How to make ethanol from potato?

Question

friends.. the answers are all good...however.. I am looking 4 Industrial//fuel grade ethanol//fuel grade.. brewing poitin / whisky is illegal around my place too.

Answer 1

In Poland, they make vodka out of potatoes, so it's definately possible.

You need to ferment the potatoes somehow. The starches must first be broken down into simple sugars. An enzyme released by germinating barley converts starches into sugars. Thus, the germination of barley, called malting, is the firststep in brewing beer from potatoes.

Answer 2

You can make ethanol from a potato. The drink is called poitin(absolute rocket fuel!!!).

How it's done....im not sure, sorry.

Answer 3

The americans call it moon shine and its lethal stuff,you can make it by extracting the ethanol from the potato but i dont know exactly how its done but i think its the same kind of process as making wine.

Answer 4

If what you are proposing is the production of illicit whiskey (poitin) then first find an Irish bog well away from any housing. The smell is appalling and someone will tell on you.

Now, the potatoes are mashed up small to help with the fermentation process. A sugary solution known as "wort" is added and a little live yeast. This is the mash. The mixture is then allowed to ferment in a warm place for a few days until a frothy scum starts to form on the surface. After about two days discard the scum and place the mix, now a weak "beer" in your pot still. Light a turf fire under the still and heat the mixture in it. This distillation process separates the alcohol from the water and potato mix. The vapour is passed down a distilation "worm" usually of coiled copper pipe, (dangerous) or even lead (deadly, you'll be lucky if you only go blind). The cooled mixture is then distilled a second time to produce alcohol at about 80% abv. This WILL kill you if you drink it. To make poitin you then cut the alcohol with pure water from a spring down to around 40% abv. The secret is in the distillation process, too cool and you lose most of the alcohol, too hot and you evaporate water into the distillate and ruin it. That then is poitin, done well it is lovely, done badly it will blind or kill you. If the process is done with malted barley instead it makes proper, although still illegal whiskey. Another popular variation is made with a mix of crab apples and malted barley. Done well this is delicious stuff.

I seriously advise not doing this unless you have a very sound scientific background by the way.

Answer 5

potatoes contain starch that is a complex carbohydrate. You have to break starchup into simple sugars and then carry out fermentation with enzymes present in yeast. Most vodka in Poland and Russia is produced from potatoes, so it can be done. In Europe, however, making moonshine is illegal.

Answer 6

You need to have a yeast ferment the carbohydrates present into the potato, to get alcohol.  Different yeasts process different types of carbs, so it might be easiest to boil the potatoes/mash them before adding the yeast.

Un-sprayed fruit (especially apples) will often have yeast on their skin (you don't always need to add yeast to the "mash" when making cider). Don't know if they're work on potato.

fermentation will can only produce alcohol up to a MAXIMUM of about 22% proof. (I've managed a home brew mead that the hydrometor indicated was 27%. While it was certainly strong I think the measuring process had gone wrong somewhere!)  To get any stronger (as would need to burn it as a fuel) you need a way of pulling the water out of thre "brew". distilation is one way, but annother way is by using a dehydration method.

Maybe add anhydrous copper sulfphate, untill it's completely saturated, and wont disolve any more. The liquid that's decanted off should contain less water, as the copper sulphate will have absorbed some of the water. The remaining liquid will probably contain some copper sulphate, but I don't know quite how much.  If this technique, or something similar used a salt that was toxic it could bypass the need to pay tax on distilled alcohol, as it couldn't really be drunk.

You can regenerate the hydrated copper sulphate (which is a blue colour) by heating it to drive off the water, leaving white anhydrous copper sulphate.

It's VERY VERY difficult to  remove ALL the water from alchol (100% proof is only 50% alchol by volume) At really high strength the alcohol will absorb mosture from the atmosphere.

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One trick to reducing the energy needed for distalation is to add oil to the "brew", leave it for a while, and then decant the oil off and distill the alochol out of the oil. What happens is the alcohol is far more soluble in the oil, than water is, This means the means the oil contains a greater percentage of alcohol, and very little water. Also as the oil has a higher vapour pressure than water, you get far less of it passing through the distallation. Only problem is the oil usually degrades when it's heated.

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I've also heard that you can make biodiesel fuel from ethanol/oil which has a lot of water, using a so called supercritical process. Don't know how fessible it would be to use alcohol straight from fermentation but it may be worth looking into.

Answer 7

You have to mash up the potatoes, mix them with water, add yeast and allow the starch to ferment (with a CO2 gas release 'bubbler' inserted).

Then it has to be distilled at 78°C to produce the Ethanol.

(It is however, illegal in most Countries. (Moonshine is frowned upon).

Further to your additional words. Ethanol is Ethanol whether fuel grade or Whisky grade. It's production from potatoes for a fuel additive would be rather a poor project.

Production of Ethanol on a Commercial scale is big business involving the grinding of grains like Corn, Barley, Wheat and Rice ..etc.

The ground grains are kind of 'dissolved' in water which liquefies the starches which break down into sugars by enzyme action of the yeast used to ferment the solution to produce a rough Ethanol solution that is then separated from the solid deposits and then Distilled under strict temperature and reflux control to produce virtually pure Ethanol.

And, to the thumbs downer, stick you thumb where it will do more good. Afraid of my Correct answer ..Eh !?.

Answer 8

I've done this.

The distilled alcohol is pure heaven, provided you get the right 'cut'. Get the wrong stuff and it's nasty!

Eidt: (Oh, Mr Customs and Excise Man. This was many years ago, and I only did it the once. And I've never done it since.)