Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I bought an ebook from knowledgepublications.com about unconventional solar power stuff, and so now I'm on the email list.

The new book is about creating alcohol and using them in diesel engines. Which got me thinking...

You can grow sugar beets, distill alcohol from them, and then sell the alochol as fuel or as booze. I don't know what the conversion ratios are, but considering that the wholesale price of cheap vodka is about $6.50/L, it might not take much.

Isn't that called moonshine. I can see it now the ATF blows up AP stille!

Yeah, selling distilled spirits is a HUGE no-no, but I'm not sure about selling fuel or fuel additives. There are people popping up selling biodiesel. I'm not sure what the laws are regarding it.

However, there may well be more money in growing sugar beets then many other crops. Especially if you take it from crop to processed product.

Alcohol laws vary widely from state to state, so it's hard to say.

From the blurb I got, you can convert a diesel engine to run on 100% alcohol fairly easily. I've filed it away under future projects though

was thinking today about traditional aquaculture and how they use bio filters, clarifyers and the like

if they held onto the fish poo after removing it from the water could they sell it as fertiliser for dirt crops ?

wilson from minamurra was going to do that

my uncle did it with the waste from his pig setup ( when he did them years ago ) made the weat grow great

There's a tilapia farm in MN that is experimenting with using the fish waste as a manure product for local farms. And I think the farms are sugar beets. They use the waste heat from the sugar beet processor to heat their water for their tilapia farm. So it would be a nice loop to the system.

I've been wanting to create a multipath heat exchanger for a long time. Diesel generators running WVO (or alcohol apparently), anaerobic compost piles, and regular old solar water heater systems all throw off a bunch of heat that just radiates, convects, and conducts away

For flat plate heat exchangers, search on ePay. They should be plenty available. Most are SS, but have copper brazing. The copper is only a tiny portion of the metal surfaces (welding the joints between the SS) and may not cause problems with your fish.
Regards,

Not unless you want to suffer. There are taxes, permits, health and safety regulations and legal issues. The government exists solely to kill your fun.

Keep your fuel and booze for your own consumption and that of trusted friends. Don't sell it, because if you fall foul of the law arguing that you weren't making any money may help you considerably.

yeah, and even using it for your own use can get you into trouble.

I have heard the highest yield of sugar that can be fermented and have ethanol distilled from, is sweet sorghum... It grows like crazy and has a much higher yield than sugar cane. If you can get it, try it. But I also agree, don't sell it... There are methanol issues with alcohol which (whilst we can make sure it's not there and wont kill us) the government will want assurances, tests, best practices etc... Fun Killers.

I use enough fuel in my immediate family to be very happy if I could supplement some. something like 250L/week if I could produce that, my system would be HUGE! so just get drunk and your fuel for free.