[Stoves] News: Methanol cooking fuel for india...

[Andrew Heggie]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 at 23:57, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
<crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

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> The attached paper explains how to use a second pass through a distillation system to greatly reduce the water content of the ethanol in spite of the fact it is bound to the water as an azeotrope. See Fig 13 for the principles and Fig 14 for the method used in Canada to create 99.5% pure ethanol with only distillation towers.
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> The method (patented in 1980) uses a recycled additive that that also wants to create a three-component azeotrope. This boils at a lower temperature (if you choose carefully) and leaves the ethanol free to condense in the tower without the ethanol-water azeotrope. The reasons why there is still 0.5% water is explained in detail in the paper.

I have not had time to look at the paper and also not so inclined as I
am not particularly interested in ethanol as a fuel. Not only because
of the dangers from aldehyde if poorly burned but I'm wary of its
abuse and dangers if imbibed.

I can see the possibilities in the patented route you cite but its
hardly in the spirit of a rural enterprise for which distilling  a
fermented alcohol  to make a spirit is the aim.

Wishing you all the complements of the season.

Andrew