EPISODE-777- ALCOHOL FUEL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH STEVEN HARRIS

[Hootie]

The Survival Podcast http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com

SERIES:     TSP
EPISODE:  777
DATE:         November 3, 2011
TITLE:         EPISODE-777- ALCOHOL FUEL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WITH STEVEN HARRIS










SOURCE FILE:
http://www.survivalpodcast.net/audio/2011/11-11/epi-00777-steven-harris-alcohol-fuel-q-and-a.mp3

FILE ARCHIVE:   
http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/episode-777-alcohol-fuel-questions-and-answers-with-steven-harris

DESCRIPTION:
Today one of our all time favorite guests, Steven Harris returns.  In episode 755 Steven went over exactly how to make alcohol fuels at home and how to use alcohol fuels in modern vehicles.  Today he comes back to answer the massive number of questions that episode yielded.
Steven Harris is a consultant and expert in the field of energy. He is the founder and CEO of Knowledge Publications, the largest energy only publishing company in the USA.
Mr. Harris came to his current position to do full time work on the development and implementation of hydrogen, biomass and solar related energy systems after spending 10 years in the Aero-Thermal Dynamics department of the Scientific Labs of Chrysler Corporation.

Join us today as we discuss…
Why small scale production is where to start
How to ensure you get a full mixture with gas and ethanol
The pros and cons of running ethanol fuel
Why some people get good mileage with ethanol and others do not
Using ethanol for alcohol stoves and smaller engines
Running E85 and Gasoline mixes in your modern vehicle
Ethanol yields per pound from stale bread you can get for free
With ethanol “unclog existing crud” and cause problems in older vehicles
Where all the FUD comes from in the Ethanol Fuel World
How anyone can get a permit to make ethanol for free
The storage life of ethanol fuels






Additional Resources for Today’s Show
Members Support Brigade - http://www.survivalpodcast.net/members
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Join Our Forum -http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum
Ready Made Resources – (sponsor of the day) -http://www.readymaderesources.com/cart/index.php
Bulk Ammo – (sponsor of the day) http://www.bulkammo.com/

Steven’s Websites

Solar1234.com – Get info on all Steven’s Sites http://www.solar1234.com/
IMakeMyGas.com – This is for the small still, currently sold out. http://imakemygas.com/
Steve on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/KnowledgePublications-wwwUSH2com/115123165250360?sk=wall


INTRO & CLOSING SONG:
“Revolution is You” by Gregg Yows

TRANSCRIPTION PROVIDED BY:
Hootie


<intro/housekeeping 0:00 – 5:02>

[00:05:02]

[Hootie]

[00:05:02]
Jack Spirko: With that I have the housekeeping wrapped up. Let us get into the main topic of todays show. Alright folks, as I said during the introduction segment we are fortunate to have back with us again today Mr. Stephen Harris. One of our all time favorite guest. I think I say safely now he has the record number of a return appearances. I don’t think I have ever had anybody, Steve, on the show as many times as you. That is a testament to how much the audience loves you. Welcome back to the show again.

[00:05:26]
Steven Harris: Thanks Jack. I just love it. I love the way your audience responds. I love how they just like a sponge and they suck up the information. It makes you realize what some people teach. It is because it is an appreciation for the students and what the students do. They come back with the questions. They engage you. They email me. You guys email me all the time. I answer the questions. It is really a privilege to work with you and with your audience. That is why I have done it. That is why we literally put over 100 hours in the lab since the last time I talk to you just bring you the stuff for this episode.

[00:06:08]
Jack Spirko: I think it's awesome. I want everybody to make sure they go by your site where you have all this stuff. I think that is IMakeMyGas.com, right?

[00:06:17]
Steven Harris: Yep, just like the sounds IMakeMyGas.com. There will be a link to that and my other stuff at my normal show website of Solar1234.com. It will have the show notes. It will have links to everything I spoke about. It will have links to IMakeMyGas.com. IMakeMyGas.com has a new 20 minute video at the very top of it, that shows you step-by-step how to make an alcohol wash with sugar and yeast, how to fermente it, how to distill it, how to distill it multiple times, and how to purify that alcohol to run as a fuel with gasoline your vehicle without modification. We will talk later on the show about running it as pure alcohol in your vehicle as 100% fuel that you've made yourself.

[00:07:10]
Jack Spirko: Awesome. What I wanted to start out with is last time you were here, you had that site setup and is this a little cool tabletop still.

[00:07:19]
Steven Harris: Yep

[00:07:20]
Jack Spirko: I have one that you sent me, thanks for that. I was mentioning it before we got on air here today. I will probably ferment my first batch of wash over this weekend. I have had my fermenters tied up with making beer because it is that time of year. One of the big things that a lot of people came back to me with after that episode was, it's kind of small. You are distilling maybe a gallon of wash at a time. By the time you put 4 gallon to 5 gallon pail of wash through there you end up with a gallon of alcohol. Does this make sense to do this on such a small scale?

[00:07:51]
Steven Harris: yes and I will tell you the truth, I have run big stills. I have a 55 gallon still with a 24 to 1 ratio column that is about about 7 feet tall and makes about 192 proof on the first pass. I have done alcohol distillation with propane burners and everything. This still is automated. It's a gallon at a time but that's not a big problem because you are fermenting 5 or 10 gallons of time. You pour in your wash. Wash is what you ferment to get 11% to 14% or 11% to 18% alcohol. You pour it into it and put the top on to it. It looks like a coffee maker but it's not a coffee maker. It doesn't require any water for cooling like a big still does. It doesn't require any babysitting. A regular still you have to babysit the thing. You have to watch your heat input. You have watch the column temperature. You have to watch the proof of alcohol coming out. If the temperature of the room changes because of your propane stove, then you just changed what's called distillation zone in the tower. Then you proof has changed. It is just babysit, babysit, babysit, babysit. That's what regular traditional alcohol fuel making is. I put in a $8 dollar timer on this thing from Walmart. I set it for 3 hours and 25 minutes. Actually I set it from 12:05 to 3:35, or 3:30. I say turn on and then turn off. What I do is I put the wash in, put the top on the still, set the timer, and I walk away. You do that morning before you go to work. When you come back you got about a 1/4 to 1/2 gallon of wash, not wash but distillate sitting there. You pour that into a jug. Then you pour in another gallon of wash and you set it to distill again when you get home. It  distill it again in about 2.5 to 3.5 hours, depending upon the percentage of alcohol. Then before you go to bed, you set it again. In one day you have now distilled out 3 gallons of wash into about 1/2 gallon to 1 gallon of distillate. You just keep on doing this on a regular basis because you don't have to babysit it. It gives you your distilled ethanol. As you will see in the video, we take what we distilled and we distillate again and we distilled again and we distill the fourth time. In this, an automated process, let get up to 180 proof or 90% ethanol alcohol. It is all automated. No babysitting, no tower watching, and it's a lot less of an investment. M my tower alone cost me $650 for a stainless steel 24 to 1 ratio column. Then there's the packing and the saddle rings  that go into it. Then there's the heaters for the drum and everything. This still does two things. One, it works on an automated basis to make a decent amount of alcohol. The second thing it does for you is that it proves to you that it works. You have done. To say that you have done it is... To say that you finished the 5K race is a lot better than someone who says, “I'm going to marathon someday.” <Jack laughs> You have actually done it. You have made the wash. You fermented it. You kept it at the right temperature. You got an alcohol yield. You put it into the still. You turned on the still. You got your distillate out. Then you not only got your distillate out, but you purified it up to a level good enough to be mixed with gasoline to actually running the vehicle. Then you should put some of it into the vehicle and ran it. You can say, “I've done it.” Once you have maxed out the still... Or you can run two or three of these stills the same time and still be cheaper than tower.

[00:11:55]
Jack Spirko: Might I add, probably one timer.

[00:11:58]
Steven Harris: Yeah, just on one timer. <Jack laughs> The still only draw 320 W maximum. The timer has a maximum rating of 1500 W. You could even run four stills on one timer and it would work absolutely beautifully. I never thought of that. It is a great idea.

[00:12:14]
Jack Spirko: One $22 timer can run four of your stills. Another things you are saying to me... This is how I always saw this... I didn't see this product, when you when you brought out for us, as “I am going to buy this. I am to run my car on it for the rest of my life on a 50-50 mixture.” Unless you don't drive very much, I guess you then could. It was more a way to learn and develop and get an entry point. Like, I tell people to garden. They say, “I don't really know what do.” I tell them to grow a 4 foot by 4 foot garden and plant some annual vegetables you like to eat. And grow them and eat them. It is the samething. It prove to you it can be done because I know what happens next. Then there's going be five more of those things in your yard. Now you are producing some level or some percentage of food sustainability for yourself, some sufficiency. For me this is kind of a soft entry for for people. You brought up an interesting point there. Another thing that people were asking me about was, “How much electricity does this take?” You said it was 320 W draw. It's somewhere around $.50 to do a batch?

[00:13:16]
Steven Harris: It is about $.50 to get to 180 proof gallon of ethanol. It depends if you live in the socialist California where they have inflated their electricity rate with taxes. You are probably spending a dollar’s worth of electricity. If you are in the Midwest. It's probably around $.50 worth of electricity. To make another analogy for what you said about this being the things that gets you started. I called this little coffee pot type of still, our gateway drug. This is what gets you started into making ethanol alcohol. It is the one that get you addicted to it. It's the one that you say, “I like doing this. I am making my own fuel.” Then you can really intelligent decision on to what is the next level still that I want to work with. What is next level of free material I'll be getting that I'll be making my ethanol with as well. To answered the question, it is about 320 W. It's running for 3 hours at a time. By the time you do all the different distillations, you're going be looking at $.50 to a $1 for a gallon of final result that comes out.

[00:14:30]
Jack Spirko: Here's another question that we got a lot. I think you've actually... because I brought this to you from a guy that was a chemist initially. A lot of people ask the same thing. You done some research, like hours and hours of research on this. I think you are going to be able to tell people something in response to this that they probably never heard before. It is about the fuel mixtures. Won’t the alcohol fuel and gasoline separate in the tank and how do you combat that.

[00:14:54]
Steven Harris: There is something called ternary chart. If you look at the ternary chart at IMakeMyGas.com and look at some the other stuff. It is a triangle chart. It is really kind of confusing how they work. If you look at them it says that 90% ethanol should mixed 50-50 and in any ratio with gasoline. If you mix ethanol with too much water in it with gasoline it won't fully dissolved in the gasoline. Actually the gasoline won’t fully dissolve into the alcohol and water,
and you get a separation. You can see the separation. I show it to you in the video, that's on the top of IMakeMyGas.com. I show you what happened. Everything says that wanted 180 proof or 90% alcohol should mix perfectly. Before I tell people to do this, I always have to do it myself. I knew it was going to work, I just knew it. I want on my lab bench, got my graduate cylinders, got everything out, got some gasoline, made some 180 proof 90% alcohol, mixed them together, and... Darn things didn’t mix. They only partially mixed, they separated. You dig further and dig further. You look at the charts again. You get out the ternary diagram for idiot book and you figure out how to read the diagram. Sure enough it doesn't mix. I have come up... The still will only produce 90% to 92% ethanol. I have come up with two methods. One is a Steve Harris method of allowing you to mix what you make 100% with gasoline with no separations at all. The second method is an industry proven method of using zeolite, which is basically looks like little ceramic beads. You pour it into the ethanol. It absorbs up the water and makes it 95% or up to 99.8%. I also show you in the video of me mixzing 95% with gasoline. It is an industry accepted and proven norm, that I have re-documented in the video that's on the top of IMakeMyGas.com, that 95% 190 proof ethanol will mix in any ratio with gasoline without separation. And it does. I show it to you with 50-50 (ratio) and with different ratios. I show it to you in the graduated cylinders. It is completely fully homogeneously mixed, there's no problems with it. The answer is you got to have 95% ethanol, which is a 190 proof. The other 5% is water. It will mix in any ratio with gasoline and you can use that in your vehicle. I show you two different ways to get your 90%, out of your still up to 95% or 100% so that it mixes perfectly. That was a great question from the chemist.  I knew I thought was the answer. I wanted double-check. I found out that I was wrong. Then I found out the right answer and the real answer. I repeated it on my chemistry bench multiple times. Then I showed it to you in the video to prove it to you.

[00:18:19]
Jack Spirko: The key is we have to get to at least a 95% alcohol concentration.

[00:18:24]
Steven Harris: Yes. Then you can mix it in any ratio with gasoline. You'll want to mix it 50-50 with gasoline and then use it in your vehicle.

[00:18:33]
Jack Spirko: Very cool. I have some questions about other applications other than vehicals. One guy says, “Are other applications? For instance could you mix the alcohol with gas and burn it in your old-school Coleman stove? Or could you make a gelled alcohol product?”

[00:18:49]
Steven Harris: Technically the way a Coleman stove works, yes it would work in the Coleman stove. Although Coleman stove uses so little fuel I can't think of why you would want to go through the trouble, but sure it would work in it. In fact pure ethanol should working it just perfectly as well. Yes, you can use everything that I just described, the alcohol to make a gelled  alcohol product. There is documentation on the net on how to make the gelled alcohol. You add one chemical to it. I think it's silicate. I forgot what I was. Then it gells it. Then you can use it as a stove fuel. You can use liquid alcohol as a stove fuel. Or you can used gelled alcohol as a stove fuel, but yes you can use it in either one of those situations.

[00:19:38]
Jack Spirko: The gelled product would also would be good to be carried a small container as like a wilderness survival fire starting aid. That's probably what made that person think that way because we have a lot of people from that world that listen to the show. My other observation on what this would be actually great to burn in is a lot of us build these little... and you can buy some, like Trangia makes them as well, are little alcohol stoves decided are designed to burn pure alcohol. We actually make them out of the bottom of soda cans. You get a soda can, put them together, and put a hole in. They call them penny stoves. You put a bunch of holes around it. It would burn just straight out of... your 90% stuff straight out of the still, without the zeolite factor or whatever, would just work beautifully.

[00:20:17]
Steven Harris: Yes it would. It would burn just absolutely wonderfully. In fact, if you get a kit for your car that holds injectors... I have a kit that I'm going to get and I am going to photo document and show it to you. I have seen the kit. I love the kit. I have talked to manufacture, but I'm not going to start selling it till I have put it on my own vehicle and documenting it. You can actually use 180 proof 90% ethanol with the kits in your car for straight alcohol. You can't do it in a regular car. You got to have this little kit in it that holds injectors open a little longer. If you really want to be daring, there is lots of documentation of people using 80% or 160 proof as straight fuel in their vehicle. 160 proof is a lot quicker and easier to make.

[00:21:12]
Jack Spirko: With that modification of holding the injectors open. On a vehicle like that, once you have is it kind of an on/off switch? Or is ti something where you are running alcohol fueled only in there now?  What would happen if you put gas into that vehicle?

[00:21:24]
Steven Harris: nothing. What you do is you open up the module and you turn the potentiometer between zero and ten. Zero being pure gas and ten being 100% ethonal. If you fill it with pure gas you just turn it back down the one or zero and you run on pure gasoline.

[00:21:42]
Jack Spirko: Basically all that’s doing, that is your little control of how long do my injectors stay open. It is probably microsecond or something.


[00:21:48]
Steven Harris:Yes, exactly. It adds a few more pulses to it because ethanol is a little bit less dense than gasoline. It has a different fuel to air ratio. You have to let a little bit more of it in, but it works fine. This feel injected vehicles only. I’m not going to cover carbureted vehicles, that is a whole other Valleywyck(). This is for 1983 vehicles or newer.

[00:2#:##]
Jack Spirko: ...with fuel injection. Next question somebody said "Could somebody verify what I just think I heard. Is Steve saying that even if my truck is not E85 branded, he has a 1998 Explore with 5 liter gas motor, he can still run a 50-50 mix of the E85 and gasoline?" He is not making his own. He is using E85 that is out there. He says, "E85 is considerably cheaper right up the road from my place. If I heard this correct, it would ease some of my fill up pain. If I do that do I need to run higher octane gasoline or will flat 89 octane gas be fine if I use that mix.

[00:22:47]
Steven Harris: Flat 89 will work. Yes it’ll work in your 1998 Ford Explorer. I have done this in numerous vehicles myself. David Blume has been doing it for 30 years or more in different vehicles. It is fully documented in the book "Alcohol can be a gas" written by David Blume. It in on IMakeMyGas.com. Links on Solar1234.com, but yes you can do it. The question is does it get cheaper? That’s the big question because how much cheaper is that E85 that you are buying? Alcohol has less energy per unit of volume than gasoline does. It’s about 80% of the value of gasoline on a BTU basis. It has 10% the energy but takes up the same amount of space. The question is do you get an advantage? Ethanol alcohol is an octane booster. No you don't need to up in it. You have already ran the octane up above the .... You don't need put high octane in it because the alcohol has already run the octane up to 92, 94, 96, or 98 because it is an octane booster. In some vehicles you get better performance and you get better efficiency because of the higher octane number. You do get a break even or a fuel economy savings depending on the vehicle. I know people flex fuel vehicles, and they say "I get 14 miles per gallon on gasoline and I get 9 miles per gallon on E85. Why do I want to run the E85? It’s not worth it."

[00:24:30]
Jack Spirko: Sure

[00:24:47]
Steven Harris: It depend upon the vehicle. You can also look at all the dollars on your E85 that you are buying as is staying in America. Where as the dollars you spend on the gasoline is going to the rag heads in Saudi Arabia that hate us or Venezuela and the money is going out of the country. There is an economic way of looking at it. There is a way of looking at where you do get a fuel economy benefits. There’s a way of looking at it where you’re not getting the fuel economy benefit from it. 1983 or newer fuel injected vehicle, you can start off of 30-70 mix. 30% alcohol or 30% E85 and 70% gasoline. OK, it runs fine in my vehicle. It does not studded, there are no issues, and it does not run rough. If it did all you would do is put in more gasoline. They you would go to 40-60. Then go to 50-50. You don’t go any higher than 50-50. I have not had any problems running 50-50. In fact in a rented Ford focus I had, it just ran like a jack rabbit. I mean it just took that octane boost and it really just a peppy little car when I was driving it on E85 and gasoline. It was not a flex fuel vehicle.

[00:25:49]
Jack Spirko: That is awesome. I think a lot of time you are going to get the bigger boost in those smaller more efficient vehicles to begin with, rather than try to run it in a big eight cylinder. I guess the thing is zero your odometer or your trip odometer, do some math, determine whether it works for you, and decide where you want your money to go.

[00:26:06]
Steven Harris: Exactly. Do it yourself. Don’t believe a thing I said. I told you how to repeat the experiment. Do it yourself and see if it works. A guy I know said I get 14 (miles per gallon) with gas and 9 (miles per gallon) on E85 in my flex fuel GMC pickup truck was driving a pickup truck. Of course he might have had his foot in the carburetor, in the floorboard all the time. He tries hard like a son of a bitch all the time. He might have been taking his performance increase with the with the ethanol and turn it...

[00:26:40]
Jack Spirko: Turning it into horsepower instead of mileage.

[00:26:42]
Steven Harris: Turning it into tire dust. Yeah. Your fuel economy is really dictated by your foot.

[00:26:49]
Jack Spirko: That’s a great point Steve. When you increase performance in a vehicle, there’s two places it can go. It can go to raw horsepower or acceleration. Or it can go long term efficiency. It is up to us to determine that. It might be driving habits as well. That is pretty interesting. Back to making our own fuel. You mentioned last time you got a truck load of bread for free. Like you filled the back of a truck up. When you’re making ethonal from bread how much does it take to make to lets say 10 gallons of fuel? Or that truckload you said you got in the podcast, how much fuel would that make?

[00:27:24]
Steven Harris: The easy answer is you need twice as much bread or starch as you would of sugar. In the video on IMakeMyGas.com I show you starting out with 10 pounds of sugar and it’s going to make about half a gallon of 180 proof 90% ethanol. If I did that with 10 pounds of sugar you would need about 20 pounds of bread. It is a simple conversion of starch over to glucose. Both of them are really close to each other in formulations. In fact, starch is sugar. It is a polysaccharide. Starch is a chain of sugars join together. that’s thousand 2000 sugars long.

[00:28:18]
Jack Spirko: Correct. The brewing process or the mashing process is basically breaking that starch into simple sugars. That is all it really is.

[00:28:26]
Steven Harris: Right. Enzymes from your barley malt or the enzymes form alpha-amylase or the glucoamylase, that you add as an enzyme at different temperatures with the starch, is what breaks down those long chain starches into short chains and single chains, which are called monosaccharides. Which is what you ferment.


[00:28:51]
Jack Spirko: That is very interesting. I am going to going side note, just to give a status people out there because I have been talking about eating this paleo way for a while. What you just heard is in 20 pounds of bread there is 10 pound of sugar. That is why I think the way I do about nutrition. I don't want to go to far off of there. It is interesting to get that statistic from totally different place. Steve I do have a question for you of my own. When we were on and I was talking about using a table sugar and you were talking about using just a plain old regular yeast like champagne yeast or something like that. I had brought up distillers yeast. Distillers yeast in some situations can handle alcohol tolerances of 18% to 22% or higher. You said to start out with the these simpler yeast. Is there a reason for that because yeast to me; you pitch it and it does it is thing. It is not like the distillers yeast a lot more expensive. Or is just that with that amount of sugar starch base, that 14% range is all you are going to get anyway.

[00:29:49]
Steven Harris: No. I say start with bread yeast. Actually bread yeast by the packet is more expensive than champagne yeast or brewers yeast. I say start with bread yeast because you get it in your local store at Walmart, Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, or where ever you are. You can get it your local store and start with it today. I want you to start with something today, rather then start with something tomorrow. My favorite yeast to use it as an 18% Turbo yeast. It has the nutrients in it and everything. It does in two days what it takes normally 7 to 10 days do with a regular yeast. That is because I am inpatient. I want to get my stuff done a lot quicker. I have a shorter experiment cycle that way. No, brewers yeast works fine. Brewers yeast works fabulous. Any beer supply store will have all the yeast you could want to. You can start with an 18% champagne yeast. For example the higher percentage 22% and 23% you to ferment those with dextrose or glucose. Dextrose glucose are interchangeably, they are the same thing. They are both glucose C6 sugar sucrose is half fructose and half glucose. When you mentioned doing the Paleo diet and you mentioned eating starch bread, everything you eat either gets broken down into glucose or goes out through your colon. Your entire body runs on glucose. Everything living in this world runs on glucose.

[00:31:31]
Jack Spirko: I am going to stop you there, because we are not going to go there. I am going to send you an ebook to read after this episode called "The Glycation Factor" written by a PHD where I am going to show you that is absolutely not a case. The body does intake burn fat.

[00:31:47]
Steven Harris: Oh yeah. It does.

[00:31:31]
Jack Spirko: It takes fat and burns fat as fat, without a conversion to glucose. Ok, so we are actually good on that. Lets keep running then.
[00:31:47]
Steven Harris: Anyways when you ferment sucrose, sucrose is a C6 sugar. It is half fructose and half glucose, which is a C6 sugar. When you ferment with the 22% or 23% yeast you got to use glucose. You can not use something that has sucrose or fructose in it. If you have changed your starches over, your bread, you actually get glucose. You can use a 23% wash. If you just want to buy sugar and use the 23%, they you have to by dextrose which you have to mail order.

[00:32:32]
Jack Spirko: And super expensive too.

[00:32:47]
Steven Harris: Yes it is, about a $1 a pound. The sugars that we are starting you off with, which is Walmart sugar, sucrose it will ferment with bread yeast. I will ferment with brewers yeast. It will ferment with champagne yeast just absolutely perfectly.

[00:32:48]
Jack Spirko: The only reason I am asking is, my thought is if I can push 18% instead of 14%. I have 4% more in my yield.

[00:32:56]
Steven Harris: Yeah it works a lot better. In fact the higher the alcohol percentage in your wash the longer the still runs for. I said you have to set the timer.

[00:33:06]
Jack Spirko: Yeah.

[00:33:07]
Steven Harris: The way you set your timer is you watch output and when your output finally goes down to either 20% coming out of the pipe or your entire batch of of distalit equals 40%, that’s when you stop your timer.

[00:33:24]
Jack Spirko: gotcha.

[00:33:25]
Steven Harris: It will start coming out of 65%, 60%, 55%, and then 50%. When your entire wash... You just take your a distillate, as your are distilling you pour it into the cylinder and you put the hydrometer. The hydrometer floats to the level and tells you the level of alcohol. When it hits 40% that your stop time.

[00:33:46]
Jack Spirko: Gotcha.

[00:33:46]
Steven Harris: Now you know where to set your timer for your second gallon, your third gallon, your fourth gallon, your fifth gallon, and you sixth gallon. You just set the timer and let the thing run automated.

[00:33:57]
Jack Spirko: I guess that would mean that your subsequent distillations would each take longer?

[00:34:02]
Steven Harris: Yes

[00:34:02]
Jack Spirko: Because you have a higher alcohol content to start with.

[00:34:05]
Steven Harris: The higher of alcohol content of the initial wash the longer it takes. When you have your 40% to 50% and you are going to re-distill again to 80%, it goes very quickly. It’s 45 minutes to an hour and it’s all come over. It’s what we are doing. We are distilling from 14% to 40% to 50%. Then we are distilling from 40% to 50% to 80%. Then we are distilling from 80% to 89%. Then we are going to distill them once again from 89% up to about 92%. Then we’re treating it will a little bit of Zeolite, to get it above 95%. They we are mixing with gasoline and putting it in our vehicle.

[00:34:44]
Jack Spirko: Great. When we put it in our one person says here. I think this is just more FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt), but you tell me. Ethanol is a decent solvent, and an older cars it can cause crud, the technical term, that is stuck in fuel lines and tanks to be released into the fuel system. Watch your filters and carb jets if you switch to a higher percentage of ethanol.

[00:35:05]
Steven Harris: Well, what do you think benzene and toluene  are? Those are what make up gasoline. It is a fabulous solvent. If you got crud on your hands just go put some gasoline on your hands, and it will wash off real good. It is just not a good idea to do it because gasoline contains benzene and benzene is a very known carcinogen. Gasoline itself is a solvent. Ethanol is what is called a polar solvent. No, there is really not crud and stuff in there that is going to get washed out with ethanol and clean it up. We are not even addressing carb jets. We are only addressing using ethanol gasoline fuel mixtures in fuel injector vehicle.

[00:35:50]
Jack Spirko: Coo, that is kind of what I thought too. My other thought is, don't people buy really expensive stuff to dump into the fuel system this supposed to clean it? Isn't that basically what it supposed to be doing?

[00:36:02]
Steven Harris: Yeah, the stuff you put into your fuel line to clean it out or to absorb water is either going to be ethonal or methanol. It’s called HEET. It is on the shelf at Walmart or AutoZone or Advance Auto. Most of those clean out chemicals are just ethonal.


[00:36:19]
Jack Spirko: Why do you think there is so much like this out there, so much FUD around the whole concept. Is it just a misunderstanding. I believed it all because I heard it all, untill I started talking to you and learning from you. Is it being done by corporate apparatus that just don’t want this to happen, as like a saboteur thing. Or is it just misinformation because people don't know enough yet?


[00:36:41]
Steven Harris: Benjamin Franklin said it the best, "No one ever lost a nickel under estimating the intelligence of the American people."

[00:36:47]
Jack Spirko: <laughs> Alright.

[00:36:49]
Steven Harris: Myth and rumor prevail in almost any industry, from knitting needles and yarn all the way up to brewing beer to making alcohol to hydrogen. We are just dominated by myths that are just put out by people who don’t know what they are doing. Most the time these things come from people who have never done a thing in their life. They have never done it. The second they mention something to you like, "Oh I’m going to do this." You say this to the person who has never done anything. They immediately come up with the reasons why you should never do it either. "Oh that is stupid. It will do this... it will do that..." That is where most of these myths come from. Is they come from people who have never done a thing or they never.... <loud thud noise in the background> Sorry about, that I was my cat knocking over my briefcase. No you cannot eat the microphone cable again, Herbert.

[00:37:47]
Jack Spirko: It sounds like you just shot somebody. <laughs>

[00:37:49]
Steven Harris: No, my case just fell over. Anyway, most of these things of why you can’t do things and what they do are bad, come from people who never done anything. Always ask advice from people who are much more successful than you. Don’t go ask the bum on the corner what to do about starting a job and being an entrepreneur. Don’t go ask the guy whose work for 30 years for one company about what you want to do with your future and your careers, as far as starting the business and be an entrepreneur and doing something new. They won’t give you good advice. Go find an independent person who is been successful and you ask them for their advice. Ask a millionaire. Ask the 1%. Asking someone that is in the industry that you want to go into who is successful about what you want to do. I am telling you everything here I have done. Not only am I telling you I have done it, I showed you on the video.

[00:38:47]
Jack Spirko: Awesome. How about this one, the next question was "How about mixing alcohol with kerosene and using that in a kerosene heater? Will that work? I can see powering the distiller with solar all summer long and storing the alcholo for later use in heating in the winter."


[00:39:07]
Steven Harris: Why?

[00:39:08]
Jack Spirko: <Jack laughs> that is what I was thinking, but you want to elaborate?

[00:39:14]
Steven Harris: Just use the kerosene in the kerosene heater. No, just use kerosene in the kerosene heater. In fact, people many times think that ethanol is real clean burning fuel and doesn’t give off any carbon monoxide. Guarantee you, if you go start your ethanol still inside and you have a carbon monoxide meter going it’ll start reading. Its numbers will start moving up. I have run inside my house, of course natural gas stove, and propane stove. I have run Coleman fuel stoves inside on the kitchen table. I sat there and look at carbon monoxide meter 6 feet away. They never moved and never bunged. The second I fired up the alcohol stove I got reading on that carbon monoxide reader. So I would not.

[00:40:08]
Jack Spirko: That is interesting.

[Hootie]

[00:40:09]

Steven Harris: I would not. Your little penny stove might be not putting out enough CO2 make a difference in the house. If you were in a closed environment it would. A larger maritime alcohol stove, I would not run inside of your house. A Boat is generally not a very close situation.

[00:40:31]

Jack Spirko: I will say this though,he second part of that about using solar... In your book "Sunshine to Dollar" you talk about getting free solar panels. I can actually see about building a solar system that would run with these stills. It’s not that I high of a draw.

[00:40:46]

Steven Harris: Yeah. I’m not always the biggest fan of solar PV anyways.

[00:40:50]

Jack Spirko: I know you are not.

[00:40:52]

Steven Harris: Yeah, you could technically do it. As far as doing what’s called solar distillation with solar heat, it’s very difficult. If you’re going to make a solar distiller, because of the way solar heat is variable, it’s cosign, and it varies with clouds. A still generally needs a constant heat input into it because of the of the reflex zone within the condenser. It will move up and down based upon the ambient temperature and the temperature the pot. Being the very big solar advocate I am, and an expert in solar heat of all types. I would not use solar to distill alcohol. Although I do have a really neat chemical way, that I’m working on of getting alcohol out of the wash, up to 200 proof with no still. You regenerate your chemical that you use with solar heat. That is a completely separate subject but that’s how you would be able to use solar to do. But not for the distillation. And not with kerosene. <Jack laughs> Don't mix your alcohol with kerosene. Just use kerosene. Next question.

[00:42:07]

Jack Spirko: Okay. If you are mixing E85 and gas in your tank, would it be better for E85 in first or the gas to mix it up best.

[00:42:15]

Steven Harris: I put the gas in first. That way you always know you going to have 50% or more of gasoline. If you had an empty tank he put in all E85 and then you went to start up your car to drive to the next pump to put in the gasoline, you are going to be running all you E85 in the vehicle that is non-flex fuel vehicle. It might cough, stutter, or not run as smoothly. You put the gasoline in and put half tanker little bit more in. Then put in the E85 and then drive off. It will mix up instantaneously. That way you are guaranteed to have a 50-50 mix of gasoline and E85.

[00:42:56]

Jack Spirko: Excellent. Last time you were on you mentioned about doing this distillation, that you needed a permit. Someone here is asking, "Is there info on how to apply for a permit if you don’t have a business?"

[00:43:08]

Steven Harris: One, it’s easier to get the permit as an individual. You got to go to TTB.gov and I’ll put a link to it on Solar1234.com. You apply to them on paper permit, that you mail in. You can get a permit for free from them to make up to 10,000 gallons of fuel ethanol a year. You got to have that permit to make fuel ethanol. Then you have to poison that with 2% of gasoline so that it’s not something that can be drunk, or mixed to drink, etc. It smells bad and tastes bad and you will not want drink it. If you did drink it you would poison yourself. It’s a permit to make it. There’s no taxes on it. That’s the whole thing about getting it. If you make alcohol to drink and get a distiller license and everything else, the government wants their taxes on it. Which is like $40 a gallon. Which is what the Tax and Trade Bureau for alcohol TTB does. If you have a business, you have to get permission from the people you’re leasing the business from, if you’re in an industrial park like I am. You have to get permission from them on the form to TTB in order to get the permit from them to distill the ethanol at your facility.

[00:44:41]

Jack Spirko:  I gotcha. If you are renting from somebody.


[00:44:43]

Steven Harris: If you are renting from someone, yes. It is not illegal to own the still. It is not illegal to use the still to distill water or essential oils or flavors. You do need the permit to distill ethanol fuel. In places like New Zealand you don't need a permit at all to make fuel or to make alcohol to drink. This is the same type of.... This is a moonshine stills, is what it is. What you’re driving on is really highly refined moonshine.

[00:45:17]

Jack Spirko: So I will bump up one of our questions then. This came from Jeddah out of Wyoming. He says a little tough and cheek I guess, "So if you had an accident and a shot of the distilled fuel finds its way in your mouth. You would still be safe, right?"

[00:45:31]

Steven Harris: Yeah you would still be safe. Except remember, we’re talking about making... <audio fades> Opps, I lost audio.

[00:45:38]

Jack Spirko: I got it. I hear you.

[00:45:39]

Steven Harris: Ok. Sorry, it just went down like crazy... The way you make Gray Goose vodka and these higher triple distilled top shelf vodkas, is you distill your alcohol three times. Thus it is triple distilled. What I am showing you the video is actually quadruple distilled. Then they take their high proof, 180 proof or 190 proof, alcohol and they diluted it with pure distilled water back down to 80 proof. Then they run it through a carbon filter, like these ZeroWater carbon filter you get Walmart or Target. You run it through there about five or six times, just like MythBusters did. You produce the best top shelf vodka that there is. That is if you are in New Zealand. It’s legal there for you to distill your own spirits. I imagine if you’re in Somalia, Kenya, or Nigeria that this probably not with much law enforcement on the subject there either. So yeah you would be just fine.

[00:46:46]

Jack Spirko: That is for informational purposes only at the current time in the United States. the next question that comes in says, "The one gas powered tools I need more than any other including a vehicle is a chainsaw. How about setting up to cycle engine to do this?"

[00:47:03]
Steven Harris: That is documented very well in the book, "Alcohol can be a gas." Dave goes over it extensively. The book is in the middle section of the website IMakeMyGas.com. It’s also on my main website USH2.com. This is the 600 page book that you dropped on your desk with a huge thud when I was on your radio show last time. You take the ethanol and you mix it with the lubricant oil and it mixes very well. Sometimes you have to make an adjustment to run a little bit more fuel through the chainsaw. Sometimes you don’t, but it works. You could get away with doing a 50-50 mixture along with the locating oil. It would work just fine. All the iterations of it for all the different two cycle power tools and everything, is covered in the book I Make My Gas (correction: book is "Alcohol can be a gas") . Today a lot of the modern chainsaws are four cycle engines because California’s basically outlawed two cycles.

[00:48:15]

Jack Spirko: Yeah that’s interesting. I really didn’t think about that. I have had my Husqvarna for five years now. Those saws run forever. I don't know if I will ever replace it but you’re right. The way I know that is, that when I needed parts for my saw I went down to the store and was basically looking for this little screw, that even the company could not tell me what kind of screw it was. I figured I would down there and take one out and walk over to the hardware section and match it up with something, and it was not there anymore. The whole saw had been completely redesigned. It is a completely different saw now. The new ones are running on a four cycle motor, at least the ones I was looking at.

[00:48:54]

Steven Harris: Yeah. I am not a big fan of laws that outlaw things but I will tell you what, that one law really did really good truly amazing thing for the advancement of small four cycle engines. Now we got all these miniature four cycle engines and it is just great. You can use them in little power generators. There are things on websites about using weed eater engines with an alternator for power generator.

[00:49:26]

Jack Spirko: Interesting.

[00:49:27]

Steven Harris: Yeah, it’s just really neat. They are small. They are inexpensive. They are mass manufactured. As an engine guy and field guy, I think it’s just great because a four cycle engine run off  of fuel by far better than two cycle engine. A two cycle engine was made for one reason, simplicity. It’s much simpler. It is much smaller. It is easier to manufacture. It has a higher horsepower to weight ratio.

[00:49:50]

Jack Spirko: The weight is a big thing.

[00:49:51]

Steven Harris: Yeah, the weight is a big thing. Except it just has a blue cloud that comes out of it all the time.

[00:49:57]

Jack Spirko: I think the one place that it really kind of hurts performance to weight ratio the most for me is in outboard motor for boats. With people that slow craft (boats). It is hard to get a motor... because there is a weight limit to what the boat can carrying. You got to a situation where an old 15 hp outboard motor weighed 12.5 pounds. The old ones like they put on the John boats and all. Now a 5 hp motor will weigh much as 50 to 60 pounds. It is for small boats, otherwise I think it is really actually been a really great thing.

[00:50:37]

Steven Harris: Overall from a technology viewpoint it has been a good thing. Lets look at putting a little diesel outboard on there. There we go.

[00:50:43]

Jack Spirko: That would be interesting. <Jack laughs> I got one for you. Here is a softball. "Is the alcohol fueled created through this process stable for a long period of time? Or must it be used more or less immediately? I know STA-BIL is offered for gasoline, but when i think of hard liquor like vodka I tend toward thinking nothing about what it will degrade or not over time."

[00:51:07]

Steven Harris: Well you can buy 200 year old bottles of champagne and they are just fine. Does that pretty much answer the question for the guy? It is stable. It does not need a stabilizer. It does not need anything. It is C2H5OH. It wants to be C2H5OH all day long.

[00:51:28]

Jack Spirko: I’m just thinking about the fact that I’m happy to pay more for a bottle of 18-year-old Scotch than I am for a bottle of 7-year-old Scotch. <Steven laughs> That pretty much says it all.

[00:51:38]

Steven Harris: Yeah. If you took that 20-year-old Scotch and it was 40% alcohol. If you took a bunch of it and you put it though the same still that is at IMakeMyGas.com and you distilled into pure ethanol. You would be running on your car on 20-year-old Scotch, 20-year-old ethanol.

[00:52:01]

Jack Spirko: Heaven forbid that, but it would work. <Jack laughs>

[00:52:05]

Steven Harris: Yeah, heaven forbid. It is incredibly stable. It is the definition of stable. If you had a fuel that you want to store for long period of time, it definitely would be ethanol.

[00:52:19]

Jack Spirko: Next one, "I’m interested in modification for non-flex fuel fuel injected vehicles. Will a higher content of oxygenated ethanol fuel cause higher fuel use, due higher oxygen reading by the exhaust O2  sensor? It seems to me, the entire engine management system would dump more fuel in until it sees the amount of oxygen within its parameters." That does not even make sense to me. I am glad I have a car engineer on the line here.

[00:52:46]

Steven Harris: No. Alcohol is C2H5OH. That’s where you get the oxygenation. It is in from the O and the OH. It is also called C2H6O, is another way of writing the fuel for alcohol. That O is never making it through the combustion chamber. That oxygen is going to combine with either the carbon or it is going to combine with the hydrogen. It is going to release it's heat. It is going to be fully combined. The O2 sensor will never see. It it’s not like it’s free oxygen making it through the combustion chamber and the O2 sensor goes "Oh no!" It does not work like that. You are in a 1800° (Fahrenheit) environmental. The combustion chamber compressed by 14 to 1 or 13 to 1. Lots of explosions, heat, expanding vapors going on. It is not making it out, It is not making a difference.

[00:53:48]

Jack Spirko: Gotcha. Another person is asking if you offer any literature on diesels. Making gas is fine but he has a diesel truck. What can he use in it and how can he make it? Second question, "Do you offer information on making a car run off methane?" Lastly, "Is it possible to make a vehicle run off ethanol alcohol and methane? Not at the same time but one that can switch to the other, like ethanol in the gas tank and a pressurized tank in the trunk. Thanks for the info Jack and Steve."

[00:54:16]

Steven Harris: Let us take this one by one. First one diesel and ethanol. Is some documentation of mixing 10% ethanol with diesel. It is called D10. It should be D90, but it is called D10 for some reason. There this very little documentation. It was done by the EPA. It was done on some special vehicles. They did not care if they broke their fuel injectors or broke their engine. There is some other documentation of mixing 10% or 15% ethanol with bio diesel. Again, it’s not extensive. It is supposed to work. I have not done it. I have not repeated it. I have not risked my $8,000 dollars diesel engine. Not the truck, $8000 engine on it. I can not give you definitive answer on it. Right now the answers pretty much a no. However how do you use ethanol alcoholic in a diesel engine. That is easy, the way you use it is the same way you use propane or natural gas in the diesel engine. That is you inject it into the intake. You actually inject it... it goes air intake, air filter, turbocharger, intercooler near the radiator to cool down the compressed heated air. Then it goes from there up to the intake manifold. Then it goes into the engine. It’s at the intake manifold portion where you tap and drill a hole to inject either propane, methane, or a natural gas into the vehicle so it will run on partial propane, partial methane, and some diesel fuel. This is done commercially to the point where you’re only using 5% or 10% diesel fuel and the rest is methane or propane. You can do the same thing with ethanol. You would mist the ethanol into the air intake. The ethanol be brought in with the air into the diesel cylinder. The intake valve would close. It would compress it up to the top. It would get very hot and temperature. The diesel fuel would then be injected immediately in the high-temperature fuel air mixture. It would burn the alcohol or the methane or the propane, making expansion work and pushing the cylinder back down. That is how you use ethanol in a diesel vehicle. What were the other two questions? They were really good.

[00:56:53]

Jack Spirko: The next one was do you offer info on making a car run off of methane?

[00:57:04]

Steven Harris: No. I don’t have full documentation on a vehicle running off of methane. I have a pickup truck that I own the runs off of methane propane. Methane is also natural gas. It runs off of any ratio of alcohol that you want to put into the tank. I don’t have full documentation on that. There are complexities involved. It is real simple thing. It works beautifully. If you want to buy a $3,000 to $5,000 compressor to compress your methane into your tanks because there is not many natural gas fueling stations around anymore. Then you have to add the tanks. I remember what you asked. There was a question about running gasoline, alcohol, and natural gas. The wonderful people Fiats, Fix It Again (Tony), have a vehicle in Brazil. It is only sold in Brazil to my knowledge. I have pictures of it. Brazil is known for running off off ethanol. This car will run off of any combination there of, of gasoline, ethanol, and natural gas at same time. It has natural gas tank in the back of the vehicle. It will run off of natural gas by it's own. It will run off of ethanol alcohol on it's own. It will run off of pure gasoline. It will run off of any mixture of gasoline and ethanol. It will run off of any combination at the same time if you so desire of gasoline, ethanol, and natural gas simultaneously. All the technology is there for it to work. It will work. It can be made... It is been made today by Fiat. There is no reason why can not be made by the car companies in this country.

[00:58:54]

Jack Spirko: I would say anything that Fiat can do that Ford, Chevy, Chrysler, BMW, Mercedes, etc. should be able to do with their hands tied behind back. If they really wanted to.

[00:59:04]

Steven Harris: Fiat owns Chrysler now.

[00:59:05]

Jack Spirko: That is true. Daimler Fiat, yeah. <Jack laughs>

[00:59:09]

Steven Harris: I was there during the Chrysler days and during the Daimler days. I left two years after their Germans came in. That was a cultural experience. You can order a flex fuel... You can order a natural gas vehicle from Ford right now. You can go to your dealerships and say I want a natural gas car or a natural gas truck. It will come with either all natural gas. Or it will come with half gasoline and half natural  gas. You can run off of any combination. You can run off of one or the other. They can be ordered right now but you have to have a natural gas fueling station near you. Let me double-check on the website right away. I think it’s CNGPrices. I’ll tell you right. I’ll tell you all...

[00:59:54]

Jack Spirko: There is a technology that is being built that has this fueling station that actually hooks to the natural gas in your house that will allow you...

[01:00:01]

Steven Harris: They are out of business.

[01:00:03]

Jack Spirko: Oh, they are out of business? That didn't last long.

[01:00:04]

Steven Harris: They were in business for a little while. The website is called CNGPrices.com. it will show you all CNG stations in United States. I will put a link to it  on Solar1234.com. The people who made the home natural gas compressor was called FuelMaker. There website is gone (www.brcfuelmaker.com). They are long out of business. They made two versions. They made one that cost $6,000  and one that cost $8,500. The one that costs $6,000 would actually have had a computer chip in it. It would shut itself off preeminently and forever after you ran for 4,000 hours. Which is really stupid.

[01:00:48]

Jack Spirko: Yeah.

[01:00:50]

Steven Harris: No, they just went out of business. For your knowledge, driving on natural gas is like driving on $0.75 a gallon gasoline. I am on CNG prices right now and let us see. The price of natural gas in Oklahoma is $0.78. We can fill up right now in Oklahoma for the price equivalent $0.78 a gallon of gasoline with natural gas. In Texas it’s a $1.39. In Little Rock it is about a $1.44. In Birmingham it is a $1.37. In Michigan it is a $1.95. It is $0.88 in Wisconsin. In California, let us see how ridiculous they are.

[01:01:43]

Jack Spirko: <Jack laughs> Who should be incentivising this by the way.

[01:01:47]

Steven Harris: That is right. It is $2.90 or $2.45 in California. They are the ones that should be giving it away for free and everything else.

[01:01:57]

Jack Spirko: Yeah, based on what they say they want.

[01:01:59]

Steven Harris: Natural gas is our fuel of the future. It is in such huge abundance. Not just in shelf formations, what is called methane hydrate. Which are off the coast in the bottom of the ocean. The same way that methane is formed underneath the ground of the landmasses. It is form underneath the ocean even more tremendously. In fact the oil well problem in the Gulf of Mexico, when they put that great big top hat on to it to try to plug it. You heard about it floated up to the top because it got plugged up with methane hydrate. Methane hydrates or methane clathrates, they are a solid form of methane like methane ice. That happens underneath the cold temperatures and high pressures at the bottom of the ocean 5,000 feet down.

[01:02:54]

Jack Spirko: Sure

[01:02:55]

Steven Harris: It is just laying there underneath the silk, in the form of methane ice.

[01:02:59]

Jack Spirko: I have read that there is a lot stuff there. There is a couple lakes in Africa, fresh water lakes, where the stuff sitting at the bottom of those.

[01:03:04]

Steven Harris: Yeah. It is just temperature and pressure. It wants to be cool down around 32° (Fahrenheit). You want to have 5000 feet of water on top of you. It forms naturally over a millennium. I found it really funny that our current fuel and the problem we were having with it as the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we could not stop it because the fuel of our future was plugging up a thing that were trying to stop it with.

[01:03:36]

Jack Spirko: Unbelievable.

[01:03:37]

Steven Harris: I thought it was funny but I guess it’s only a weird sense of humor that I have. Natural gas is the fuel of the future. There was so much of it. It is there in tremendous amount. We have not even begun to touch the methane clathrates. There is no one mining methane hydrates or methane clathrates right now. We have our offshore... In fact there is so much methane and oil wells that they can not transport it, that they flare it off. That’s where they’re putting in liquefaction plants now on offshore oil rigs to liquefy natural gas, to put into a liquefied natural gas carrier, a boat carrier. That will then carry it to United States or other places around the world. We are a little bit off subject but...

[01:04:19]

Jack Spirko: No, I am glad we are talking about that. It is cool. I am glad we brought that up. I would love to have you back on, maybe one day just for an opinion show about the future of natural gas. But we are talking about alcohol today. You said something earlier, that just that has got me really interested. You said that you are on to a way now to... I do my fremention, I have got my wash, and going to distill it. To basically turn that into almost 100% alcohol with no real energy inputs, no distillation in the conventional sense. What the heck are you talking about?

[01:04:57]

Steven Harris: It takes energy input, but only to clean up what you are using at the very end so you can use it again. For example, to get our ethanol from 90% up above 95% or all the way up to 100%, we use what’s called a three angstrom molecular sieve. Which in another English term is called zeolite 3A. Which is really a specially formulated diatomaceous earth that’s mixed with clay, baked in a kiln, and it is in the form of small ceramic beads that you hold in your hand. You drop this into the ethanol that is 90%. I show this on the video at the very top of IMakeMyGas.com. It absorbs the water. The three angstrom hole are big enough that water can fit into it but the ethanol can not. That’s why it absorbs in the water and leaves the pure ethanol behind. That is from going from 90% to 100%, or 90% to 95%. I have successfully used a few different other substances. I have gone from 46% to 83%. Then use the same substance again to go from 83% to 92%. Then I use the zeolite to go from 92% to 99.8%. I just got in some yeast to ferment a 23% wash. What I am going to do is I’m going to use the same chemical substance which is pretty inert stuff. I’m going to go from 23% to 80% .Then 80% to 90%. Then use the zeolite to go from 90% to 100%. Then you take your your inert chemical, which is kind of like a powder, and mix it in with the water that you have remaining. Then you thrown it into your solar oven. You solar oven drives off to water and leaves the powder behind. Which you break up and then use it again to separate more of the water out from the alcohol water mixture, keep the alcohol and then put the alcohol through the zeolite. This solar heater is well documented in my famous book that everyone loves, my best-selling book, "Sunshine to Dollars." Which I will put a link to at Solar1234.com. Come to think of it, it is on IMakeMyGas.com too. Then you use a solar oven to dehydrate your zeolite. The zeolite needs to be baked in an oven of any type; solar, gas or electric. It needs to be baked in an oven between 350°F and 400°F for about 3 hours. It will drive off the water that’s been absorbed. You can use the zeolite for dehydrating the ethanol over and over and over and over and over and over. I found another chemical and it works really good getting rid of a water at the alcohol percentages I mentioned. Like from 20% to 80%. Then you can drive off the water just boiling temperature heat. You only need a solar oven at 220°F or 240°F or 250°F. It is so easy to make a solar oven that works on heat that low.

[01:08:33]

Jack Spirko: Just to be clear, when you talk about doing that solar heating that’s not distillation process that is using these chemicals to pull the water out. It is just to drive it back out, so you can use them (the chemicals) again.

[01:08:44]

Steven Harris: Yeah. Notice I said no distilling. There is no distilling. I have not done the full math on this. I’m not perfected it 100%. I have done it. Me doing it on the lab bench is a different thing than you doing it. I just like an interesting side thing to tell you about. Do not wait for this because it is going to take me quite some time to do it. Then it takes me time to prove. Then it takes me even longer to document it. Then it might only be applicable on a small or a medium scale. It might not be good all large-scale because you would have to have a square-mile of area to dry your stuff out with. It is just an interesting the side thing that I came across that I have been working on. If you want to start with alcohol today and you want to get working on it, get the still at IMakeMyGas.com. Go watch the video first. It’s at the top of the page and it will start playing right away. It will show you me doing everything. Everything I talk about and everything will have to do. You will see it in pictures and audio. It will leave no question in your mind that, "Oh yeah, this is something I can do." Like I say, "This is a gateway drug to alcohol fuel." This is what gets you started. This is what gets you going saying, "Yeah I can do this. I have done this. I have ran the 5K marathon. I am going to do a 10K marathon. I have done in 1 gallon distiller. Next thing I’m a going to do is I want a 5 gallon distiller. Or I want a 25 gallon distiller. Or I have done it with sugar, which is more expensive than gasoline but I have done it and it works. And I did not drink it. I resisted the temptation."

[01:10:26]

Jack Spirko: <Jack laughs> On the zeolite, really quick, my question with that is about let us say I am sitting there with a half a gallon out of my distilled spirits. I need to get that up to that excess water out of there to get it close to a 100%. How much zeolite do I use? Is it basically filled up with zeolite? Is there half from the bottom? How much does it take to do the job?

[01:10:48]

Steven Harris: About half to a third of the amount. The real answer is, if you got 90% alcohol by volume and all alcohols measured by volume not by weight. Then 10% of your volume is going to be the water.

[01:11:04]

Jack Spirko: Sure.

[01:11:05]

Steven Harris: If you got 1 liter, that means.... If you got a 1000 milliliters that mean 100 milliliters is going to be water. 100 milliliters is a 100 grams. Zeolite absorbs 20% of its of its weight in water. You got 100 grams of water need to be absorbed. That means he used 500 grams of zeolite. For something about a quart of 90%, you would use just over a pound of zeolite 3A, is the answer in English terms.

[01:11:46]

Jack Spirko: We do that and then bake that it to recharge. Basically to drive the water out of it and use it again and again and again and again.


[01:11:54]

Steven Harris: Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It is pretty rugged stuff because it is baked into the ceramic. That’s done at 1,800 degrees (Fahrenheit). It is really stable thing. Just don’t go crushing it, stepping on it, pounding on it with a hammer, or throwing it.

[01:12:13]

Jack Spirko: <Jack laughs> Gotcha. People are going to be able to get that stuff from you pretty soon?

[01:12:17]

Steven Harris: Yes. I have found an excellent supplier of zeolite 3A. I get it right from the manufacture. I am testing two different versions of the zeolite right now. The one that wins is the one I’m going to sell you. It will be available on IMakeMyGas.com. I'll be talking about it on the next show. I am going to sell it to you at a better price than is available anywhere on the net right now, because right now they are raping you on the price of the zeolite 3A. I will be selling it for about $6 a pound. There are places that sell it for $10, $12, and $20 a pound. We are going to do at about $6. It’s going to be the best stuff guaranteed. Ship to you directly by priority mail. Were going to buy it bulk so we maintain the quality over it. We made sure it is airtight. You can't leave your zeolite 3A out in the atmosphere because it will absorb the humility in the air. Everything will be shipped to you in a super plastic bag. Coming from us you know it hasn't already absorb moisture. People told me, "I have used zeolite and it did not work." Well, how did it get shipped to you? Oh, you left out overnight before you used it. Open to the air? Uh-uh (No), that was your problem right there.

[01:13:37]

Jack Spirko: Sure, it hydrated itself out the atmospheric moisture.

[01:13:42]

Steven Harris: Yeah, it hydrated itself out of the atmosphere. <Jack laughs> Zeolite 3A releases heat when it absorbs water. It is kind  of neat in the world of solar. You can take zeolite 3A and you can put it into a pair of containers, where you got zeolite 3A on one side, water on the other side and you pull a vacuum on it. The water will evaporate off the water side, which cools the water because it is energy leaving. It goes to the zeolite 3A side and it makes heat.

[01:14:17]

Jack Spirko: That is a very interesting.

[01:14:19]

Steven Harris: With zeolite 3A you can make yourself a solar air conditioner and a solar heat storage system at the same time.

[01:14:27]

Jack Spirko: That is so very interesting.

[01:14:29]

Steven Harris: If you are 18 years old and you don’t know what to go into, go into chemistry. Go into organic chemistry especially. It’s a world of fascination. There are endless possibilities. There was stuff that I was doing, which I will I talk about with mixing in with the alcohol, that has not been documented. I actually had to find some of the documentation that wanted to answer one question. I had to go get a thesis from Caltech from 1923. I had to call them and ask them to scan in and send it to me. The best thing on this one area of the one thing that I did was written in a paper in 1923 in Caltech. He did not have a fraction of what I had. I have a scale the weights down the 0.01 grams that costs me $4. He had a very complicated balance beam in a booth with sliding glass doors to keep air currents from disturbing it, just trying to measure his densities. I can measure temperature instantaneously. I had much better things available to me. I found all the errors that he did because he was working on 1923 chemistry lab in Caltech with the windows open probably in the heat, that I could do better in my lab. I took those things improved upon them. I’m just trying to say, by far.... This was inorganic chemistry, which is the periodic table of elements. There have been so many things that have not been done in inorganic chemistry, let alone organic chemistry which is with carbons and the number of chemicals is in the millions... It is a fascinating world. It is stuff that you can do. You can do original work. You can make original material. You make original inventions. The sciences, the chemistry, the physics, and even high end mathematics they are all fascinating areas to go into. They all will make great careers for you. Just listen to the excitement involved for me for what I do. I am never bored with what I’m doing. If anyone listening is wondering, "Will I go into political science? Or join the occupy Wall Street people? Or do I want to go study differential equations and organic chemistry?" It is differential equations and organic chemistry. That will make you a man.

[01:17:02]

Jack Spirko: Awesome. I will tell you the things that you got me really interested with this whole heat exchange with zeolite. I’m not going to go there. We have kind of wrapped the show up at this point.

[01:17:10]

Steven Harris: Yeah.

[01:17:11]

Jack Spirko: That has my mind going through 500 different things right now that could be done with that. The IMakeMyGas.com, you still have the same offer available to people that you did last time that you were on. You what to refresh people to what is available there, as far as the get started package?

[01:17:28]

Steven Harris: Yeah Jack. Hang on a sec. I love your audience so much I forget to mention the stuff that I am selling. At IMakeMyGas.com, I got the tabletop still on there. You can get it with the measurement kit. Which is a flask and hydrometer, so you can measure the percentage of alcohol. The hydrometer is just a floating weighted scale. It is a glass tube. You drop it in and it bobs up like a fish bobber does, only it has a scale on it that says, "You got 40% alcohol. Or you got 80% alcohol." I have it up there with book, "Alcohol can be a gas," the "Alcohol can be a gas" DVD, and my book "Sunshine to Dollars." You can get everything. You can get the still, the measurements kit, "Alcohol can be a gas" the book which is a 5 pound $47 book on its own, the 3 hr DVD, I will throw in "Sunshine to Dollars" for nothing, I’ll throw in shipping in the USA for nothing, and it’s $314.97. That’s cheaper than the smallest column still you would ever go get. You’re off to the races and ready to go.

[01:18:42]

Jack Spirko: We did have a couple questions and one that I would like you to address here as we rap about your still. People said it looks a lot like something use to make distilled water. Yours has actually been modified though, right?

[01:18:52]

Steven Harris: Yes. It is directly... This is not a home brew collusion. It looks like a water distiller. It is nothing that we changed to be a water distiller. It is something that the manufacturer changed at the manufacturing plant to be an alcohol distiller. There are vents in a water distiller to let anything volatile escape off the top before the water condenses. Those holes don’t exist, those vent holes to let any VOC's anything volatile off like perfumes to come off of it. Plus the water distiller runs about a kilowatt electricity. Which is way too much energy to pour into a still this size. The heating element has been cut down to 320 Watts. The still we are selling might look exactly like a water distilled still that is normally sold out there on the market. However it is an alcohol still. It is designed expressly for alcohol. Although you could use it to distill water with it if you wanted to. But no, it is not water still. It is an alcohol still, right from the manufacture.

[01:20:11]

Jack Spirko: Awesome. I will be firing mine up in the next week or so. I will let everyone know what Jack is capable of distilling up here and see we can not come up with some new stuff. Anyways man, I appreciate you being here again on the show. It is always great to have you on. I think you are now officially the record holder for the most appearances on The Survival Podcast. I would like to have you back for many more times.


[01:20:34]

Steven Harris: I love it. I mean it is a hoot. It is a ball. I love talking to you. I can’t wait to see what your audience writes to me back with. They send me pictures and stuff like, "I got this. I did this. Here is my solar heater I made from free glass I got from your book Sunshine to Dollars. It is blowing hot air into my living room right now." I just do the same thing, I do not believe people do the stuff we write about. It continually amazes me. It thrills me to no end. It is a hoot. Your audience is the best. I’ll come back as many times as you guys will have me. I  will always try to bring the enthusiasm and something new and different and pump them up and get them stuff they can really use and get going with. This is what I do.

[01:21:20]

Jack Spirko: Awesome. You are great at it. Again thanks for being on the show with us today. Folks again, the website is IMakeMyGas.com. Get by there. I have links to all of Steven's site and everything we talked about today.

[01:21:33]

Steven Harris: And Solar1234.com will have all the show notes as well.

[01:21:37]

Jack Spirko: Absolutely. Get on by the site. Just like last time, start throwing questions at us. If we get enough questions we will bring Steve back on answer them or who knows. With some of the work you are doing we might have you back just to talk about what you do with zeolite.

[01:21:50]

Steven Harris: <Steven laughs> It is getting to be winter time. It is solar heating season. Nothing pays for itself faster... And a solar air heater can pay for itself in days.

[01:22:00]

Jack Spirko: Absolutely, I concur. Well folks with that this have been Jack Spirko today, along with Steven Harris. Helping you to figure out how to live that better live, if times get tough or even if they don’t.

[01:22:10]

<Closing song>