Bio-fuel

[hairyape1]

Ok... I know this is potentially a bad subject, due to what is going on with bio-fuel on world-wide scales... and of which I completely don’t agree with.
But I was wondering if anybody on the community has had any experience with making bio-ethanol from waste products? I have read about making it from all kinds of waste products, from the obvious sugar based substances all the way to wood or waste paper...
Would be great to hear if anyone has had any success in producing their own?

Thanks

Benji

[Eco_AL]

Nope, havn't tried it yet but it is on my 'to do' list.

I have a serious amount of leaves every year and want to try making some kind of biofuel from them. Either by fermenting them to produce ethanol or put them in a biodigester for methane, or both. I also want to try making producer gas with them to see if that is viable.

[smallnetto]

Theres a process called gasification, basically you can put any bio-mass into a container with a little bit of other precesses involved and turn it into a substance that burns cleaner than gasoline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification

now i have not worked on this subject yet so i still do not have much information regarding it but.....i will be working on it within the next year. if your interested i will let you know when i start looking up more information.

[Eco_AL]

Theres a process called gasification, basically you can put any bio-mass into a container with a little bit of other precesses involved and turn it into a substance that burns cleaner than gasoline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification

now i have not worked on this subject yet so i still do not have much information regarding it but.....i will be working on it within the next year. if your interested i will let you know when i start looking up more information.

Yes I have looked at gasification and producer gas, woodgas etc. It looks very promising. That will be another project.
My main reason for looking at biogas or ethanol from leaves is that I already have a very large septic tank system and biodigester running. Neither of them is being utilised for fuel, just water treatment. So It wouldn't be very difficult for me to alter the system to take the annual leaf drop and turn it into gas. Ethanol production would be harder and to be honest that would be purly for research as gas would be easier for me to use.
I have also bee looking at leaves as part of home made paper logs to replace firewood.