Homemade alcohol for degreasing?

With all the painting I've been doing, I've been using a lot of various solvents to wipe stuff down before painting.

While visiting friends that brew their own beer I got the gears clicking over in my head.  Is there any possibility that I could set up some sort of perpetual still in the garage that will let me have a steady supply of ethanol/methanol to degrease stuff?  I know I don't want to be drinking methanol, but are there other health risks for being around it?

I suspect distilling alcohol is illegal, even if you're not going to drink it.  It's also moderately dangerous in an explode-y kind of way.

You absolutely can, but honestly the take isn't as much as you would think, and the run would take a couple hours depending on batch size.  BUT, it is a LOT of fun and I find home brewing to be one of my favorite hobbies.  so here goes:

First, to be legal by the feds you'll need a Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) fuel alcohol permit.  Super easy to get:  https://www.ttb.gov/business-central/requirements-small-alcohol-fuel-plant-afp  but remember, this is for fuel only, drinking your product would still be a felony. 

Next, you'll need to read your local state laws to see what they require.  For Washington State (where I was) there was no requirement to denature the fuel alcohol you made as long as it stayed on the property.  So the joke was that I used the fuel in the "lawnmower" but I was the one mowing the lawn

Next up is equipment, and you can either build the still yourself or you can buy one from Mile High Distilling (or similar).  Each type will have its plusses and minuses but I recommend the "Bokakob Reflux":  https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36050

Super easy to build, and works extremely well.

I recommend the reflux over a pot still as you're going to be shooting for 70% and above for any sort of cleaning you plan to do.  Your typical pot still isn't going to hit that mark without a stripping run which would mean you'd have to run it at least twice before you got the alcohol content to where you want to be.  The stuff that comes out of a reflux can be as high as 96% at first and goes down from there.  If you put a 2.5" flange at the bottom of a BokaKob, you can mount it to an old keg for a boiler.  From there you can heat the keg boiler with a hot water heating element and some sort of controller to start the heat at x-temp, and you'll slowly turn it up from there (as the alcohol percentage drops, your temps rise).  I used an aquarium pump to push water into my cooling coil (and to the liebig condenser on my output tube).

Next is the recipe:  Generally I like to keep my "wash" under 10% and I stay away from turbo yeast.  I've found that going over 10% or using turbo yeast really ups the methanol in my batches.  BUT if you you're not drinking it, you don't need to worry about that or spend a lot of money on ingredients.  7 or 8lbs lbs of regular old white sugar in a 5-gallon batch of water.  Boil it and add in an 8-12 ounce can of tomato paste for nutrients.  Run whatever wine or turbo yeast your heart so desires.  Two weeks later, you'll have something ready for the still.

I cant remember what my takes were like when I had my Boka...  It wasn't much.  Under a gallon that was over 60% for every 5-gallon wash if memory serves me correctly.  Might be off there by a bit.  Anyhoo, home distilling is very much legal here in Hungary so I've quit with the pretending I was making fuel and started to play with my pot still we bought from the hardware store here

Ooh!  but dont worry about stills blowing up.  As long as you're paying attention, things are smooth and simple (so easy a redneck can do it).  Be warned though, stills do get lonely.  If you leave the area, you accept the risks   On the Boka what I did was drill a 1/4" hole at the top of the cap, right between the cooling coil inlet and outlets, and laid a penny over top of it.  Any overpressure that couldnt escape my outlet was going to escape through there (ultimately a still is an open system, but an extra vent for safety never hurt anyone). 

After all that, the only thing left to overcome is the negative stigma and misinformation leftover from the prohibition era.  Checkout https://homedistiller.org and read until your eyes bleed.  Lots of good info and people there (but they do expect you to do your homework before posting).

Good times.

As others have said: is it possible? Sure. Is it practical? Not really. You're likely to spend as much in raw materials as you're able to extract.

Acetone and industrial alcohols are really cheap for you to buy. They are waste products from distillation (and refining, I think). What you're talking about is going through the process of getting a good distilled product, just to collect the waste.

It would be like brewing beer just to get spent grain for animal feed and yeast for baking, but throwing out all the beer.

Now, if you want to take up home distilling, that's a separate but dubiously legal hobby.

Keep in mind that what you'd yield in waste acetone and alcohols is actually pretty low. We collect a lot more in our spirits run than we cut from our heads and tails. It's not worth it to us to collect our waste for cleaning. We just buy gallon jugs of isopropyl.

Beer Baron said:

 

Keep in mind that what you'd yield in waste acetone and alcohols is actually pretty low. We collect a lot more in our spirits run than we cut from our heads and tails. It's not worth it to us to collect our waste for cleaning. We just buy gallon jugs of isopropyl.

That's really interesting to me- I expected even small distilleries to save it and just use it.  

One other note- there are some sources of "sugar" that can be really cheap- many fruit farms sell the bad looking stuff for really cheap, or may even give it away.  Not that I've totally looked into that, but when we were doing other cooking on a large scale, it was interesting how discounted bad looking fruit was.  

(and in terms of process, making wine is easier than making beer- as there's no process to turn starch into sugar)

While I'm a huge bourbon fan, I'd probably make grape brandy, since that's what I have in my backyard.

alfadriver said:

That's really interesting to me- I expected even small distilleries to save it and just use it.  

We save the heads to blend back in to subsequent batches. Eventually to build up enough to do a full Heads Run. Still has a lot of good flavor-positive components and drinkable ethanol that can be separated with more runs.

So really all we're left with are the foreshots. We could save those for acetone... but it's just not much and not as good for my uses in brewery sanitation as high quality isopropyl.

A friend of mine used his heads and tails as solvent.  Unfortunately he hasn't run in a while and is out of clearer.  He's currently building a flute still so might have less waste.

With as cheap as isopropyl generally is, I can't see distilling as an overly viable way to get cleaning alcohol.  You can buy a case of 91% iso for what amounts to about $10/gal even in pandemic times.  I found some at a surplus store for $1/qt last year.  In PA, drinking alcohol is stoopid expensive, but in MD you can often find a 1.75L of everclear for $20

When you brew the beer, you can only yield about 14% alcohol depending on the yeast you use.  Just seems like a lot of brewing/distilling for only a 14% yield.

Now if you're making whiskey, I'll be down to help you with quality control :)

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Wonder how difficult it is to extract the gasoline portion from $2/gallon E85.

It would still be denatured, since I doubt anything you could do at home for cheaper than just buying denatured would get it food-grade pure.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Pretty simple, actually.  Add 50% water and shake the hell out of it.  The ethanol will mix with the water, which wont mix with the gasoline.  From there you can let it settle and pour/siphon off the gas, and run the ethanol mixture through your still.

It may just be squeemish me, but even after the process I wouldnt drink ethanol that was mixed with gasoline

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Wonder how difficult it is to extract the gasoline portion from $2/gallon E85.

It would still be denatured, since I doubt anything you could do at home for cheaper than just buying denatured would get it food-grade pure.

I might be concerned that the gasoline that remains in the distillate after un-denaturing might render the degreasing part not very good.  I think Asa is thinking of this as a final wipe before applying paint, not just a general degreaser.

The components in gasoline have widely varied boiling points, some of which evaporate sooner than alcohol.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

For a final wipe before paint, I personally would just buy whatever chemical, be it denatured alcohol or acetone or whatever.  It's $15-20 in gallon cans.

OTOH, I'm the guy who had POR-15 come off in sheets.  I could probably screw anything up when it comes to paint.

Interesting stuff here guys, thanks.  I wondered if it would be worth it or if I'd be chasing my tail.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

For a final wipe before paint, I personally would just buy whatever chemical, be it denatured alcohol or acetone or whatever.  It's $15-20 in gallon cans.

OTOH, I'm the guy who had POR-15 come off in sheets.  I could probably screw anything up when it comes to paint.

Much truth.  I'm here to offer advice on alcohol.  NEVER take paint and body work advice from the Curtis.