3S—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, Wovtmbtr 3,1979
This Ford 7000 diesel has been modified to burn two fuels, diesel and
denatured alcohol. The alcohol is carried in the tank at the front of the tractor.
State
(Continued from Page 1)
act as quickly as possible on
it Action will be slowed
down somewhat by two
week-long recesses this
month, one for elections and
one for Thanksgiving.
Even so, Moehlmann said
he expects there’ll be a
gasobol with the Governor’s
signature by the end of
November.
Horst was calm on
Thursday morning, but
made it dear that be didn’t
intend to remain shut down,
and that he’d have a lot of
support if he fired up the still
again.
“My-state Senator told me
to keep on running,” Horst
said.
“One fellow offered to pay
the $2500 license fee to keep
me running, and another one
said he’d pay my fines if I
was arrested. I’m going to
wait and see what the
legislature does, but I’m not
going to wait too long.”
For Horst, there’s more at
stake than fuel for his
tractors, cars and home oil
burner. He and a partner,
Robert Kreider, have been
working on their distillation
Horst to demonstrate
use of alcohol still
Floyd Horst will
demonstrate the use of
gasohol for heat on Thur
sday, November 8, at the
Lebanon Municipal
Building. He also will ex
plain this distilling methods,
ATTENTION
New Holland Sales Stables, Inc.
announces these additional Consign
ments and Sales to be held at their sale
barn located 12 miles East of Lancaster
on Route 23, New Holland, Penna.
30 head herd of Holstein Dairy Cows, in ail
stages of production will be sold at the Nov
ember 7 Dairy Sale. Consigned by Ferree
Esbenshade.
8 Bred Gilts to be sold at the November 7
Feeder Pig Sale.
Wayne Gower Production Sale including Bred
Gilts, Open Gilts and Boars to be sold Saturday,
November 10 at 1:00 P.M.
Chester White Association Show and Sale
Saturday, November 17 at 1:00 P.M.
ABE DIFFENBACH. Manager
717-354-4341
shuts down still
method since December.
The still now standing in a
concrete block building
beside Horst’s veal calf barn
is still number six.'
“I’ve got a lot of time and
money in this still,” Horst
said Thursday to a small
group of visitors. For the
investment I’ve got here, I
could have bought several
new tractors.”
No one doubted his word.
Horst is not the kind of man
to till people with suspicion.
He seems open and honest
about what he’s doing and
what he’s got. But what he’s
got doesn’t look like several
tractors.' ,
It looks like a collection of
old rusty water tanks, linked
with tubes and pipes and
smelling faintly like the
juice that comes out of the
bottom of the silo.
While it doesn’t look im
pressive, the figures Horst
gives for its operation are
worthy of note.
Ground shelled com enters
the distillery building
through an auger at the rate
of a bushel an hour. It goes
first to a cooker, where it’s
heated to 190-degrees, then
and talk about the
modifications necessary for
operating farm machinery ,
with home-brewed gasohol.
The demonstration will
start at 9:30 a.m.
> ’ N? V
' ,»,\ •
to a tank where powerful
enzymes break the corn’s
complex starch molecules
down to simpler sugars.
From there the material
moves to a fermenting tank,
where yeasts ack on the
sugar to form an alcohol
containing fluid called
distiller’s beer. This beer,
which has 10-percent
alcohol, is then distilled to
get the alcohol.
If the process were to take
place in copper, stainless
steel or glass vessels, the
resulting alcohol would be
drinkable. Horst uses an old
steel water tank, and is
convinced that the alcohol as
it comes from the still is
unfit to drink.
Nevertheless, he
denatured all that he
produced by adding one
percent gasoline and four
percent ketone. The
resulting mixture doesn’t
smell like anything anybody
would want to drink.
Horst has been using the
ethanol from his still to run
his Ford 7000 diesel tractor,
which ordinarily is an 80 hp
machine. By burning two
thirds diesel fuel and one
third gasohol, he figures he’s
getting over 130 horses. He is
not, at this point, saving any
diesel fuel.
“I’m buming just as much
diesel as before,” Horst said,
“and I want to keep it run
s ..***£
Floyd Horst, the Lebanon County farmer whose
name and picture turned up all over the country
after the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board
closed down his gasohol still.
ning this way until 1 can hook
it up to a dynamometer.
After I find out what kind of
performance I’m getting, I’d
like to cut back the diesel
fuel to maybe 40-percent of
the mixture, and run it at
about the torque it was
designed for.”
The gasohol that comes
from Horst’s still costs him
under 50-cents a gallon, he
says. When diesel fuel was
selling for 40-cents'a gallon,
this system didn’t make any
sense. His costs are labor,
depreciation, interest on the
$3,000 investment in the
building and still, and 7-
cents per bushel of com.
The corn cost is the real
key to successful distilling,
Horst says.
Horst figures his seven
cent cost on $4 com.
The ground com that goes
in at one end comes out at
the other end with about 20-
percent less feed energy, but
along the way its protein
content has gone from about
8-percent to nearly 35-
percent, and the fat content
has nearly doubled to 15-
percent.
The figures aren’t Horst’s,
they came from a Penn State
test lab.
A visitor on Thursday
asked Horst how the feed
would work with his veal
calves. “The way this thing
is going,” Horst said, “I
don’t know if I’m ever going
to feed calves again.”
Horst and his partner plan
to sell their distillery
equipment as soon as they
can get it on the market.
They’ll be operating und<£"
the name of Renewable
Energy Resources and they
expect to be busy.
After the state ordered
him closed, Horst was in
vaded by reporters from
area newspapers and radio
and TV stations. Wire stories
about his plight showed up
all over the country, and his
phone hasn’t stopped ringing
since.
On Thursday, the phone
rang every 10 or 15 minutes,
with somebody calling from
down the road or across the
country for more in
formation.
Horst’s life is changing
rapidly, but he may just be
the-most visible part of a
movement that will
drastically alter the nation’s
patterns of energy usage.