How to make ethanol

The basic way to make ethanol is with an ethanol conversion kit. The ethanol conversion kit is also known as an ethanol still and they are available at reasonable rates. You can make ethanol with this kit. The process involves fermentation of sugar feedstock into alcohol and then processing or distilling it through an ethanol still in order to make ethanol. Also an important point to remember is that you need to get a license for producing ethanol at your own home. In most places actually it is considered an illegal act to produce ethanol at your own home locally. This is why a special permit is required which is issued by the authorities only after several formalities.

Making ethanol at home is a good idea as it is a way of cheap alternative fuel. Most often the wet and dry mill processes are used to make ethanol. Under the dry mill process, the steps involved are milling, liquefaction, fermentation, distillation followed by dehydration and denaturing. The milling step involves passing the corn feedstock through a hammer mill that grinds it and converts it into a powder called meal. Then the meal is mixed with water along with alpha-amylase and the starch is liquefied by passing it through cookers. After that a pulp like substance comes out of the cookers. To this pulp, glucoamylase is added in order to transform the liquefied starch into sugar that will further be fermented.

The fermentation process is carried on by adding yeast to the pulp. This will help the sugar to ferment into ethanol and also carbon dioxide. Then it is required that the alcohol is removed from the solids and water. This is done through the process of distillation. At this point the alcohol is almost at its full strength that is approximately 96 per cent. Water is to be removed from the alcohol. For this it is passed through a dehydration system which uses a molecular sieve that removes each and every single drop of water from the alcohol. Finally ethanol is produced. But one major step that is required to be made after ethanol has been made is denaturing. This a process by which the ethanol is made unfit for human consumption. It is done when ethanol is used to make fuel. The reason for doing this is to ensure that it is not misused and consumed by any person. People may get tempted as it is technically alcohol. This cannot be allowed and has to be discouraged. This is done by adding a small percentage of gasoline to it, almost two to five per cent. Thus, ethanol becomes poisonous.

Under the wet mill process, the steps involved are steeping, screening, separation, starch conversion, germ separation, drying, fermentation, syrup refining and oil refining of the germ. Well, these processes are carried out at big plants. But if you want to produce ethanol at home you can carry out the similar processes at a smaller scale with ingredients such as ethanol distiller, water boiler, alpha amylase, glucoamylase, yeast grain, water plastic barrel. You basically do not require the huge hi-tech machines that are used in the big plants if you are a small scale producer working from your own home. A word a precaution is that since ethanol is flammable all the processes need to be carried out with care and at a proper place. So you need an out house or a garage as it should not be done inside the house. While fermentation specially, the ethanol should be kept somewhere outside in a protected area. Ethanol should be stored in a plastic container.