Re: Industrial ethanol

[rangaz]

Sorry to bring this back up but a recent unit on organic chemistry has sparked my interest again as this process could produce clean spirit for use with essences with practically no fusels to speak of. Whether it would be cheap enough to be practical is another. If you were to bubble ethene through water slowly, passing over a distributor of conc H2SO4, The only problem would be neutralising the H2SO4 at the end with NaOH or something similar and then distilling to get rid of the salt and increasing proof. Again, not sure of the prices of conc H2SO4 or ethene, so not sure whether this is viable or not

[markx]

A rather cruel and unusual way for producing drinking spirit IMO. It takes clean chemicals to ensure a pure product but obtianing them ain't exactly cheap and removing the byproducts or contaminants originating from unclean starting materials can take a lot of effort. I'd rather stick to classical fermentation and distillation when it comes to making booze.

[hornedrhodent]

Again, not sure of the prices of conc H2SO4 or ethene, so not sure whether this is viable or not

Probably cheaper to buy booze than those chemicals - not to mention attracting the attention of the anti-terrorist authorities.

[Uncle Remus]

.....or you could make a nice wash in the first place, and distill it and pay attention to your cuts.

[Watershed]

Most industrial spirit ( over here anyway ) is made by grain distillation anyhow - all our lab absolute is. It's just cheaper to produce.