Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production as an Energy Source — “The Proof is in your Buzz”

Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production as an Energy Source — “The Proof is in your Buzz”

By 2022 apprentice Lucas Babinec

With a refractometer we determine the brix of various fruits

Bring to mind a world where energy is cheap, plentiful, AND environmentally friendly. What’s powering that world? Wind? Biogas? Hydroelectric? Solar?

Pause.

Take this question seriously.

Our current track record with energy has us in a planetary ecological crisis, not to mention indirectly causing inequity and oppression all over the world. Now, what if we could grow our own fuel, in a way that increases soil fertility, ecosystem health, biodiversity and without any pollution or additional extraction of our planet’s precious resources. In a decentralized, community supporting, and resilient system. Caring for each other (people), the earth, and sharing the abundance fairly. Crazy. Nonsense. Not possible.

Enter Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production as an energy source

Please, if you’re here reading this and are unfamiliar with permaculture, check out these essential blog posts: Why Permaculture and Applied Permaculture Principles. Also, *shameless plug warning* look into taking one of our yearly Permaculture Design Courses.

In my first blog article I reviewed a book, ‘The Wizard and the Prophet’, about two different mindsets when working through our ecological challenges as a species. Permaculture-based alcohol fuel production harmonizes both perspectives, bring the best tech magic from the wizard and the most essential wisdom from the prophet together. At this point you probably are asking the question:

How?

Simple. Regenerative agriculture. Fermentation. Distillation. And then cycling all yields back into the system, aided by stacking functions and honoring the principle of zero-waste. This can be done on a household level or on a community level. Both would work within the design framework of permaculture and both are probably needed to gain true energy sovereignty. Primary fuel crop and overall polyculture selection would be specific to each biosphere and personal/regional culture preference.

A productive banana grey water circle

For example, here in Mastatal that might look like a great diversity of fruit trees: Sapote, pitanga, starfruit, jackfruit, mango, papaya, and many others that offer both food and the chance to ferment whatever can’t be eaten. Then, you’d have your staple fuel crops such as bananas, cassava (yuca), bamboo, and sugar cane. These would all be supported by other plants that fix nutrients in the soil (making them more bio-available), attract pollinators, and provide biomass for mulching. With skillful agroforestry methods in place, such as those implemented at Rancho Mastatal, anyone or any community could grow their own fuel. In a temperate climate like North Carolina, the fruit trees might be pawpaws, apples, and mulberries, with staple crops like potatoes, corn, soy beans, and hemp (grown in a polyculture/plant guilds with regenerative practices; no monocultures, no GMOs, no pesticides and other toxic chemicals).

Okay, now you might be wondering why this isn’t already the case. How come we don’t already have alcohol (aka ethanol) as an abundant, environmentally friendly fuel source?

100 years ago

What was going on in the United States back in 1922? Any guesses? Alright, well, many things actually, but what was a major one relevant to this topic? One word. Begins with a ‘P’.

PROHIBITION.

Our homemade alcohol station

The US Congress passed the 18th amendment in 1919, outlawing all production and distribution of alcohol. This destroyed the alcohol fuel industry and all farmer led cooperative distilleries, which had been booming since Pres. Teddy Roosevelt championed some liberating legislation in 1906. At the time, even Henry Ford preferred alcohol as a fuel source. The Model T was a dual fuel vehicle, able to run on ethanol or gasoline. Then an oil man with a last name beginning with ‘R’ ruined the party. When prohibition was reversed in 1933, gasoline was firmly positioned as America’s favorite fuel. Great for Big Oil. Bad for the people. Bad for the planet.

If this surprises you or leaves you feeling skeptical, I totally understand. Dive in, investigate and decide for yourself.

My curiosity has been sparked. I picked up the book ‘Alcohol Can Be a Gas’ by David Blume and now I want to prove that these possibilities are real. With more than six months left in my apprenticeship at the time of this writing, I reckon some experimentation and hands-on learning is in the cards. I didn’t even get into explaining the whole fermentation and distillation steps in this post or the various co-products that can be harvested from it. There’s a lot more to learn, stay tuned for the next installment of Permaculture-Based Alcohol Production. To be continued…

Read Other Permaculture Related Blogs

La Importancia de la Permacultura

6 Reasons to Use a Biodigester

Endeavors to End Propane: Local Fuel Sources and Efficient Cooking Technologies

Endeavors to End Propane: Local Fuel Sources and Efficient Cooking Technologies

Self-made rocket stove at the Ranch

By Tim O’Hara
Ranch Core Team Member

Endeavors to End Propane:  Local Fuel Sources and Efficient Cooking Technologies

Cooking food can make it tastier, easier to digest and absorb nutrients, and safer and healthier to eat.  Cooking at the Ranch happens multiple times a day, and on some days, pretty continuously throughout the day.  We generally have a lot of hungry bellies to fill!  Over the decades we have been steadily reducing our use of propane to meet our cooking needs.  Propane is a refined product that comes from crude oil or natural gas.  The negative environmental impact from its extraction and refinement on communities and the earth are well documented.  We have lessened our dependency on this imported product (Costa Rica has few crude oil resources and a moratorium on oil drilling) through the production and use of our own biogas, the utilization of solar cookers, dehydrators, and hay boxes and perhaps most importantly by incorporating efficient wood burning stove technology into our culinary domain.  

Our woodshed

Wood is renewable and abundant in and around Mastatal.  That’s not to say that wood can’t and isn’t managed poorly in many parts of the world where it is used for cooking.  For us, fortunately, we have a plentitude of this resource in a country that does a commendable job of taking care of its timber resources.  We have almost limitless supplies of firewood coming from our woodshed, local small-scale bandsaw mills that operate in the region, and our own agroforestry systems.

Common open cook stove

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 3 billion people worldwide still cook using solid fuels such as wood and dung in open fires and on inefficient stoves.  Poorly designed stoves and age-old cooking practices can produce high levels of small soot particles and other pollutants that penetrate deep into our lungs.  Exposure is particularly high among women who cook indoors and their children resulting in 3.8 million premature deaths a year from pulmonary illnesses.  The extensive use of wood for cooking can also contribute severely to deforestation and its associated devastating social and environmental impacts.  It can also consume precious and considerable time to gather and haul.  

ACE One in action!

These worrisome facts have led us to build and invest in efficient wood burning technologies and food production methods that allow us to sustainably and safely use this local resource to cook with.  Our alternative cooking workhorses are our 5 rocket stoves; 3 purchased ACE Ones, and two adobe/cob stoves designed and built in-house.  These stoves produce little to no smoke based on a design that features an air intake or fan that produces extreme heat in the combustion chamber that ignites and “burns away” any smoke that is produced.  This can be referred to as “complete combustion” and reduces or eliminates soot from the cooking process.  The ACE One stoves use small pieces of wood whereas the home-built versions use slightly larger pieces of wood.  These efficient stoves burn smaller quantities of wood and produce less or no smoke while retaining the many benefits of cooking with this local and accessible resource.   

One of Ranch’s agroforestry systems

When possible, efficient rocket stoves can be coupled with a well-managed agroforestry system that through the extensive planting and pruning of nitrogen-fixing and food producing trees can yield a steady supply of accessible firewood and the food that will be cooked on the rocket stoves.  This is yet another example of the closed-loop systems that we oftentimes strive for on our farm.   

Adobe rocket stove being built at Ranch

Rocket stoves can be small or large, take many shapes, and can be made from a wide variety of materials.  What’s common to all of them is the their ability to efficiently produce extremely hot combustion chambers.  To improve performance, your rocket stove chamber can be insulated and your burning surface sized and designed to effectively support your favorite cooking pot.  You can even buy rocket stoves for camping these days though if you’re a do-it-yourselfer or on a tight budget, we’d encourage you to design and build your own.  There are plans all over the internet.    

Our cob oven

In addition to our repertoire of rocket stoves, we have a self-built cob oven that we use for pizza parties and other baking endeavors, 3 Wonderbags, a solar and electric dehydrator and of course our magical biogas stove.  We’ll tell you more about these in a future article but in the meantime I’d encourage those that love simple solutions to check out the wonders of the Wonderbag and see how you can help transform a family’s life in Africa while saving a considerable amount of cooking fuel.

Let us know if you have any questions and come and check out are array of alternative cooking technologies if you find yourself in our neighborhood.  We love to share our experiences and hope that this has found you well well.

Simple rocket stove being built in community of Mastatal

The Biodigester

The Biodigester

By Mike Paladino, 2019 Rancho Mastatal Apprentice

It's 5.30 am in the dewy morning rainforest of Mastatal – the cacophony of squawks and birdsong remind us that the winged beings have begun their daily business of foraging for themselves and their young, the toads have tucked themselves into the nook of a tree or within a pile of leaves to avoid the relentless heat of the new day, and one by one the guests at Rancho Mastatal stretch and yawn their way out of their abodes and ease their way towards their first cup of coffee. Within moments of a couple of team members arriving, one opens a valve on a stove and WHOOSH! sparks the flame upon which we will cook our breakfast. But the source for this gas isn't of your average origin. This fuel comes from one of the most potentially troublesome yet profoundly utile resources on Earth: poo.

Here at the Ranch we are utilizing two means of generating alternative energy known as “biodigesters.” A biodigester houses various bacterial species to break down organic matter and capture biogas (namely, methane) released by the bacteria in a process called anaerobic fermentation – i.e. the organic matter is digested by the microbes in the absence of oxygen. In the particular case of Rancho Mastatal and many other sustainability centres around the globe, the common organic matter for these microscopic busybodies is excrement, primarily bovine with a smaller source coming from yours truly. There are several kinds of microbes at work here. Some break the matter into simpler molecules of sugars and acids. Other microbes, which find oxygen toxic, are able to break down the simple organic matter to form gases. The ultimate end result of this process is both energy for heat and electricity as well as valuable soil amendments which we disperse throughout our gardens. Essentially all of our breakfasts (roughly 30% of all food cooked here) are prepared solely with the captured methane gas from the combined two mechanism. It is estimated that reliance upon propane as our major cooking gas was cut by roughly 50% percent after the installation of the biodigester systems.

The human waste system is (and should remain) an ultimately hands-off process. A six-foot deep brick tank surrounded by an air seal was installed seven years ago and inoculated with bacteria to jump start the production of biogas. As the two toilets are flushed, they drain into the tank where the material broken down by the bacteria and transformed into methane which is piped directly to our stove top. The system involving cow manure demands daily attention, but can usually be tended within thirty minutes or less. It requires adding fresh cow patties (one and a half recycled rice bags for us) to a 55-gallon barrel and filling it up with water. It is necessary to pulverize the material so that it becomes water soluble – roughly 15 liters for every kilogram of organic matter. Here it is left to sit for a twenty four hour period prior to being pumped into the four barrels below. As the solids settle to the top, the liquid is moved through the series of tanks below before finally arriving in a PVC bag. The gas is captured and then join the same pipe before reaching the kitchen. The solids are tossed into a 14-day compost rotation before they arrive to the gardens to be sifted and applied to our beds.

Any technology that enables us to transform abandoned “waste” into usable energy shows much promise for small-scale homesteads striving for self-sufficiency as well as society at large. And that's not just another hippie talking s&%t.