How do I make a home based ethanol production facilities

Have you tried out "home made ethanol" in google?

I have now! Some great stuff, thanks a lot. In the past I searched google all of the time but I have found that this place often has information I can't find in google so I check here first. I couldn't find a thread about the subject so I posted my own.

it takes about 10 days to make some 10% wort. Then you get 1 gallon for every 10 gallons. That means you need to do 50 gallons in say 3 batches or a 17 gallon batch running every 10 days, you'll be busy. The amount of energy to distill the ethanol will cost you about $10/month, and you'll need 100 pounds of sugar, thats about $40/month, so it'll cost $10/gallon.

Don't forget about the licensing and approvals required by the ATF and your state. (I'm assuming you are in the US) Then there will be safety regulations, procedures and requirements to assure that you won't start a fire storm in your neighborhood. If you should choose to ignore all that and an unfortunate incident should occur, be prepared to pay restitution and/or take a long vacation and meet a lot of new "friends". Tattoos not optional. The home brewing of beer, wine and hard spirits is one thing. The distillation of extremely volatile and flammable liquids is another.

<...The distillation of extremely volatile and flammable liquids is another...>

...and in many countries will require licensing, safety inspection and the payment of excise duties.

From what I am hearing from you guys DIY fuel production is not a practical route. I had found a site (http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/index.html) that makes it sound like a its not such a bad idea. Take a look at it if you want, I could use an objective opinion.

I'll look into permits and legal issues later, after I know if it's a project worth pursuing. But I'll keep it in mind.

If I asked you if you could store a couple of 55 gal. drums of high octant racing fuel in your garage at home, next to each of your two cars that each contain about 10 gal. or so of gas, or in your case ethanol, what is your first thought? How well would you sleep?

The fuel in your cars is contained in a structure designed to prevent ignition by an outside energy source, a closed system with a valved cap, more or less "intrinsically safe". I'm not sure that would be able to be said for most of, say, 2000 DIY distillers. Stories have been told of moonshiners stills exploding. Even if the rate of irresponsible distillers was only 1%, I wouldn't want to live near any of them, but that's just me.

The ATF and most of the government oversight issues will be to head off home brew for consumption under the guise of fuel, keep in mind stills are not legal for consumption with out proper licensing from a huge number of government agencies (and all alcohol is treated as for consumption). As far as production from switch grass, this is ethanol production from cellulose, you need special enzymes to hydroloze the cellulose in to sugar. Cellulosic ethanol is not something you'd want to do on a small scale.

I see your point about the enzymes... I need to be able to produce the things I need to run it or find them locally. I know it's a tall order but is there a practical method of ethanol production that is suitable for small scale?

I'll deal with the governmental issues if I can find an effective production method first.

Biodiesel, or related, might be an easier fuel source to make at home, and the vegetable oil can be obtained from waste cooking oils, and the lye can be derived from waste ash. Ethanol typically involves a biological reaction first to make a weak alcohol solution (this is the beer wine stage) this requires an environment maintained aat proper temperatures for the yeast (or other biologicals if cellulosic) to effectively produce ethanol from stock sugars (could hydrolyze starch easily into sugar in first stage), then you need to distill the ethanol, probably a number of times in a household system to get a reasonably high proof ( like 190+) this requires heat. Ethanol reacts, and has similar properties, that they do not readily separate on distillation, but rather one concentration increases and the other decreases with each distillation (and input of energy) untill it become too costly to distill out any more water.

I live in Tennessee, and the term used here is 'moonshine'. Un-licensed, no-tax paid, ethanol plants. ... The Fed's (ATF) still take a dim view if it. It still happens some, just not as much as is 'used to'.

Even water distillation devices are supposed to have federal inspections, to ensure you don't use it for 'improper' uses.

You can make ethanol from just about anything that has sugar in it, add some brewers yeast, to make a 'mash'. Then once the yeast gets the sugar transformed into alcohol (ethanol), you 'distill' it in a 'still' by 'boiling off' the alcohol, and have the vapors cool off and 'bottle' the results. To make it 'driving ethanol' and to keep the 'revenuers' off your back, add about 10% by volume gasoline to it.

You can probably find a book 'for reference purposes only' at lindsaybks.com ... one of my favorite book sellers (no other attachment to them).

Just remember, "Don't mess with the Eagle" as my Dad used to say. Meaning police, whether local, Federal, IRS, ATF, or any other combination of letters. Nothing positive comes out of it in the long run. /// I am just glad to be able to pay taxes, as there are those that don't have that as an option.

On the first of April, nineteen fifty-four
A Federal man sent word he'd better make his run no more
He said two hundred agents were coverin' the state
Whichever road he tried to take, they'd get him sure as fate.

On my website SCIENCE AND RELATED STUDIES, find both MESS-SEProjectsAPIX-SEProjects.and APIX-SEProjects. Both of these projects are a part of Agro-Biogenics, a new Sustainability Engineered Projects Corporation which is being incorporated and presented on CR4. You are welcome to follow along as these projects advance. You will find the APIX Blog in the Sustainability Engineering Section of CR4.

A long time (30 yr?) ago, Mother Earth news had an article about solar stills for producing moderate amounts of fuel grade ethanol. I don't know if that article would be available, but a Google search on solar stills might give you something to go on.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/meCh7.html

seems to be a link to this set of articles.