Turning Grass into Gasoline: Green Fuel Revolution

Is corn the only crop that can be made into fuel? In our new series with Andy from @htme, we’re exploring how to make gasoline from grass clippings to power small engines.

[harry]

I know of a self moving bioreactor that automatically mows your lawn, ferments the gras, is powered by the grass, fertilizes it and if you let it, even self replicates. It's a cow. Or a goat. Or a sheep.

[liv]

Dude, convert the lawn mower to a steam engine, turn the grass into pellets and burn them to power the mower. Will be cheaper than making ethanol and you dont need to handle chemicals. The downside you will create a lot of smoke, but hanging some meat on the exhaust will smoke it for free

[jasonhale]

Your running the lawn mower with out the Air Shroud on it. The air shroud directs the air that the fins on the flywheel pushes across the head of the engine to cool it. It most likely overheated at the end of your mowing. It's a briggs air cooled engine and requires the shroud to cool it.

[acdhd]

If I may make a small suggestion: When distilling alcohol the lid of the fermenter should be dome shaped so as to direct the water/alcohol vapour to rise into the neck of the device. Otherwise most of the alcohol will condense on the flat underside of the lid. I also noted that when you performed the "flash" test by igniting the distilled alcohol, the flame was yellow. That indicates that the alcohol you distilled contained a significant proportion of methanol (CH3OH).

[darryl]

That's some quality grassoline right there

[battalionR]

My uncle had a silo on his farm. He used to fill it full of silage, to feed his cows in the winter. If he got some moisture in it the silage would ferment. It was pretty funny to see a field full of drunk cows.
So, the acid isnt needed, take your green grass and ram it into a barrel. It'll ferment on its own from naturally occurring yeast. If you'd like, run some copper tubing through the barrel for hot water. Keep the barrel outside in case it gets a little too hot, it can self combust.

[MsRiqueman]

Here in Brazil we mass produce Bioethanol with the organic material left from harvests, mostly from sugar cane, which has tons of sugar. Basically you press the sugar canes and take the juice out, the material left is still moist and can be used to make Ethanol. Its a good way to make use of stuff that would go to the trash.

[savagesarethebest]

It is something weirdly beautiful about the grass powering it's own destruction

[lordofshade]

here in Brazil we started the alcohol production program on sugarcane in the 1970's, here the liter of alcohol is about 75% of a liter of gasoline and about 80% of the engine performance. Well, Its a green fuel but not a great deal in terms of economy. To your project I would recommend another approach, no acid, no shredding, just dry the grass and burn it in a boiler connecting it with a steam engine to make electricity and use an eletrical lownmower. It is possible that you would have a most cost-effective result.

Thank you for your video

[ChronoTango]

Got to keep in mind that at a large industrial scale, any and all byproducts aren’t simply waste. Byproducts get sold as other products or bulk sold to someone else who will process them. That lowers the costs. A big industrial site would probably have the capacity to control exactly what their byproducts are as well.

[topsecret]

There’s also the possibility of dry distilling the grass into syngas (wood gas), then using the gas feedstock with Fischer-Tropsch to produce actual gasoline, consisting of medium molecular weight alkanes (paraffins), alkenes (olefins) and cycloalkanes (napthenes). So from pentane to tridecane, and as light as propane and even methane if necessary.

[jpmotox]

The engine didn't have the top cover on which directs the cooling air from the flywheel fan over the engine. It over heated is likely why you had trouble...

[secondhandlyon]

Coming from a moonshiner family some of this was painful to watch but it was entertaining.

[Ertiyed]

So the title should have been Turning Grass into Ethanol: Green Fuel Revolution. I was fooled!

[SolarSeeker]

If I was going to try this I would go for a peletizer to compress the gas into fuel pellets and then use that directly in a wood gasifier system. This method would give you a much higher energy density for less money and would be versatile with any woody material such as leaves or paper.

[sharlamorris]

To ferment grass it needs to be wet and stay wet and then shut the lid on the barrel. Keep mixing every 12 hours for two days, repeat the process to concentrate it before you add yeast. It'll need a storage tank to capture the resulting gases. Use direct light preferably sunlight or lighting and a heat pad. -Brian Morris

[jasepoag]

The perfect liquor for the discerning suburban dad.

[datastorm]

Boy, this seems super energy and resource efficient...

[thejuanderful]

Thirty years ago I was reading about making fuel from newspapers. It was pretty much the same process of using acid to break down the cellulose. I thought newspaper would be a cheap source of yeast food but after researching the process I decided to go with potatoes.

[pax]

It reminds me of the NileRed video about making alcohol with toilet paper