Oregon Coastal Center and Ethanol

No plans. designs or models have been built. Everything is in the planning stage. At the present time, this is our thinking. If someone has some experience, we would welcome it.

Alcohol fuel is a nearly 100 percent alcohol with a tad of water. There are several reasons why we think alcohol is the fuel for us.

1. The most important one is that alcohol can be made by anyone, with a minimum of equipment. The knowledge necessary to make it can be obtained just by reading this book. As long as folks can grow certain plants, they can make alcohol fuel to run all or part of their power equipment.
2. Dependence upon someone else to supply any fuel is no longer a problem or a threat. Alcohol is a good fuel, superior to gasoline in many ways: It can give extra power to certain engines, it is almost non-polluting compared to gasoline, it is safe and easy to handle. Third, the cost of conversion from gasoline to alcohol is inexpensive: For many engines it is merely an adjustment of the carburetor jets.

When it comes down to basic survival. The fuel shortage doesn't seem all that serious. The bottom line to all this is that when the next fuel shortage comes -- and you can bet that one will -- the ones who have prepared best will survive with the least pain.

Preparation is basically a crushing and extraction of the sugars which the yeast can immediately use. But sugar crops must be dealt with fairly quickly before their high sugar and water content causes spoilage. Because of the danger of such spoilage, the storage of sugar crops is not practical.

What Crop to Use?

At the present time, our thinking is leaning toward the sugar crops, but this can be changed.

Sugar Cane. At the present time only 4 states (Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Hawaii) cultivate sugar cane, but there are hybrids (such as saccharum spontaneum) which can be grown further north. High yields per acre of both sugar and crop residue are strong points of sugar cane production. The crop residue, called bagasse, is used in Brazil to provide heat for the distilleries.

Sugar Beets. Although sugar beets are grown in many areas of the U.S., they must be rotated with nonroot crops (1 beet crop per 4 year period is the general rule). While beet by-products cannot provide fuel for the distillery, the beet pulp and tops are excellent feed in wet or dry form. Or the tops may be left on the field for fertilizer and erosion control.

Alcohol Still Design

Our thinking for our proposed Alcohol is a differential column. A differential column is one that is packed with some sort of material that provides surface for vapor contact between the phases of fractionating.

A six-inch column is of the conventional random-packed type. The column is filled with 5/8-inch rings. They provide approximately 131 square feet of surface per cubic foot and at the same time allow about 90% free gas space.

The packing and a packed column are nothing new as far as still designs go. The difference is at the point of introducing the vapors into the column and the method of removing the heat from the column. The usual manner is to mount the column on the batch pot and feed the vapor into the column at the very bottom. Since the column must maintain temperature equilibrium (that is, a decreasing temperature rate in the column, starting with the boiling temperature of the mash at the bottom and ending with approximately 175 deg F (79.4 deg C) at the top), this method controls that equilibrium by the amount of heat in the vapor as it is introduced into the column.

How much will be make?

A 250-gallon container of mash takes about four hours to come to a boil, and about four more hours to complete the distillation process -- which will yield 20 or more gallons of 180- to 190-proof alcohol, and another couple of gallons of lower-proof distillate. It is possible to make your entire run straight through and get 180-proof ethanol, but it would take a long time and would waste energy.