Making Ethanol: A Few Easy Steps to Follow While Making Your Own Ethanol

For those who find it hard to swallow the increasingly high costs of gasoline there is hope yet in the form of being able to make this product on your own. If you have ever tried to make your own beer or wine, making ethanol should not be difficult since you can ferment any starchy or sugary food or even waste product into a mash that can further be distilled to produce 190 proof alcohols. One could use this ethanol in one’s car and there may not be any need to make changes to the vehicle since it may already be ready for using E85 ethanol.

Use Dry Corn in Sufficient Quantities

To begin making ethanol one would need dry corn which is readily available and some may even use sugar cane for this purpose. Make sure that you purchase the correct quantity. The corn will need to be ground and it may require a grain mill for this purpose and one should then add water and cook it at temperatures that will allow for liquefaction and add enzymes which will allow the starch in the corn to be converted into sugar. Mashing as well as fermenting is also required for making ethanol.

One should ensure, when making ethanol that all the water content is removed through a process called a molecular sieve which is really a strainer and it should be as fine as possible to get a finer end product. One may also use Zeolyte that is a granulated product, which soaks up the water and leaves the slightly longer ethanol molecules alone. To remove the water from the Zeolyte one may broil it on a backyard grill or dry it out in the sun. One may use a hydrometer to verify that the ethanol is actually 200 proof and if any water does remain, it will settle at the bottom when mixing it with gasoline.

There are ATF regulations that require that the alcohol be denatured and for this a meager two to five percent would suffice which should ensure compliance with necessary regulations and for this one can take the next step, which is to add gasoline to the ethanol in order to obtain E85. Before using this E85 in a car one should ensure that the vehicle is ethanol compliant. Following these simple steps should ensure that you have the ability to begin making your own ethanol, and thus become fuel independent.