Quote:
Originally Posted by smeard
Ok so update: more research has been performed. US gov requires all fuel based alcohols to be diluted to 95.5% which is deemed undrinkable. Someone could try to if they were desperate, but severe discomfort, vomiting and pain could ensue. Just a weird thought that came into my head. Hope you find this helpful! (Doubt it  ) |
95.5% ABV is very drinkable - you just mix it equal parts with water. It's the 4.5% of contaminants that they add which are specifically designed to make it undrinkable that you can't stomach.
So, short answer: Yes, E85 is 85% ethanol (if you buy it in summer). That's exactly the same substance that makes up 43.8% of a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue.
And E85 is cheap because it's not taxed like alcohol, and generally speaking the entire manufacturing process is government subsidized.
The problem is the other 15% - which is gasoline and a mixture of nasty stuff to make it undrinkable. Getting rid of the Gasoline is easy - you just 'float it off'. Ethanol is water soluble, oil and gas is not.
Mix your E85 with equal parts water, let it sit, then carefully separate the bottom 80% of the solution (water solution including alcohol) from the top 15% (oil and gas).
Discard the top 20%, keep the bottom 80%
But the hard part is getting rid of the contaminants. Unsurprisingly, there's not a lot of information online about how to do that. I'd suggest a mixture of distillation and activated carbon filtering.
Thanks to some enterprising scientists and a government grant, it's not entirely uncharted waters.
The trouble is you want to make damn sure you've got all the methanol out of the solution (because it'll make you go blind), and all the ugly tasting additives that make you throw up, which are probably specifically designed to have the same boiling point as the ethanol. You're either going to need a chemical analysis laboratory at your disposal; or a bunch of rednecks who'll test your moonshine for you.
tl;dr: It's very possible to extract drinking alcohol out of E85, but it's a complicated process and if you get it wrong you'll be drinking gasoline (or worse). It's not something your old man will be doing for a quick fix. At this stage it doesn't seem like anybody's conducted the trial and error process (including human testing) necessary to develop a how-to-guide.