Alcohol Fuel Powers this Experimental Truck
(Page 5 of 8)
September/October 1979
The Mother Earth News editors
But one particular granger family—the Zeithamers of Alexandria, Minnesota—is simply not about to take any "gasoline drought"—real or contrived—sitting down ... because these folks are making their own alcohol fuel for about half the price of the commercial gasoline it's replacing.
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IT'S PLAINLY PRACTICAL
The Zeithamer dairy farm—a 50-cow, 500-acre spread—requires more than 10,000 gallons of combustible petroleum to get through each year. Increasing fuel costs were enough of a burden for the Minnesotans to contend with, but a scarcity of the precious liquid could have resulted in disaster . . . which is one reason why Archie (the senior Zeithamer) and his son Alan decided to convert to alcohol fuel.
"It's nothing new, you know," Archie says. "Farmers were burning straight alcohol in their tractors—years ago—when they couldn't get anything else . . . there's no doubt it works. And no one else is better equipped to handle alcohol production than are farmers. We have the raw materials right on hand, and we're far more flexible than any large commercial distilleries could be because we can make fuel out of whatever surplus crop we have available. Furthermore, we're producing our ethanol right here where it's going to be used . . . we aren't burning up half our product trying to deliver it to some distribution point located three—or more—states away."
The cost factor is another reason why Archie feels that on-farm distilleries are the most practical. The Zeithamers' total production plant investment was only $10,000—not an overwhelming sum for a farm the size of theirs—and the operating expenses are also minimal, since the plant is usually fired with wood scraps. The Minnesota farmers can make 500 gallons of alcohol fuel per week, which—with all expenses except labor considered—will cost them only 50¢ a gallon!
HOW THE ALCOHOL OPERATION WORKS
The Zeithamers use a 4,000-gallon oil tank—mounted over a masonry firebox—as their cooking and fermenting vat, and they've equipped the container with an electrically powered agitator that constantly stirs the mash mixture while it's being heated (thereby eliminating the need to "babysit" the process in the cooking stage). The father and son team shell and grind their corn to a coarse consistency, then add it to the tank, with water, in a ratio of about 28 gallons of liquid to each bushel of corn. Yeast and enzymes are also added during the process, and the mixture is allowed to cool and ferment for about three days . . . after which, the resultant "still beer" (it contains about 7-1/2 to 10% alcohol) is strained through a filter and temporarily stored in a 10,000-gallon tank which is set, underground, beneath their fermentation vat.
The Minnesotans then pump the "beer" mixture through a preheating chamber and on into their "stripper" column . . . a 12-inch-diameter, 17-foot vertical pipe (containing 76 perforated plates) which separates the alcohol vapors from the water mixture. This design allows for any partially distilled mash to fall back to the base of the tower to be recycled. The alcohol vapors are taken off the top of the column, fully liquefied in a condenser, and finally drained into a 1,000-gallon storage container to be denatured. (The denaturing process involves nothing more than the addition of several gallons of gasoline and ketone to the tankful of spirits . . . in order to guarantee that the fuel cannot be used as a beverage.)
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