Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1919-10-29
THE FUTURE OF ALCOHOL.
BY FREDERIC ]. HASKIN
Especial Correspondent Of The Argusl.

Washington, D. C., Oct 27.-Anyone who
imagines that prohibition has materially dim
inished the Importance of alcohol is sadly mis-
taken. Alcohol has an immense industrial flu
ture-- If you want to get rich. start an alcohol
still Provided you are making Industrial al
cohol, which is not potable, the law will not
interfere with you.
Within a comparatively short time, alcohol
will be running all of automobiles and
tractors. 1t will be used to produce heat and
light In practically all situations where kero-
sene and other petroleum derivatives are now
used.
In a recent Haskip letter it was explained
that we would soon have to go direct to the
sun for our heat in order to make power, be-
cause the supply of heat stored up in coal is
steadily diminishing and becoming harder to
reach. We must therefOFS-tap the sun, which
is the permanent source OF heat 1t was ex-
planned how this sun heat can be converted
into either steam or electricity. 1t will then
our street cars, wherever this work cannot be
done by water power. But it will not of
course, run our jitneys and our motorcycles.
The petroleum upon which depend for
transportation is diminishing in amount even
more rapidly than coal. Gasoline is becoming
more and more expensive and scarce. The
government experts say that will surely be
cut of gas in a few years unless great new
deposits Of petroleum are discovered
Therefore we must now discover a perma-
nent source of motor fuel to take the place
of the temporary one upon which we have been
drawing. and to supplement the use as per
manent source of power. Scientists seem to
agree that alcohol will furnish this permanent
have been studying both the production OF al
cohol and its fuel in motors. Reports
on both cases will soon be available.
Alcohol will furnish a permanent supply Of
motor fuel because it can be made out of vege-
tation, and vegetation can be produced on the
earth indefinitely. 1t now costs more to pro-
duce alcohol than It does 20 produce gasoline.
but gasoline is becoming more expensive all
the time, while the cheap and large scale pro-
duction Of alcohol, in this country especially,
is Just beginning.
Alcohol has already begun to replace gaso-
line abroad. In France $3.50 mixture of al
cohol and benZol. is in common use as a motor
fuel, and some mixtures of 80 per cent alcohol
and 20 per cent benzoI are used. In this coun-
try alcohol has been tried motor fuel both
in automobiles and in tractors. You can use
alcohol in an ordinary automobile designed to
use gasoline but you will not get very good
results. In a motor designed for the use of
alcohol. it will give just much work, gall
Ion for gallon! as gasoline. 1t has not high
fuel value as gasoline but there is less waste
about 1t. An alcohol engine is more efficient
than gasoline engine ct is also cleaner.
AS you may know, there are two kinds of
alcohol, ethyl alcohol and methyl tor wood
alcohol. Ethyl alcohol is the kind we use to
drink in the old days Methyl alcohol is the
days, causing blindness in some cases and
sudden death in others.
Ethyl alcohol is also the kind that will be
used a motor fuel. Do not infer from this
however. that you will have always a few gal
Ions of cheering beverage in the gas tank when
alcohol comes into general use as fuel. In or
der to be made drinkable, ethyl alcohol must
be rectifed, which consists in distillng it in
special way, so as to eliminate fusil oils and
other impuri les, Most of this industrial al
cohol will presumably contain some of these
impurities and therefore be unfit TO drink.
But this is not certain, for alcohol must be
distilled to high point before it be used
as fuel. Fermentation produces a mixture of !
alcohol and water in which alcohol is only
16 per cent That is it produces "32 proof"
alcohol Now alcohol must be at least 100
proof or not more than 80 per cent water /
before it will serve fuel. And to distilI it /!
to that point heat must be used. This use of
heat to produce fuel. is. of course, a process /
which to certain extent defeats its own end. /
But the bureau Of chemistry has also found /
that the water can be separated from alcohol /
by freezing, because water freezes at a higher /,
temperature than alcohol 1t seems probable I
that this freezing method will ultimately re
proof of fuel alcohol. The freezing process /
will leave in all the impurities and so insure
that no one can drink the stuff.
To the layman who is used to paying a .
steep price for alcohol in any form, it seems
improbable that this substance should be made
cheap enough to burn in a motor. But the ma
terials from which alcohol is made are easy
to produce and very abundant in nature.
Alcohol is made from sugar. Sugar is made
from starch And either sugar or starch oc- .
cur in practically all forms of vegetation. 1t
is possible to make alcohol out of every weed
and tree that grows. OF course it is practi-
cable TO use only certain forms of vegetation
for making alcohol Our present largest and
cheapest source Of industrial alcohol Is BLACK
strap" which is a ,sUgary residue that is left /
when all the crystalline sugar has been ex-
tracted from sugar cane.