the BBC

[Cellar_Rat]

Did anyone see Bang Goes the Theory last night?

It was quite interesting and one of the topics was running mopeds on alcohol (amongst other things) there was some interesting points, but mainly that they couldn't distill the rough cider, they have made to any more than 55%.

Is that cobblers?

If you our interested here's the link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dpnsw/Bang_Goes_the_Theory_Series_6_Fuel_for_Free/

[fatbloke]

Yes, it is cobblers Brian. A quick dig round the net, confirms they were probably trying to distil wrongly. Not looked up making fuel yet, as most of the stuff out there seems to be about people in the US making moonshine, but some of the stuff I found to read, suggested that its not to difficult to achieve a 95.6% ABV purity. Whether that's high enough strength to run an engine on, I don't know.....

[Cellar_Rat]

Understanding distillation from schoolboy chemistry just made me think that was all either A) Cobblers B) made for telly

Thanks for backing up my thinking !!

[waggoner]

They should have bought one of those "water distillation" devices from the local HB shop,, from all accounts you can get 90-95% from them. Of course it's illegal to do so though!!

[Rich]

That'd be the water cooled ones then I'd thought, the air cooled water purifiers goto about 60% ish or so I'm told .

[waggoner]

Oh,,i don't know on that,,,,they have them for sell in the local HB shop and the person who works there was telling me about them. Saying that you get 90/95% then you water it down to 40%,,and about all the different flavoured additives you can get too..so only going on what they said.

Not interested myself,,i'll stick to the wine making..

[Cellar_Rat]

I have a friend who reckons his gets up to big numbers

[mcblades]

At Uni, I was making "whisky" out of malt extract wine using a homemade fractionating column and leibig condenser (pipette case full of smashed pipettes for the column and another empty pipette case with a copper pipe running through it and a water jacket for the condenser). worked a treat, but the shine was tres rough. ran it through a gas chromatograph and found all sorts of aromatic alcohols, ketones and methanol. Still, blind drunk was the endpoint and it managed that admirably (note methanol content). BTW the abv of this stuff was about 85% which is proof spirit (doesn't wet gunpowder enough to stop it burning).

Funny thing was one of my flat mates had his guitar nicked and when the boys in blue turned up for a statement they asked what the contraption on the cooker was. Managed to convince them it was a work of art we were drying on the stove. Maybe there is something to the new minimum educational requirements for new PCs in the winsor report.

cheers

Mark

[Cellar_Rat]

... Maybe there is something to the new minimum educational requirements for new PCs in the winsor report.

LOL - very good. I think 'drying art' shows you were aleady benefiting form a uni education.

[goldseal]

Managed to convince them it was a work of art we were drying on the stove