1710 Making Methanol From Dry Distillation 

One of these days I'll wake up and get greeted by a video of Mr. Robert using a rocket stove synthgas/methanol, electricity producing generator that also does a time travel and pee purification on the side. Awesome job, as always! We are so lucky to have you!

You, sir are an amazing unstopable force, gratitude

Hi, just a safety note here when making wood methanol. If you pipe the gases from the cool end of the condenser to the wood pot heating flame, you may need a flash arrestor in the line that returns to the burner. I tried something similar many years ago and had a big boom, followed by the liquid end product catching fire. I thought I was making wood gasoline, but didn't realize until I saw this video that I was making wood methanol. Maybe it's the same. Love your work. Cheers.

Straightforward, to the point, no messing and very informative at the same time. PLEASE don't change that.

Moving forward and saving lives. I hope you know that. It is always such a pleasure to whatch your work and your willingness to share. Like it or not you are a light in this world. Keep it up. God bless you.

You show everyone that anything is possible with some effort.

loving your videos! I am glad you get right to the point when so many other channels go round and round. your a blessing in my dreary life so thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge.

Thanks to teachers like you I grew up loving physics

I wish your videos were longer. It's so nice listening to what you have to say! I find myself completely mesmerized.

If I'm ever shipwrecked on a deserted island, I want you with me! I have the utmost confidence you could invent anything we needed.

I love this! Robert you are killing it! Keep it up mate!! lol 🙂

Perfect Robert, please continue your great videos

Forgot to say, regardless of my comment, I love your video's, probably the only channel I have subscribed to that I watch every video. So glad I came across your channel so many years ago....

I really needed this video at the right time. Thank you Robert!

Such a positive and energetic guy! Although this information is not new to me at all, I listened with interest to the end.

yeah that's real simple and all you make it look so easy and you're quite entertaining you are with all your fun enlightening information I just ordered some carbon felt to start making my emergency candles so I'm in the process of that thanks for all your insight

brilliant Rob, brilliant. God I wish I had a lecturer like you.

Thanks, never been disappointed in your videos always interesting and practical.

that was a very interesting experiment! Would be super nice to see some further experiments about diy methanol with maybe some efficiency improvements or process improvements. Best regards!

Such a wonderful teacher!

That's quite a rabbit hole your going down there, great video love the content you make

Ok Fantastic Robert! I’m on it now! Thank you Sir!

Very nice easy explanation presented

Learning from the professor the art of moonlighting...

This is WAY better than the average video on gasification where little is explained over half an hour of rambling and you only understand it if you have experience already. I have a still about 4 or 5 meters long. I generally got for refrigeration pipe because I know where to get it and my still is 3/4 copper water pipe on the outside with it bent 90 degrees at the ends and 2 holes drilled to feed thru the refrigeration pipe. I've played with wood gas a bit but never knew exactly how methanol was obtained. We don't have many deciduous trees NATIVE to Australia because it just doesn't get cold enough. So only trees with European or American origin by the sounds. There's some oak around here but not much, all I know is on government land.

You are a true inspiration.

I really appreciate your videos! Thank you!

Did not know you could cool the gas and condense it for later use. Bravo! On another note, I used to make charcoal in a 50 gal drum with a brush fire around it. But i always wanted to build a kiln with the gas pipe bent back underneath to cook the charcoal with its own gas. Saw someone do that once, would love see you demonstrate it and explain the details.

That is great. Thank you for doing this.

Absolutely superb! This is the sort of stuff I wish they’d taught me at school……I might have attended a bit more if they had!

I've found when coil copper pipe it's handy to fill it with sand if you want bend in tight radii. I used this method when I was building my induction heater. Great video thanks pal.

I love your videos! I have a couple of questions about this set up. Firstly, how long do you burn/boil the wood for, and secondly, from the amount of wood you put in the tin, how much methanol is produced? A follow up video to answer these questions would be great. Love the channel and just subscribed 👍

A note on the microbore, there are a couple of types, you need the annealed type like Rob used it is usually a more orange red colour, the stuff that looks like normal copper pipe will need annealing. Once it's formed you may also need to anneal if you need to change the shape of the coil due to work hardening otherwise you risk crack the pipe.

Thanks very much mate, you're the best 👏

My guess that the yield of methanol is very low. I looked to see if there was a low pressure catalyst you could use to convert the syngas produced into Methanol, but the lowest pressure catalysts still need about 10 Bar (140 PSI, 1 MPa). Now that would be a good experimental video.

Respect and gratitude unlimited

Love it!

Useful information. May desperate times never require this.

Thank you, good Sir!

Great Stuff Lad Bless Up

Thanks Robert :) your a gem

Thank you!

Love a distiller. Maybe I'll send you a sample for Christmas 😉😉

Thanks for sharing keep it up God Bless you

Awesome, I hope you get a chance to show a more optimised version

Awesome, thank you.

Awesome...your the best. Thank you.

Again. Thankyou!

You can also refine the methanol for biodeisel, but on the coil layout, you really want the coil to have a continuous downward run, so that it doesn't make bubble traps in the raised areas as badly.

Thanks for showing the distillation to make methanol Robert .For a home set up I was wondering how much energy you would need in the heating up to how much energy you would get back from the Ethanol produced

Top Man Rob!

with longer use, the pipeline fills with tar and clogs the entire system. But yes, a simple demonstration of how to do this. It would be better if the pipe was folded into a U shape several times and a valve was placed in the lowest bend where the tar can be drained out of the system. Water cooling helps also a lot.

Quick tip: if you can't reach your former, try the ladder. :)

by the way thank you for pointing out the different types of wood can have that drastic of a different output of product :)

Thanks for sharing

Brilliant professor pots I mean that most sincerely...............Thanks again I built the heater it's brilliant.

Merci Beaucoup!

great content thanks

You are awsome professor great..interesting content👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Good idea! Methanol can be used instead of gasoline in a "grid down" or emergency situation. People can use methanol to power up electric generators or internal combustion vehicles. Though, the air/fuel ratios for combustion with Methanol will be different as is the energy density of methanol, but in a grid down situation it's best to have some liquid fuel than none. Can you show us how to do wet distillation as well? It would be interesting to show how to extract liquid fuel from many sources and each time show the liquid fuel running an electric generator or a vehicle.

It could also be interesting to cover DIY Ethanol production. My late Father-in-Law knocked that up for his Bio-Ethanol heater, and I think he basically brewed up sugar and yeast, then distilled that to get Ethanol. This is only from memory so, don't quote me on it!

Here’s a neat video idea what kind of batteries can you make and different things can you make from three standard issue soldier meals or MREs

Dude, your awesome.

Amazing

STOP!!!! I can't keep up with all the stuff you're making me want to try!😆

God bless you. That was simple, beautiful and easy enough for a moron like me to understand!

I would suggest the cooling pipe be situated so the spiral is specifically traveling downward to make sure there is no liquids stuck in the middle of the coils

I wonder what your day job is. Your videos are interesting and you are an effective instructor so I wonder if you teach shop or something similar

Great series of videos on syngas! Is the heat from the gas coming out enough to continue the pyrolysis of the biomass? That way we can just jumpstart the burning process and then it can continue on its own. Of course then the question is how much remaining gas is there for us to use.

That is brilliant Robert, you make everything look so simple 😁 on a slightly different subject, could you show us how CO2 could be used as a battery as energydome have done, it looks like a very promising solution for grid scale storage? Thanks a million

Awesome!

It might be interesting to use kitchen waste or compost as feed stock. Good project. Perhaps the vapor out waste could be burned in a plant pot?

Amazing Robert!!! Please show us how to make H202

This is how Sweden drove tens of thousands of cars during second ww. The Americans had more than a million heating wood in the back of the cars with a wood stove. (:. Also it should be classified as solar energy because that's where it come from.

Superb, my de-valved empty propane tank has a purpose 🙂

Very nice my friend! Would it make more sense to have the coil vertical instead of horizontal? I believe the liquid will get trapped at the bottom of each coil wrap. Just a thought, and just a fan of your insightful videos. Cheers 😁

This is an important exercise to learn, with proper ventillation wood could be used to generate the 300 - 400 degrees required to create the methonal by dry distillation so you aren't using a valuable fuel to create the methanol. Just my opinion !

Fantastic! I wonder if the heater would get hot enough to be able to perpetuate the still / heater..... Thanks for sharing

impressive

Robert, You never fail to educate and entertain. Can you do this with acorns?

There is a company named "Vevor" that makes, among other things, stills. Although the one I bought was intended for "Beverage production," it is an 8 gallon Stainless Steel vessel, with a lid that clamps on, a Thermometer that goes inside through the lid, and, a condenser coil that has a water jacket!, and includes a WATER PUMP, so you can circulate cooler water from a tub or bucket. I see no reason It won't work for this. But once I try it, I'll never want to use it for "Beverage production." Which is fine, I don't drink. I can still use it for fuel grade Ethanol, though. I paid $105 and change for it. I plan on using 5 gallon water bottles, the "Water Cooler" style, with a Tee fitting on the tubing to allow the condensed Methanol to drip into it, while the volatile gasses like Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide et cetera are fed to a burner under the pot, to help fuel the process. I shall bookmark this video and try to remember to make an update, and also try to post a video of me trying it.

I got one. DMSO extraction from timber. It is a solvent for clothing material dyes.

Thanks a bunch should help a lot of folks again thanks ehhhh

And again the interesting thing are Lachmayer's papers on isomerization in hemp products and methanol seems to be more practical there than cyclohexane. In other words everyone growing weed should watch this video and re-consider if it's really worth it.

It might be nice to use concentrated solar to turn saw dust and junk paper mail into methanol.

Would it work more effectively if the axis if the helical coil were vertical? I’m thinking that a substantial bit of distillate would get trapped in the bottoms of the loops.

Saw a video recently about how flammable pine resin can be. Sticky stuff for sure but has been used by early humans for ages.

I was going to suggest freeze distillation? But it seems you got it nailed when making methanol. Fantastic!

Sweet 👍🙂

I remember a patent i saw about a really simple process for making liquid fuels from gas at ambient pressure. If I remember correctly, they bubbled the hot (100-200c) gas through a tank of diesel and ball bearings (I think they were tungsten balls) and the gas condensed into a liquid they could burn in an unmodified kerosene heater. It sounded like the perfect thing for home fuel makers. The process worked with hydrogen and biogas from a digester, so I bet syngas would work too.

A question, under a similar setup, doesn't this produce pyroligneous acid (sometimes termed as wood vinegar)?

Perhaps make a modified rocket Mass Heater using this distiller to capture the methanol to REBURN (or to just help ignite fuel) on rainy days.

Excellent. Is there any more updates on different fuels for heater?

At the drag strip , Nitro guy says , nice fuel station , let’s race !

very good thank you, what catalyst is needed to make methanol from syngas?what temperature do we need pressure to?

FWIW, it is pretty easy and inexpensive to separate menthanol from water through vacuum distillation. Look up 'methanol recovery' for lots of building ideas. (This method is used to recover the methanol when making biodiesel.)

Now add a fractional distillation column instead of the dodgy condensation coil. Methanol water azetrope can be broken with 3A molecular sieves in a second distillation which would also remove associated pyrolysis tar.

Wow! 👍🏻

I really want to see dry destination with leafs 🍃 in the autumn season

Do you reckon adding a thump keg would increase production? (being dry it prolly wouldn't thump tho)...