Learning About Homemade Ethanol

Although homemade ethanol can certainly be a dangerous thing, it can also be a rather intriguing thing, and so in order to be able to understand everything about homemade ethanol in general, one must learn about how to make it, what is involved in the process, and more, as well as what the dangers are of homemade ethanol; only when all of these matters are discussed can a proper viewpoint be taken on the subject matter.

About Homemade Ethanol

In regards to the matter of homemade ethanol, basically there are several facts that should be taken into consideration, such as: the level of interest in using alcohol as motor fuel has followed cycles of fuel shortages and/or low feed-grain prices; alcohols burn more completely, thus increasing combustion efficiency; and that there are many disadvantages to using alcohols, particularly methyl and ethyl alcohol.

As well, ethanol, which is grain alcohol, can be made out of straw; and in fact the ability to make ethanol from straw rice straw, wheat straw, oat straw, etc.- is truly the modern day equivalent of the Holy Grail or the Philosopher s Stone, as in a time when barely any new oil fields have been discovered in the past ten years, and a war in Iraq rages with such madness that it seems unlikely that anyone will be able to pump oil for the next several years.

As well, intensive research on cellulose conversion to ethanol previously focused on that of mechanical, heat and acid hydrolysis techniques, all of which are expensive, and as well, it should be known however that cellulose ethanol truly has two unique advantages over conventional alcohol.

The first is that the greenhouse gas emission reductions from cellulose ethanol are three times greater than those from grain based ethanol on a life cycle basis, and second, cellulose ethanol is made from a plentiful and renewable resource, which is the non-food portion of agriculture crops.

The ethanol industry in general is truly growing at an incredible pace, and in fact, production was up nearly 23 percent compared to just last June when 180,000 b/d of ethanol was produced; the ethanol industry is also expected to produce more than 3.3 billion gallons in 2004, up from 2.81 gallons in 2003.

Overall it is quite easy to see that there is much to know about ethanol in general, and also that in order to be able to have a proper viewpoint on it altogether, we need to try and understand as much about it in general as we can.

The Ethanol Fuel Cell: Information That is Critical in the Understanding of Ethanol Overall

The ethanol fuel cell is a matter which needs to be taken quite seriously into consideration, especially once you realize the fact that using ethanol as fuel and this directly surrounds the matter of the ethanol fuel cell is actually one of the most topics of conversation in the world today.

In fact, the largest single use of ethanol period is as motor fuel and fuel additive, and the largest national fuel ethanol industries exist in Brazil, and one of the most major methods of production is through fermentation of sugar; ethanol also creates very little pollution, which is absolutely a positive thing, and as well, millions of acres of land are going to be needed if ethanol is to be used to replace gasoline hence why the matter of ethanol fuel cell is so critical.

More About the Ethanol Fuel Cell

In regards to leaning more about the ethanol fuel cell in general, basically you need to know that a fuel cell is a device that can actually obtain 40 to 50% efficiency in the conversion of fuel into useable power; this technology is actually a by-product of the NASA space program, which was originally developed to provide a lightweight and efficient power source for use on manned space missions.

However, it was soon realized that this incredible technology could be used for numerous other reasons, and so it was thus eventually shared with the world, and now there is the fact that ethanol is being considered as being the most major option to a replacement for gasoline in the world; this is even more important considering the fact that we are presently in a war with Iraq and that for the most part this is also where we get our fuel from.

It should also be known that some fuel cells actually use specialized molecular sieves made of complex polymers with some type of anode/cathode properties, and then others use expensive platinum catalysts. Then there are those which use pure hydrogen as a fuel source in order to be able to make electricity, and some are designed to run on propane, but they then may only have a membrane life expectancy of about 3,000 hours.

Overall, we can see the importance of this issue, and understand now why we should take it much more seriously into consideration overall.