Thanks, Ken, For the excellent response. Your suggested search worked great. I put <gasoline ethanol water "ternary phase diagram"> into Google, got a copy of the diagram at 21 deg. C.
Here's the question I have thought about-- The diagram suggests that I can accomodate about 2% to 5% water in ethanol and blend it with gasoline without separation at 21 deg. C. I read a warning somewhere that this isn't wise because the water will separate out at low temperatures. Then, I wondered, is THIS a way to make a blend without dry alcohol, to cool the mix and remove the water. (I understand, it's all in the phase diagram, and if it works the wrong way, just all of the alcohol separates out too.) So, what do you think? I suppose if I weren't lazy, I would start looking for a low-temperature diagram. /Ernie In a message dated 8/22/2004 10:10:52 PM Mountain Standard Time, biofuel@yahoogroups.com writes: Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 13:12:04 -0700 From: Ken Provost <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Extracting alcohol instead of distilling? on 8/22/04 10:19 AM, jseabolt2002 at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Here's my theory. Gasoline and alcohol will mix. Alcohol and water > also will mix. But gasoline is lighter than water so it floats and > doesn't mix. > > So does that mean if you took the alcohol/water from the mash and > mixed it with gasoline, would the alcohol attach itself to the > gasoline and what you would end up with is water on the bottom and > gasoline/alcohol on the top? Then just decant the mixtures? > > It's hard to describe the whole system verbally, but you can do a Google search for the "ternary phase diagram" of the "ethanol-water-gasoline system" and everything will come clear. Essentially, your idea doesn't work. With no water present, ethanol is infinitely soluble (miscible) with gasoline. But being a polar molecule, it vastly "prefers" water. Thus, in mixtures of all three, the alcohol forms a phase with the water, while the gasoline remains a separate phase. In other words, you CAN use water to extract ethanol from gasoline, but you CAN'T use gasoline to extract ethanol from water. -K [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
