It depends on why you want to get to the azeotrope point. If your goal is to use absolute alcohol as a fuel, then you are wasting your time. absulute, or pure ethanol with spontaneously revert back to the azeotrope with any exposure to moisture in the air.
If you are wanting a way to clean the water out of the azeotrope so that it can be used for the esterification process, then why not use an oxidation/reduction reaction instead. Once you get Azeotropic ethanol and you want to use it to esterify you fatty acids, it is just needs to be processed with metalic potassium. If you take azeotropic alcohol and slowly add metallic Potassium to it. The Potasium reacts with water to form hydrogen gas and pottassium hydroxide (KOH). The metallic Potassium will aslo interact with the alcohol in a similar manner to yeild Hydrogen gas and CH3CH2OK. These are very strong bases that should react with our oil to produce diesel. John Taylor wrote: > > > > >From: "Thomsons" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Reply-To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com > >To: <biofuel@yahoogroups.com> > >Subject: [biofuel] Azeotropic ditillation > >Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 21:31:08 -0000 > > > >Can anyone give sond tchnical data as to why azeotropic ditillation > is no > >longer used comercially? Will the use of molecular sieves be > overtaken by > >pervaporation with membranes to produce 200 proof ethanol? > > > >Andy Thomson > > > Dear Andy, > > I am a chemist by education, but little have I used (or remember) what > I > learned years ago. I do environmental now, so most of what I do is > specific > to that. > > I do know that distillation takes Lots of heat energy. So this is a > big > negative. > > However.... > > At one time I worked for a company that made oxygen concentrators. > They > used molecular sieve material in a reciprocating flow system to > separate > oxygen from nitrogen. > > I wonder if a similar system could be used to concentrate ethanol in a > much > more efficient manner than distillation? > > Yours, > > John Taylor > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com > > > Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. > To unsubscribe, send an email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get your FREE credit report with a FREE CreditCheck Monitoring Service trial http://us.click.yahoo.com/ACHqaB/bQ8CAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
