What amount of water is required in ethanol production?

Answer 1

In ethanol production, by fermentation, water is necessary. Ethanol concentration above 15% will kill traditional yeast. Distillation is the removal water to get the alcohol and water to a usable ratio. Some alcohol is used at 15%. Pure alcohol (anhydrous) has all the water removed to practical level.

Many recipes require five gallons of water to ten pounds of grain.

For a practical guide to ethanol, see: Mother's Alcohol Fuel Seminar © The Mother Earth News, 1980. New yeasts have been developed which provide for higher batch yield of ethanol. "Turbo" yeast.

Scott (homedistiller.org) writes : The recipe that I use is one that has been in my family dating back close to 200 yrs. (of course there have been slight modifications over the years...we now use boughten yeasts instead of wild yeasts and we buy tomato paste instead of making it). This recipe is for a 5 gallon mash.

• I take 20lbs. of the biggest stickiest grapes we can pick, and I freeze them.(it is easier to de-stem them when they are frozen).
• Then I pull them off of thier stems and put them in a 3 gallon stockpot and add enough water to cover the grapes a few inches.
• Then I bring them to a boil and mash them with a potato masher untill ALL the grapes are mashed pretty good.
• Then I add 5 lbs. of white granulated sugar and a 6oz can of tomato paste and stir until it is disolved.
• Next, I pour it all into a 6 or 7 gallon bucket and fill it to 5 gallons with cold water, squeeze the juice of 1/2 lemon and cover it.
• When the temp is down to about 78-80 degrees F is when I get my yeast started. I have used baker's yeast and it works fine, but lately I have been using Red Star's champagne yeast.(very similar to ec-1118).
• I take 3-5, 5gram packets and put them in a pitcher that is 1/2 full of the mash from the bucket. I stir it well, and leave it sit over night.
• The next morning, I skim off whatever is floating off the top of the bucket and discard it.
• Then I SLOWLY pour the yeast pitcher into the mash stirring it gently.
• Then I cover it with a couple layers of plastic wrap and a rubber band (I poke some holes in the plastic with a pin).
• Every morning, I skim whatever is floating off the top and stir vigorously, and stir again 3-5 times a day.
• After about 3 days of this, I slowly pour the contents into a new bucket. The grape seeds will be on the bottom of the bucket (I save them and plant them later) you can discard them. Top the bucket with water to 5 gallons, cover it again.
• I will stir it vigorously 3-5 times a day until it stops fermenting. (usually about 2 weeks) when it is done fermenting, it is still a thick juice that contains alcohol, and does not resemble wine at all.

NOW it is ready to run. We have always run in a pot-still.

• 1st run. FAST, collect everything until the distilate comming out is about 20-25%abv.
• 2nd run. SLOW, discard the first 150ml.
• we collect in 250ml increments, and add them together to taste.
• we stop collecting at about 30%abv.

The finished product has a little bit of a grape aroma and after flavor. We usually age it in natural uncharred oak, and sometimes we add about a half cup of raisins to age it with.

Ethanol fuel production from cassava with "turbo" yeast for higher alcohol content will provide more alcohol per batch.

Another recipie recomends: Bring 100 gallons of water to a boil in a large mixing container and add 25 lbs. of ground cornmeal, crushed soybean or wheat. Add 6 oz. of yeast and 100 lbs. of sugar.

Bakers yeast will produce a maximum of around 14% alcohol, whereas the "turbos" can generate up to 20% alcohol. Obviously you'd use different amounts of sugar for either case. Its not that the Turbo makes a higher % from less sugar, its advantage is that it can handle the higher concentrations (first of heaps of sugar, then later, the high alcohol %), and hence you need proportionally less water. Hence you end up with more alcohol in your 20L wash, because you are able to put more sugar in. Only use the Turbo's if you're after a "neutral" alcohol. If you're trying to make a flavoured spirit, (eg corn whisky, brandy, rum, etc) then use a yeast which will help give you the flavour profile that you desire.

Per "Whole Lotta Nada"

It would take 1,215 gallons of water per acre of corn for the conversion process. The yield per acre of corn to ethanol is 405 gallons. That's per year. So how much would it take to run our country for just one day on ethanol? Here are the numbers, 32,035,500 gallons of ethanol or 791,000 acres of corn, 96,106,500 gallons of water and that is just to process it to ethanol. We still have not touched the amount of water it takes to grow it. So for the yearly amount of water required for an ethanol only market is 34,982,766,000. 35 BILLION gallons of water!

Temperature and pH are critical to alcohol production.

When the fermentation has finished, usually the amount of water is lowered by distillation or evaporation.