Frequently Asked Questions How is ethanol made? First, a water/sugar solution is fermented (via yeast) into beer that averages anywhere from 10 to 20% alcohol by volume. It takes 14 pounds of sugar to make 1 gallon of ethanol. Although the industry term for this fermented solution is 'beer', this is generally not the kind of beer you would want to drink. The type of yeast used in the process is also important because yeast begin to die as the percentage of alcohol rises. In order to obtain higher alcohol percentage contents during fermentation, the yeast need to be specially tolerant to high-alcohol environments. Second, the 'beer' is boiled and the steam is directed into a distillation column (or commonly called a 'still', an abbreviation of distillation). Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water. Alcohol starts to boil at 173 degrees F, where water boils at 212 degrees F. The combination of water and alcohol forms a special compound called an Azeotrope, which in our context means that no matter how many times the alcohol/water solution is boiled and distilled, the maximum percentage of alcohol ever attainable through distillation will be 95.6% (or 191.2 Proof) by volume. In other words, using distillation only, there will always be at least 4.4% water in distilled alcohol. Third, if desired, the distilled alcohol can have the remaining water removed (creating what is known as anhydrous ethanol), through one of several other types of processes. One of the simplest processes for removing the rest of the water from the alcohol is by the use of a 'molecular sieve.' A molecular sieve works by acting like a sponge, but in a selective way. The porous openings of the material are large enough to allow water molecules to enter, but are too small for the ethanol molecules. Since the molecular sieve material is hygroscopic, the net effect is that water is absorbed, but not the ethanol. After the water has been absorbed by the material, the anhydrous ethanol is drained off.
What Licensing Is Needed? As far as United States licensing goes, there are three categories of permits for the fuel producer; small, medium, and large. The small producer permit is the simplest to obtain, and will allow you to make up to 10,000 gallons per calendar year. This permit does not cost any money to obtain. Simply fill out the form, mail it to the address specified in the included instructions, and your permit will arrive in about 30 days. The application (form 5110-74) for the permit can be obtained here. Aside from the Federal permit, your state and local governments may also require licenses. This varies from state-to-state. Please check with your local government entities to validate what, if any, additional licenses are needed. A good place to start is to contact your state agency that regulates and licenses the sale of beer, wine, and spirits. Texas, where we are located, does not require any additional licensing at a State-level beyond the Federal Alcohol Fuel Producer Permit. We suspect that most other states do not require additional licenses, but it is the customer's responsiblity to verify that they operate our equipment with all of the necessary licenses. But even Texas residents should check with their local government entities to verify that there are no additional requirements in their area. If you are a customer who resides outside of the United States, you will need to research what licenses, if any, are required to own and operate an ethanol distillation system. NOTE: When you are discussing licensing questions with a local, state, or federal agency, make sure they understand that you are interested in producing FUEL and not drinking alcohol. A distiller's license (which would allow you to make drinking alcohol) is substantially more involved and very expensive to obtain, requiring bonds, public notices, etcetera. None of these should be required for a small fuel producer.
What About Feedstocks? 1. Waste Alcohol. There is a tremendous amount of waste alcohol generated everyday in restaurants, bars, pubs, and other places that sell alcohol drinks. Everytime someone does not finish a drink, or leaves a partial pitcher of beer on the table, those glasses and containers are carried back to the bar and dumped down the sink. By supplying the bartenders with plastic barrels, you can get them to dump those partially finished drinks into your barrel, and collect the waste. That waste alcohol will generally be a mixture of beer, wine, and various mixed drinks, but will more than likely have an average alcohol content of at least 10%. Since this is precisely the type of 'beer' input that a distillation system wants, all you have to do is collect this waste alcohol, and run it through the system. This is also the fastest method since there is no fermentation step involved. 2. Waste soft drinks. Bottlers of soft drinks commonly pay for the disposal of waste product. Soft drink syrup is an excellent feedstock. You simply add Turbo Yeast, ferment, and run through the system. 3. Waste donuts, bread, and pastry products. Virtually every town has a donut shop, and almost all cities have one or more 'day old bread' outlets. And, as we all know, once uneaten donuts, bread, or pastries reach a certain point, they are thrown away. The key is to make arrangements with those places to pick up their old donunts, or the stale bread. You can also make arrangements to take the waste from distributors of packaged products like chips, cookies, and other products. To process these items, simply mix with water, add an enzyme (which we can supply) to convert the starches into sugar, and then ferment with yeast. Other feedstocks 4. Sweet Sorghum. We believe that Sweet Sorghum is probably the best feedstock to use (if you intend to go out and grow something). Sweet Sorghum is fundamentally exactly like sugar cane, but will grow in almost any climate. It has the same sugar content as sugar cane, is processed the same way (running the stalks through a roller press), and best of all, you can get up to 4 harvests per year (versus an 18 month growth cycle for one sugar cane harvest). Agricultural harvesters are already being manufactured that are designed specifically for Sweet Sorghum and will automatically cut, press, and even prepare the juice for fermentation. 5. Sugar. Certainly not the cheapest, but definitely the easiest of the home-processed beer stocks is to use plain old granulated table sugar. Mix with water, add yeast, and ferment into beer. While edible table sugar works great, there are also inedible granulated sugars from various suppliers that would also work just as well, and would be a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, obtaining those inedible sugars is not as easy one might imagine. Most of the companies who supply or trade in these items do so in very big quantities (e.g. minimum order of 12,500 metric tons). Also, if the sugar is being sourced from outside the US, there are substantial import tarrifs and other regulations to deal with. This is an area we are researching with the hope of setting up regional distribution centers. However, this not something we can help with today. If you are a farmer, or geographically have access to these crops, two that you may want to consider are obviously sugar cane and sugar beets. While sugar cane is going to be found only in warm climates, sugar beets are grown in many temperate zones. 6. Waste Fruit. Most growers of fruit products (apples, peaches, pears, watermelons, or anything containing sugars) can easily be crushed, juiced, and fermented. These are excellent sources of ethanol and the great part about using these as a feedstock is that there is a tremendous amount of waste already in the system. Some producers report an annual waste of 30% or more of their crops due to simple issues such as a blemish on the skin of the fruit. These blemishes have no consequence as to whether or not the fruit is 'good', but rather people won't purchase them in the store if they do not look 'good.' As a result, there is a huge percentage of waste every year with all of these fruits. The US fruit industry waste alone could make millions of gallons of ethanol that would otherwise rot. 7. Grains. Most people have heard the negative press about making ethanol from corn. Why we even continue to make ethanol from corn is rarely understood, but the simple answer is that there is a tremendous surplus of corn, and the infrastrucuture was already in place to grow, harvest, and process the corn. As a feedstock in general, corn is one of the worst, because it only yields about 200 gallons/acre. If you were growing corn, and wanted to process it yourself into ethanol, it would be far better to grow a different type of crop that had a much higher alcohol yield per acre. Nonetheless, if you have access to cheap grains, and want to use them to make ethanol, you will have to do some extra work. First, the grains need to be ground into a meal, then added to water and brought up to near boiling. The 'mash' then requires an enzyme to convert the starches to sugars, a second enzyme then breaks the long chains of sugars down to simple sugars, and finally yeast is added to ferment the mash into beer. We would recommend that if grains are used, that users have external tanks for the initial stages of processing, and then pump the filtered beer into our system's tanks for distillation. There is a substantial amount of leftover particles (commonly known as distillers grains) after processing something like corn into beer. If you do, however, choose to use grains as an input, those leftover distillers grains make excellent feed for everything from fish to cattle. And as part of a larger system, this approach would be ideal. 8. Other feedstock. There are many, many different crops which provide much better sources of ethanol. Anything that contains starch or sugar can be readily converted into ethanol. Ranging from algae, to sugar beets, to cattails, and many others, these crops offer the best output per acre. We recommending searching the web for more information on this topic, as ethanol feedstocks are quite an extensive area to cover in a single website FAQ.
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