Ethanol: the solvent you can make at home

[Oncewas]

D-Limonene is honestly a futile at home endeavor, unless you have a massive still and large amounts of orange peels. I just removed the piff of 4-5 tangerine peels the other day and put them in my distillation apparatus(which only has a 125mL fluid capacity) and I got around 2-3 mls of tangerine distillate(3 hours of running my heating mantle + 3 hours of running my water pump for 2-3mL).

It's a cool idea in theory, but I just find it impractical. It does smell nice though!

 

[Dorge]

how much does it cost... well... a bag of sugar and some turbo yeast is your biggest cost continually.

No, it's not.

A kilo of sugar coming at around $0.80-£0.80 at cheapest price will give you by fermentation a total of ~600ml ethanol. And yes, you can find alternatives to it, e.g. potatoes as you said even though with potatoes it gets more complicated for starch->sugars conversion (so that you have more fermentables to begin with, I presume you're knowledge on brewing, no?) so more input required here. All in all however, sugars is not the greatest cost. The greatest cost is distilling it as well as producing a distillate of at least 95%.

I ask again, what is the cost of it?

ok your not rude at all... lol your kinda being a jerk man.

again whats the cost of it? ecological cost as well as functional cost.

 

[benzyme]

more trouble than it's worth, unless you're equipped to distill (large copper still).

I know the green thing is in vogue nowadays (although the canadians made green chem cool in the mid 90's, and it took americans a decade to catch on) and your intentions are great
but the standard chems of extractions aren't really bad for the environment.

it's more of a matter of preference, i suppose

 

[Dorge]

Totally... and I am not putting out the whole these chems or solvents are bad rap... because I dont think that way... I do think that making your own ethanol has a lower impact. But seeing how everything seems debatable... what ev...

I do know that some people get a watchful eye some times for buying certain solvents, and you can make one... even if it does not work for a lot of other things it still will work for all the IPA that people use ect. There are some pretty decent stills you can buy online too.
I dont think its more trouble then its worth really, and you have multiple uses for it... such as Emeli vodka... ; )

 

[Infundibulum]

how much does it cost... well... a bag of sugar and some turbo yeast is your biggest cost continually.

No, it's not.

A kilo of sugar coming at around $0.80-£0.80 at cheapest price will give you by fermentation a total of ~600ml ethanol. And yes, you can find alternatives to it, e.g. potatoes as you said even though with potatoes it gets more complicated for starch->sugars conversion (so that you have more fermentables to begin with, I presume you're knowledge on brewing, no?) so more input required here. All in all however, sugars is not the greatest cost. The greatest cost is distilling it as well as producing a distillate of at least 95%.

I ask again, what is the cost of it?

ok your not rude at all... lol your kinda being a jerk man.

again whats the cost of it? ecological cost as well as functional cost.

Well, my above post contains not a single word to support your claim that I allegedly said that home-made ethanol is more expensive. When I asked you about the cost, you said that all the cost was in the sugar and the yeast. I disagreed with that saying that this is the cost for fermentation. or in other ways to produce ~600ml of ethanol diluted in water and yeast byproducts.

Obviously trying to distil the 600ml out of the fermented sugar solution takes more effort, and more money and has additional ecological impact. The home still will not get you everything in one go, you need to distil and re-distil and re-distil. These processes take time and increase the cost. My point was that your assertion that all it costs is the sugar and yeast is wrong and there are more costs "hidden" in the process. I then enquired whether you have any idea about said costs. And that's all basically.

Also, I see no rudeness, I feel no rudeness and I have not the appetite for being a jerk to anyone in particular.

 

[endlessness]

To add to the cost calculation: The easystill is a 320 Watts appliance. It says its capacity is 1.4 liters in 4 hours. This multiplied by how many re-distillations are needed for a pure product, and multiplied by the electricity cost in your area. This way one can have a number.

I havent made the calculation but intuitively it seems pretty clear that indeed its not an effective practice, at least if one wants to use it as a solvent for many extractions.

On the other hand it might be interesting to have it just in the sense of having the alternative, to have the option, in case one cant find pure ethanol in his area, or its a hollidays with all stores closed and one is in an extraction spree and forgot the ethanol (hehe), or if its too expensive because of government taxes, or if one just wants to use a home-made ethanol for the last step of an extraction because one feels subjectively better (so lets say one preffers to use a small amount of home made ethanol for the last step of herb-infusing in making changa)


Btw myd, when I asked if this would distill limonene, I wasnt considering distilling the limonene from orange peels (because indeed like you said it seems when dealing with so large quantities of peels, an industrial process would be way more effective), but more like, if one wants to re-distill his used limonene to clean it up after extracting.

 

[Dorge]

Dont see any rudeness huh?
I see your not a Mod because of your social skills then...

 

[Infundibulum]

Dont see any rudeness huh?
I see your not a Mod because of your social skills then...

yawn....

I think you cannot make a nice soap opera here. I love soap operas. I expected more extreme name calling and you got me disappointed here.

Anyway, in all seriousness now, if you see rudeness please point it out to me clearly so that I see my faults and try to correct them. I didn't say I wasn't rude, I said I see no rudeness. So please help me and refrain from resorting to petty name calling. You can PM me re this issue if you feel like, as this does not belong in this topic. This is a Mod request and I will not further continue such a discussion on this thread.

Ta.

 

[The Traveler]

The absolute biggest cost you have to pay when you buy a bottle of ethanol in a store is taxes! In some tax free zones you can get a 1 liter bottle of ethanol for 2 euro's (about 2.5 dollars). I don't use that much ethanol and every time that I pass through that nice tax free shop at the border of Swiss and Italy I get myself and my GF a total of two nice bottles (you can import one liter per person for free).

So if you see the prices they ask for ethanol, know it's the government who makes the biggest profit by large.

Dont see any rudeness huh?
I see your not a Mod because of your social skills then...

He's our pirate mod, beware his scimitar!


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Observant]

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www.amazingstill.com

maybe this is useful in some way ... maybe not

 

[BananaForeskin]

Alright, guys... first off, as helpful as they may be to some people, store-bought stills are not necessarily the way to go. Also, for the purpose of making a solvent, pot stills are not the way to go. You need a reflux still.

Long before I realized the value of psychedelics, I made my own 90% ethanol in a home-built reflux still, which I used to make absinthe. I still use my own ethanol as a solvent in many situations, like for making caapi or salvia extracts. It is cheap, and fairly easy. Dorge really is right that the major costs involved, besides the initial investment, are in the turbo yeast and sugar. It takes about $8 US dollars (a very liberal cost estimate) for the raw materials to ferment 20 litres of >20% alcohol wash. My still, which is NOT particularly huge (I successfully hid it from my parents for a year, at the beginning), cost $150 US dollars in materials (including the propane torch, boiler, and portable stove to heat it on) and puts out about 1 litre of 90% alcohol per hour after it's warmed up.

I recycle the cooling water, so that's maybe a half cent of electricity (once again, liberal estimate) and $2 of wash to make a litre of 90% ethanol.

It's not expensive, in fact it's a lot cheaper to make it than buy it here (where Everclear costs a lot more than one euro a litre). Despite the low materials and power consumption, I would agree that it is probably more ecologically friendly to buy ethanol. But it's cheap, and fun, to make it on your own.

Everything that got me started is on here: Distillers Wiki

Look at reflux stills, and fractionating column stills. This is the sort of equipment that would be used for making ethanol as a solvent; all of those dinky little counter-top pot stills that they sell online are for making schnapps in your kitchen as a hobby.

 

[benzyme]

alcohol is a useful solvent, but it is very nonselective. it pulls all sorts of undesirables.
yields from MHRB would be around 40% dmt. an A/B will be ~80-90%.

 

[tryptographer]

Alright, guys... first off, as helpful as they may be to some people, store-bought stills are not necessarily the way to go. Also, for the purpose of making a solvent, pot stills are not the way to go. You need a reflux still.
Everything that got me started is on here: Distillers Wiki

Good advice! It requires some skill and dedication but reflux is the way to go if high purity ethanol is desired.
Using pot stills, a triple distillation is needed to get close to 90% and the product is less pure (more taste, that's why pot stills are used for whiskey and reflux stills for tasteless grain alcohol/wodka).

 

[69ron]

Isn't a reflux still just a still with a reflux condenser?

Could you just use an Allihn condenser or does it need to be a coil reflux condenser specifically?

Also, if the condenser works too well, don't you just get reflux without any distillate as you normally do with a Soxhlet running properly? So you need to be adjusting the cooling all the time or it won't work?

 

[BananaForeskin]

Nope, a reflux still is not just a still with a typical reflux condenser. A reflux still is a pot still (or regular still, you might say) with a reflux column on top. The reflux of the distillate back down the column, after condensing on some sort of high-surface area packing material inside the column, purifies it, essentially mimicking multiple distillations in one go.
Then the purified ethanol vapor from the reflux column enters your condenser of choice, condenses, and out trickles the distillate.

I hate to say I'm not very familiar with proper equipment like Allihn condensers or Soxhlets, so if I answer like I'm misunderstanding their purpose, feel free to correct me.

Anyway... the reflux column itself needs some sort of coolant entering at some point. Just to make sure no-one is confused, I will be referring to the reflux column and the condenser as separate things. They are two separate entities in this process. In the case of a reflux still in which the condenser is mounted physically away from the reflux column, coolant needs to pass through the reflux column at one or two points. See the first picture. There is a reflux column, with what is effectively an Allihn condenser coming off of it. The coolant passes through the top of the column, enters the condenser, and passes back out through the bottom of the column.

In the second picture, there's a reflux still in which the condenser is mounted inside the reflux column (or on top of it, whichever makes mental conception easiest for you). The cool air from the condenser regulates the temperature in the reflux column, and a catchment plate diverts all (now liquid) ethanol off to a tap on the side. Because this second design is much less complicated and requires less material, it is a more common one. My reflux still is a larger (and tweaked) version of the one pictured here. The design is much like the Soxhlet running properly of which you speak, except that the catchment plate diverts the distillate to the tap.

With a well-designed reflux still, you barely need to adjust anything at all throughout the process... pot stills can be a pain in the ass, but once a reflux still gets going at the right temperature and with the right rate of coolant flow, it'll purr like a kitten and smoothly put out each distillate (methanol, ethanol, fusels) in sequence, like clockwork, and with minimal human interference.

 

[69ron]

Can’t you just use a normal glass lab still with a vigreux column, and then a condenser to perform the same function as one of these reflux stills? A vigreux column makes separation of the distillate far more accurate before the distillate reaches the condenser by performing pretty much the same type of action as the reflux still you are explaining. Is there a reason a vigreux column is not used?

 

[BananaForeskin]

Yeah, it looks like a lab still with a vigreux column would effectively be a reflux still. If you have that equipment lying around, 69ron, you are all set and ready to go!

There are only two reasons I can think of why home distillers don't use vigreaux columns and the like, the first of which may be totally invalid:

1. Size could be an issue. I'm guessing that it'd be fairly expensive to make a two-, or five-gallon still, which are some of the common sizes out of lab equipment. How big would a vigreux column+condenser need to be to handle an acceptable rate of distillation at those sizes...? Most of the vigreux columns I see immediately are only 200-300mm tall.

2. Hell, I haven't even heard of a vigreux column before now, and the idea of using lab equipment to build a still has never crossed my mind! I've never seen it mentioned in distilling forums or sites. The really traditional material to build a large still out of it copper, and it's still called the best. So I would say the main reason is not size but ignorance of the possiblity in the distilling community... which is silly!

Given that the average solvent-making Nexian doesn't need a 2- to 5-gallon still, this could be the answer. Putting together a small reflux still out of lab equipment would be ideal for such an enterprise, as it is clean and avoids the tricky soldering jobs that go along with building things like the mini-still shown above. If making ethanol ever enters the wiki, I would say that it definitely needs to include this!!

 

[Dorge]

glad to see this went beyond smarmy comments.
lots of good info guys!