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Making Ethanol

Ethyl alcohol, or ethanol fuel, has recently taken center stage with its suggested potential to replace fossil fuels in vehicles. While it is the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it can also be used as a biofuel alternative to gasoline, especially with its affordability and ease of manufacturing.

How to Make Ethanol

Ethanol can be mass-produced by fermenting sugar or by hydration of ethylene from petroleum and a variety of feedstocks such as sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain sorghum, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton, other biomass, as well as many types of cellulose waste and harvestings.

The basic steps for making ethanol are:

Fermentation: Making ethanol requires microbial fermentation of sugar.

Distillation: For the ethanol to be usable as a fuel, water must be removed and have a purity of 95-96%.

Dehydration: The most widely used dehydration method is a physical absorption process using a molecular sieve. Another option is azeotropic distillation, achieved by adding the hydrocarbon benzene which also denatures the ethanol (to render it undrinkable for duty purposes). A third method involves use of calcium oxide as a desiccant.

While greatly simplified, these are the basic steps for making ethanol. For more information on the topic, we encourage you to explore our other articles or seek out recent research in the scientific community.

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Ethanol Production and Co-Products

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