Joe, There doesn't seem to be any majik bullet for this. The rate of diffusion is related to the kintetic energy (or vapor pressure?) of the ethanol, its concentration, and the surface area it is diffusing through.
I wonder if the problem extracting ethanol from wine is that it only represents 12 - 13% by volume. as concentration of ethanol drops/water rises that azeotropic deal becomes more of a factor. It may be necessary to first distill the alcohol ..... 50%, 60%, 80% ?? Then dry it with the castor oil screen. If so, the picture that is starting to develop is not a pretty one: A. Fermentation ..... distill ferment ..... castor oil screen allows recovery of some anhydrous ethanol. At some point ethanol conc. drops "screening" is no longer feasible. B. Return "exhausted" ethanol/water mix to the still along with next ferment. Thanks for the time and effort you are putting in. I think that ultimately, the successful production of energy on a small-scale, and hence local level ..... intergrated with sustainable farming, will include ethanol production. Now go have a drink. Tom ----- Original Message ----- From: Joe Street To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 9:23 AM Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Ethyl Esters (was Making Methanol) Hi Tom Well I put a couple of bottles of my hooch in a flask and dumped enough castor oil on top to form a layer about 2cm thick. Heated to 60 degrees C and started to nod off while waiting for something to happen. So I went to bed and left the hot plate on overnight......well in the morning......I crept downstairs....full of anticipation, like a child on Chritmas morning and......there was this collosal.....huge.......disappointment. There was nothing interesting. Even though I had crossed my heart and hoped to die. So I reduced the oil layer to about 2mm to try again. It is stormy here today and the temperature controller I am using is digital and uses pulse control for power modulation with a solid state relay. I didn't feel comfortable leaving the experiment running while I went to work in case of a surge on the electrical which could result in the loss of the relay and the hot plate then running full blast so I shut it down. I'll try again over the weekend if I can. It looks like the diffusion rate of alcohol through the castor oil is depressingly slow. It may still work though but may require a lot of time. If so it might be a candidate for some type of solar heated affair that you just let sit for days. Dunno. It's no majik bullet at least. Maybe seives is still the best bet. Haven't tried corn grits yet either.... Joe Thomas Kelly wrote: Joe, What's the word? I've had my fingers, eyes,and heart (?) crossed for days now ..... on the edge of my seat, "waiting a shivers" for the results of the castor oil screen/ pinot noir experiment. My fingers and eyes are holding up but my heart is starting to cramp up. Encouraging? Discouraging? Inconclusive? If I recall correctly, any response with the term bat guano in it means "Sorry, I don't want to talk about it." Tom ----- Original Message ----- From: Joe Street To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 10:09 AM Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Ethyl Esters (was Making Methanol) Hi Tom; Yes you got the idea I am thinking about. I worked a bit on the setup last night. I've got some old pinot noir I made a few years back ( which is a difficult grape at the best of times) which is a bout a 0000 on the dryness scale. I'll take a bottle or two and put it in a flask and pour in some castor oil which will float on the surface. Since the flask narrows at the top it won't take too much castor oil to form the barrier layer. I'll heat to just below the boiling point and see what happens. Perhaps the alcohol molecules will drag some water with them as you said. The only way to know is to find out. In the very least I'll have some high potency ethanol for making herbal tinctures. If I'm lucky I'll have dry ethanol!! Fingers crossed, eyes crossed, heart crossed, hoping to find out..... Tirah Joe
_______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/