Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Fuel you can feel good about
February 29, 2008

Photo by http://www.thecarycompany.com 

E85
E85 fuel consists of unleaded gasoline and anhydrus ethyl alcohol.   It is 85% alcohol and 15% gasoline.   While E85 does not free us 100% from foreign oil, it could get us 85% of the way there.  With gasoline at $3.19 a gallon and expected to be $4 a gallon by summer, that is a lot of  money that could be spent on alternatives. 

FUEL YOU CAN MAKE AT HOME
Like the back yard Victory Gardens of WWII, something you could do to help the war effort now-a-days is produce your own fuel.   This will reduce the amount of foreign oil we need to buy from people that are at war with us and is something we can do to support the USA's move toward national energy independance.    As automation and control engineers, after taking a look at the processes involved, perhaps we can make some improvements and automate it.  Ethyl alcohol is a byproduct of the cattle feed enrichment process.  The other part is "Distillers grains and solids" which is a cattle feed that is worth more than the corn that was used to make it.  The alcohol is a waste by-product of the enrichment process and can either be thrown away or sold.  Since it is a liquid (easy to handle) and can burn, it would make sense to use it as a fuel.  Henry Ford designed the model "T" for farmers to drive into town once a week and believed that the farmers would distill their own fuel for it and so the engine was designed to run on ethyl alcohol.   The nation was on a kerosene economy at the time and there was little or no use for gasoline, which is a waste byproduct of kerosene production.  When it was found that model "T's" could run on gasoline, that became the cheap fuel of choice.  Perhaps it is time for us to switch back to ethyl alcohol, at least until electric vehicles take over our roadways.   My relatives and neighbors who are farming are in favor of farmer grown fuels to move the USA toward national fuel ndependance.  As an engineer, it makes sense to me, especially if small, automated packaged plants become available that would allow farmers to distill their own, on site.  Have we gone full circle yet, are we back to where we started?

For those of you at home that would like to try this, it is no more difficult than baking bread.  The first step is to make a good quality beer, which does not require a license, and there are many suppliers for people engaged in the beer making hobby that can help you get started.  The next step, to distill, does require a license to be legal.  You apply to the ATF for a "license to distill alcohol for fuel purposes" which last time I checked didn't cost anything and could be approved in 90 days or less.   A good quality beer is about 10% alcohol by volume and can be seperated out by distilling.  For each 55 gallon drum of beer that you produce you can get about 5.5 gallons of alcohol.  The 49.5 gallons left over is an enriched cattle feed that can either be served wet or dried.  Drying is an extra step but allows you to store or ship it more easily.   The quality of your still determines the quality of the alcohol.  Typical moonshine still in the woods made of metal siding and downspouts for piping can produce about 165 proof  (80% ethyl alcohol and 20% water) which seems to run OK in a 1956 Chevy with a few carb adjustments.  

Google LUNAR X-Prize Update


For Control Engineering Magazine Online Edition readers within driving distance of Traverse City, MI, Rich Core - Software developer for Team FREDNET will be giving a short presentation about his teams lunar rover,  Linda Graham will tell us about her adventures at the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, and Paul Grayson will explain how working for free can pay off, all at the Robot Club meeting Saturday March 8, 2008 from 1 to 2 pm at the AIM workshop, 390 4-Mile Rd. S., Traverse City, MI 49686  (GPS location: N44* 35’ 58.3” W85* 38’ 7.6”)  Free Admission.  Free Parking.

Please call or e-mail pgayson@aimagic.org to let me know how many people will be attending.  I will need to shuffle some vehicles around and set up chairs depending on how many people RSVP.     

2007 DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE

Photo by AIM Team members Linda and Tom Graham

GO ROBOTS !

Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1180000318

Posted by Paul Grayson on February 29, 2008 | Comments (0)