdwatcher on another forum has long since made an
excellent recipe that meets the needs of bakers yeast for nutrients. You can use something as simple as a home depot paint bucket (the new clean ones)
as your fermentation vessel. Methanol poisoning (difficult todo unless your intentionally adulterating the product as ethanol is the antidote FOR
methanol poisoning, always throw out your first 10ml or so of distillate for 4 L runs, scale up as needed) isn't common even among moonshiners these
days. Lead poising is far more common from using lead lined radiators as your condenser.
Side note: Most brewing stores are great sources of large glass vessels for acid storage etc. Heavy duty gallon jugs with the glass handle etc.
K2S2O5, CaCl2, NaHSO3, PTFE stoppers etc Likely mentioned on these forums before.
Others peoples work follows.
http://www.homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5018
Birdwatchers sugar wash recipe
{birdwatchers}My recipe for an 80 liter wash. Ingredients as follows:
3 cups tomato paste
Juice 3 lemons
Approx. 18 kg sugar
225 grams fresh regular bakers yeast. Buy in bulk at any good health food store.
water(I use spring well water)
Procedure:
Keep careful notes from start to finish for future reference.
Carefully mix paste, juice, say 14 kg sugar with 60 liters water at 30C. Measure SG.
(you are aiming for 1.09)
Carefully add water and sugar to bring mixture to 80 liter, WITH A SG 1.09.
Temperature of finished mixture should be 30C-35C to start.
You should now have 80 liters of mixed ingredients.
Carefully sprinkle 225 grams of yeast over surface, stirring in.
Place cover loosely, to let CO2 escape, keeping flying nasties out.
There is so much CO2 coming off; there is no need to worry about oxygen coming in contact.
Place bottomless styrofoam box over fermenter. Dangle lit lightbulb through small
hole in lid. Bulb must be strong enough to keep the mixture at a steady range of
30C-35C for entire fermentation. Size of bulb depends on room temperature. Stick
your digital thermometer through side of box to track inside temperature.
{A good idea would be to set up with water a day before you begin wash to determine
the size of light bulb to maintain water/wash in the 30-35C range.}
Check SG and temperature daily
Stir daily
On day three, syphon contents evenly into four 23 liter airlocked carboys.
(This step may not be nessesary and I may at some future date simply take the wash from start
to finish in the unairlocked storage container)
Check SG and temperature daily
Shake carboys gently daily.
After a total of 7-8 days SG should be .995. If not, wait until completion.
[file]12960[/file]
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bbartlog
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Thanks! Those are good instructions. I had wondered myself whether a loose-fitting lid was adequate (given a fast fermentation) for air exclusion,
assuming you want just ethanol and not something drinkable.
One quibble though: you say
'A good idea would be to set up with water a day before you begin wash to determine
the size of light bulb to maintain water/wash in the 30-35C range.'
Actually that won't work well; rapid fermentation (especially on the 80 liter scale) is exothermic enough that you will end up with a significantly
higher temperature *after* the process begins, so if you wanted to aim for some target temperature using just water as a test it would have to be
lower, maybe as low as 25C. If your heater gets water up to 35C then after fermentation it will probably overheat.
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ScienceSquirrel
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I would not use baker's yeast but a good all purpose wine yeast from a home brew shop.
I think that 30 - 35 C is far too warm, many yeasts will make more congeners at this temperature. I ferment out beer at 20 -25C using a top fermenting
yeast.
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bbartlog
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For anything drinkable, sure, you want lower temps. For just ethanol, it depends... higher temps will get things done quite a bit faster, and if what
you're after is fuel or solvent, or if your purification is good, it might well be more convenient.
I will say this about pushing to higher temperatures, though: it makes it harder to control the temperature. Faster fermentation -> more heat
generated -> runaway (of sorts). Of course it's not a true runaway since all that happens is that higher temps kill or render dormant a lot of your
yeast, but *that* kind of 'temperature control' will really mess up your product, and may stall out the fermentation at a far lower % alcohol than it
would otherwise have reached.
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ScienceSquirrel
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It will depend on your yeast strain and it's tolerance for alcohol and sugar.
Baker's yeast may not tolerate either high sugar or high alcohol but it is more tolerant than ale yeasts of higher temperatures.
To make solvent or fuel alcohol from a high gravity sugar wash, the best bet are the turbo yeasts. They will ferment high gravity washes very rapidly
out to around 15 -20% ABV and are very temperature tolerant.
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Regolith
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Had I not seen tests from a fellow brewer/biochemist I would agree with the turbo yeast idea. Upon finding the actual strain in a common turbo yeast
package imagine our shock when it was a fast rising bakers yeast and the nutrients contained (among other things) a type of clay (possibly intended as
a bio-protectant for the yeast?). I have no idea what type of clay only that it was defiantly not soluble and under a microscope was definitely clay.
Plus a turbo yeast package is quite expensive (here anyway). I can buy my sucrose, yeast, and 10 gallons of distilled water for the price of ONE turbo
package. There limited shelf life is also a problem, small yeast sachets get moved much faster thus are a fresher product. Since we are talking about
a living organism here. Still if it's cheap near you, damn your eyes, and enjoy the almost 30% percent that some claim with their turbos. Use whatever
yeast you have available. If you only have bakers yeast you can still make good stuff from it. Hence the very basic instructions it's all things that
can be had at Walmart.
From my front porch I can see a store that stocks Lalvin ec-1118 yeast. It's very common here along with a few other main strains. Thus I too wouldn't
use bakers yeast as I prefer the lower temp needs (and higher finished proof) of the above. If your making fuel then your not caring about the feet
smell in your tails(the last of the distillation). For drinking you should be filtering through activated carbon for purity sake, I use significant
carbon as well (I make my own, via pyrolysis) I find most fish store carbons, save the brand fluval, add color from there binders dissolving
(possibly?). For chemistry needs as well it should be filtered as purity is key in chemical reactions.
As Squirrel said you don't want to add too much sugar or you will explode the cell walls of the yeast. There really is too much for here I mean it's a
whole forum on it's own, like adding sugar in 2 batches to not kill the yeast off the bat. Don't waste sugar though you can't easily reuse excess
sugar in a wash. Yeast can only go to its nameplate max under normal conditions (non bioreactor, even then your removing alcohol).
One thing I noticed myself, ec-1118 normally only goes to its full 18% (14% normally, not uncommon, like all things yeast has marketing people) if
your using corn sugar (fructose, expensive) I have found the birdwatcher recipe of tomato paste and lemon juice DOES get it all the way to complete,
it does take a couple weeks though. Meaning the nutrient needs of the yeast are being well met. I'm also cheap when it comes to pitching yeast, more
yeast from the start means a faster ferment. Which you may or may not want depending the use, I like my ciders to finish slow and cold. You may want
solvent right now.
An interesting tidbit about yeast people don't often know is it can breath air very well, you can use a fish pump and turn one small sachet into a
large quantity of yeast by giving it several days to multiply in a container with air going bubbling through it. When you put it into your wash it's
still breathing but it's using enzymes within itself to chew off oxygen (and other molecules) from the sugar. It actually can't live without air.
Sterility is key for the above, you don't want unwanted organisms settings up in your bath, hence my usually just pitching yeast from the package into
warm water - into wash.
[Edited on 11-2-2011 by Regolith]
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ScienceSquirrel
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I would agree with Regolith, you can buy Lavlin ec-1118, it is a high gravity wine yeast, you can squeeze a bit more out of a turbo but they do cost
more. You should be able to buy it by mail order from a good home brew shop if you do not have one locally and you could buy a pot of yeast nutrient
to get them off to a good start if you want to get fancy.
I like this yeast but I am making beer, it happily deals with highly hopped worts in the 3 - 6% ABV range, is used by professional microbreweries and
settles out very well.
http://www.brewuk.co.uk/store/ingredients/ingredientsyeast/y...
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Panache
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once you have a successful yeast running simply set the next ferment using some wort from a just completed batch, very few commercial distilleries
ever buy yeast, unless to trial or test.
As for extracting the ethanol the best way for large batch's is either room temperature vac disitll running very cold coolant or ~30C nitrogen
stripping, ie bubbling 30C N2 through your vat, then condensing out your ethanol from the N2 stream. I have a paper on this if anyone wants it speak
up.
Both methods negate the need to filter post ferment as no heat cycle is used, once you do your numbers you'll find around 20% of your alcohol is not
currently worth recovering, depending of course on your specific input costs.
In australia fermenting is a waste of time, we have such a glut of non premium red wine that can be purchased far more cheaply than the alcohol could
be produced by oneself.
The glut however i fear will shortly be no more as Keith Urban is said to have began work on it.
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ScienceSquirrel
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| Quote: Originally posted by Panache | once you have a successful yeast running simply set the next ferment using some wort from a just completed batch, very few commercial distilleries
ever buy yeast, unless to trial or test.
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A lot of breweries and distilleries do pitch from one batch to the next but there is a risk of contamination with wild yeasts or worse bacteria.
UK breweries that have their own strain go to a lot of trouble with acid washing, small scale inoculation and culture and then growing on to make a
fresh starter every few batches, etc.
A lot of microbreweries in the UK use the Fermentis yeasts, they are available in small and large packs, so a lot of new brewers start with them on a
home or pilot scale and then continue onto a commercial basis.
They are very dependable, fast working, flocculate well and cover a range of beer styles.
The yeast is the cheapest ingredient after the water in a beer, why risk a ruined batch for pennies?
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DougTheMapper
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I tend to do the opposite: I make solvent-grade ethanol and then make it taste good.
I use 5 gallon washes of white beet sugar (Just the granulated stuff from the supermarket - in Michigan, it mostly comes from sugar beets) and I pitch
it with "Turbo Pure 48" which claims up to 18%abv in 48 hours. I let it go for a week or until it stops kicking out CO2.
It then gets siphoned off the settled yeast (though is still rather milky brown and nasty) and distilled in a still made from a 2-gallon pressure
cooker and some copper tubing.
The raw ethanol tests in at around 150 proof and tastes like burnt yeast. A second distillation is performed, keeping only 90% of the ethanol/water
mix, leaving it at about 170 proof and significantly less distasteful.
It then sits in 750ml glass bottles on copious quantities of activated charcoal for a week or so with daily shaking. The charcoal is filtered out as
much as possible and it is again re-distilled. At this point, orange peels, cloves, black pepper, pine needles, vanilla beans, or whatever can be
added to the still pot to produce flavor at the receiving end. (I'm a fan of gin though I never did get any juniper berries) This is distilled to
about 90% to avoid burning the flavoring agents or releasing the garbage the remaining suspended charcoal has absorbed.
After this, the spirit is diluted with distilled water to 80 proof so it doesn't destroy your esophagus so much on the way down. Alternatively, it can
be diluted with various juices, sugars, colorants, etc. but I've never really bothered.
As for the tail end of the two 90% distillations, you can recycle the alcohol by throwing it in before the first distillation of another batch. With
this method, 5 gallon washes equate to about six 750mL "fifths" of 80 proof, including loss from the incomplete distillations, vapor loss, etc.
The charcoal is regenerated by spreading it on a cookie sheet and baking it at the highest temp your oven will go for at least an hour. Mine goes to
500F or 260C. Make sure it's dry first... there's no sense in strongly heating an ethanol-soaked material in an enclosed oxygen-containing
environment.
I realize this makes me sound like an alcoholic. This stuff, though illegal to produce, makes a great gift. Flavorless, I can produce it at less than
1.90 USD per fifth. My friends love me since I always provide the drinks when we have parties, and, as they say, it's "not that bad." 
Oh, and if anyone wants it, I can dig out the little excel sheet I wrote to help calculate how much sugar is needed to produce a specific %ABV, how
much CO2 is evolved, how much water you need to avoid killing the yeast, how much it costs based on sugar and yeast prices, etc. if I can find the
dang thing.
EDIT:
As for the solvent, distill the plain yeasty wash twice (or to 180-190 proof; use a hydrometer - they're easy to make) and shake over anhydrous MgSO4.
Re-distill after water has been absorbed if you wish. MgSO4 is recoverable with the same method as the charcoal if you don't mind a steamy kitchen.
Oh, and for pete's sake: don't bubble air into the yeast while it's fermenting! Yes, it can live both anaerobically and aerobically, but producing
ethanol and acetic acid respectively. Even a small amount of acetic acid makes some really nasty tasting stuff and will cause pitting on aluminum
still parts. Use a bubble trap to minimize exposure to oxygen. If you're really nutty about it, boil the water before using it to get rid of dissolved
oxygen. I do this anyway to get the sugar to dissolve, but it's a good idea if you plan on using extra water.
[Edited on 11-2-2011 by DougTheMapper]
Victor Grignard is a methylated spirit.
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Regolith
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Doug I'm also a huge gin fan. Juniper is a hearty plant that thrives in most climates, I have several low ground bushes in the backyard. They live
under massive snowdrifts in the winter without issue. I may not have made this clear with my above for those non brewers here (like I said there is SO
much to brewing) if your increasing your yeast mass before through adding air. You DON'T want todo that once the yeast is pitched and the ferment is
started in your air-locked containers. Don't force brewing that way you won't get want you want at all. You must do your prep beforehand once you have
racked into your primary fermenter you want to disturb it as little as possible. (exceptions made to re submerge floating grains)
I've not had issue with oxygen in the mix Brewing and baking yeasts are chosen for low acetic acid production. They have an entire different genus of
yeasts that are used specifically for vinegar making. The "mother" as it's called that makes acetic acid can live for centuries hibernating in it's
wash. The very high price cider vinegars are made with mother cultures that are in many cases older than everyone working at the plant. I can recall
one plant where the whole placed burned down save the vault where the mother was. (it was sold to another vinegar brewer)
You need some extra copper in your still for spreading out the heat your distillate shouldn't taste of burnt yeast. Also try not to siphon your yeast
into the still, leave the settled yeast behind, boiling dead yeast cells is a sure way to off flavours. After a single pass mine is wonderfully
ethereal with no off burnt smells at all.
Also if your distilling you don't want to be using aluminum, Stainless steel or better yet copper. Copper helps bind sulphurous compounds and keeps
them from leaving the still. I use pure copper pipe cut into half inch wide rounds and hammer semi flat so it fits into the mouth of the still (I use
about a foot of copper pipe per L of still volume). Copper also combines with acetic acid as well to produce copper acetate, thus binding it and again
keeping it out of your distillate.
Doug you mention making your own hydrometer, how do you calibrate the device ? Or do you simply use a ruler and mark it accordingly? My hydrometers
are closely guarded against damage as they were too much money for just glass and lead. When the day of there breaking comes I may MAKE new ones.
Also regarding reuse of carbon, possibly due to it being my own manufacture and being exceptionally small particle size. I find I must cover the glass
dish I'm cooking off my carbon in with foil or other air blocker as the carbon reaches ignition temperature around 500F you may not even notice it
right away but you come back an hour later and instead of black fresh carbon you have a pyrex dish of grey ash.
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DougTheMapper
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Wow. First of all I'd like to say that I'm genuinely impressed!
About the air introduction when pitching the yeast... I just realized that I inadvertently do it without thinking about it! I always start with about
500mL water at 104F with a good scoop of sugar in it. I pitch the yeast into that and shake it vigorously once all the yeast has been wetted. It
rapidly begins to foam up after a few minutes and is then ready to pour into the main fermenter.
I admit my still has a lot of room for improvement. It was made as an experiment to see whether producing ethanol this way would be viable at home
with minimal cost, hassle, smell, etc. and has since weathered many trial-and-error experiments. It's bulky and the condenser water needs to be
manually changed. I am in the process of designing another one, among other things. I only used an aluminum pressure cooker because it was the biggest
airtight vessel I could find at the supermarket. My next design will definitely incorporate some column packing. Based on your suggestion, I'm
thinking copper wool should be best.
My hydrometer is really crude. It's simply a drinking straw with the ends hot-glued shut and a BB inside as ballast. Since the straw is of uniform
cross-section, changes in density are directly proportional to the depth the straw floats in a graduated cylinder of product. I calibrated it using
several fluids of known density. I used 100% isopropanol (.786) and water (1.000) as two hard points and used a ruler to make graduations. I printed a
plot of the specific gravity of ethanol and water from 0 to 100% and I just read off of that. The hydrometer itself has its own units which I have
translated to actual density values and plotted them on an axis of the chart.
My carbon is in no way powdered. I bought it (and everything else) at http://www.brewhaus.com/ . I bought the cheap stuff... it comes as small spheres resembling coarse black sand. I haven't had problems with it
disappearing yet, or not that I've noticed.
Here are a couple of photos:
http://doug-admin.webs.com/EtOH_still.JPG
Victor Grignard is a methylated spirit.
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peach
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That turbo stuff is the absolute tits ain't it! 
I've manage to roll the culture from one pack up to 200l using bags of sugar I got from the baker's supplier; we had a bakery next door.
It didn't take long at all to get through a barrel this big.
This barrel cost about £10. It was previously used to deliver olives. I think the entire barrel is HDPE and it's so darn tough. The neat thing about
it is that the lid has a rubber seal and a screw on retaining ring. It needs a clean now.
I washed a 10l glass bottle out with boiling water and set the turbo yeast off.
To clean the barrel, I simply gave it a rinse with a few kettles worth of boiling hot water. To avoid it getting too carried away, or me killing it, I
made the 200l up to 50% of the full sugar concentration to start with. Where I was living at the time, it was below zero for months around Christmas
and I had this stored in an unheated industrial unit I was renting. I dropped a fish tank immersion heater in the barrel (with it set to cut off if it
got too warm) and stacked all the packing out around it as insulation. Poured in the 10l culture and stood back. Fizz it certainly did! I've had less
fizzy drinks come out of a soda fountain.
I didn't need any form of water lock, I only had to cover the top with the lid, leaving it unscrewed so it didn't pressurise. Once the culture is
going, yeast is a strong enough competitor that it will dominate a lot of other forms of life.
I have some GL45 to B24 adaptors that screw onto the tops of the glass bottles to convert them to laboratory glassware tapers.
[Edited on 13-2-2011 by peach]
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497
National Hazard
Posts: 778
Registered: 6-10-2007
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Damn that's awesome. I have one of those HDPE drums and a couple packets of that exact yeast.. Man its tempting to try, but I'd have a hell of a time
finding something to do with that much alcohol..
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Regolith
Hazard to Self
Posts: 73
Registered: 4-2-2011
Location: Mining the moon.
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Damn your eyes those of you with cheap turbos. There's a brand here that uses activated carbon IN the mix, looks like boiling asphalt when its
fermenting. As I said I'm not paying for it though(not a second time rather)..
Also DAMN you peach and your cheap gear, I mean I can turn my head and cough a magnetron or crap a hermetic compressor (I'm putting the plumbers kids
through college). A whole 200L HDPE drum with wide mouth ? I need to make friends with a bigger restaurant or a bakery it seems. An airlock is only
really needed for long slow ferments. Where the CO2 output isn't high enough to outgas a whole drum.
Peach, here's a challenge I've not seen done well. Figure a way to distill Directly out of that drum. Perhaps the drum could withstand a vacuum?.. I
can find data on absolute ethanol in HDPE all the way up to the 80C and its still listed as Excellent. So a full temp regular atmosphere run may be
available.
I would certainly do a second run in proper glass or metal before consuming. But a stripping run on a full 200L would save a ridiculous amount of
time.
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peach
Bon Vivant
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I was going to suggest that.
The melting point of the plastic is over 100C, but not by a whole lot - with the azeotrope boiling not a long way below. So it would be a good idea to
test that with a smaller HDPE bottle first.
If alcohol is distilled at 85mBar or less, the azeotrope should split to yield pure ethanol. At that level of vacuum, it will also be boiling not a
lot above room temperature. If you live somewhere hot in the US, it'd probably be boiling just sat there.
Again, the question would be whether or not the drum could withstand it. I can stand on the drum's sides and it won't bend. Or one could add some
rings of plastic to the inside as support. If you have a metal barrel, you could weld the supports in place and sterilise it by dropping an immersion
heater in. Given the history of distilling alcohol at home, I'd again try that with water in the barrel first.
The turboyeast with activated carbon in it is sold at Partyman.se; which is actualy a membership drive for Alcoholics Anonymous
Brewing up large amounts of alcohol is interesting, not just for it's booze potential, but because it can be used as a feedstock for other work. If
you were to blow your alcohol over some hot copper, you'd get ethanal.
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Regolith
Hazard to Self
Posts: 73
Registered: 4-2-2011
Location: Mining the moon.
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I use it as the primary feedstock in a microwave plasma chamber. It makes for a lot less hassle than pure gases with cylinder rental fees
transportation etc. Plus it's so cheap making it i don't even bother trying to save it if there still liquid in the vaporization chamber, meh, dump it
clean start reactions anew.
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