Harmon Seaver wrote:
> You'd have to have an awful lot of ethanol to keep it from freezing.
> Strong beer (5-7%) freezes pretty easily. People used to "distill" their hard
> cider by putting a barrel out to freeze. Any fermented solution you can you
> can
> freeze fairly quickly -- the % of ethanol will never be above 16% at max, and
> you need at least 50% alky to "anti-freeze" a solution. Depends on how cold
> it
> gets, I guess, but zero should pretty well do it for any "wine" or "beer".
>
I got the idea from thinking about "ice wine" and "hard cider" that's made
in
the Okanagan Valley where I used to live. The fermentation process for fuel
ethanol or biodiesel ethanol is no different than that for beer or wine, and
since
the yeast die off well before the alcohol percentage reaches the high 'teens, I
thought that such an approach would create a more favorable energy balance for
ethanol fuel production in cold climates.
It would be an interesting thing to try. Perhaps someone might experiment
with
this approach and post the results. Further, it would eliminate the problems
associated with licensing a distillation apparatus. (No, officer, it's NOT a
still, it's a refrigerator. . .) If it works, I wonder how the energy balance
of
refrigeration would compare to conventional distillation.
robert luis rabello
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
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