6 Steps To Making e85 Ethanol At Home by Frederick Musser -

							by: Frederick Musser

6 Steps To Making e85 Ethanol

Step One: . . . The Conversion Process

We have to break down carbohydrate sugars, such as the starch from corn. Create it into "Mash".
Grind or crush the feedstock (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc...). Then dilute and add an enzyme
(alpha amylase) to turn the mixture into a liquid. Once liquified a second enzyme is
added(glucoamylase) to convert the starch into sugar. (If the source is mainly sugar, i.e...rotten
fruit, molasses, etc..., the conversion step can be skipped.

Step Two: . . . Fermentation

Add yeast and make it into a beer (wine) type solution.

Step Three: . . . Distillation

The beer (wine) type solution needs to be run through a still to extract the alcohol from the
solution.

Step Four: . . . Filtration

The ethanol now needs to be filtered to get rid of excess organic volatiles.

Step Five: . . . Dehydration

The ethanol needs to be "dried". After the distillation process there will be a certain amount of
water in the ethanol you have just created - this can be dried running the ethanol through Zeolite
a readily available product for drying ethanol.

Step Six: . . . Ethanol Into e85

Now simply convert the pure ethanol into e85 by adding 15% unleaded gasoline to your ethanol.
e85 is nothing more than 85% ethanol mixed with 15% gasoline.

This article was posted on September 15, 2006