How Can Alcohol (Ethanol) Be Made From Ethene And Fermentation?

Question

What are the advantages and the disadvantages?

Answer 1

I believe ethene and water will react to for ethanol. This is just a prediction, and even though they shouldn't be able to mix (b/c one is organic and the other isnt), there should still be some solubility. The ethene, a mono unsaturated molecule will become saturated in the presence of water (loosing the double bond), and subsequently pick up the left over OH- to form ethanol, or C2H5OH. I would draw my predicted mechanism but, it would be kinda hard to illustrate using only text! so lets try it like this:

C2H4 (ethene) + H2O ~> C2H6 (Ethyl) + OH-
OH- + C2H5 ~> C2H5OH

Maybe that's how itll happen, maybe not. Just a prediction. :)

Answer 2

Ethene is C2H4 if you didn't know.

The reaction of ethene to ethanol (drinkable alcohol) is as follows:

C2H4 + H2O ---> C2H5OH

If you have pure ethene adding water, and then heating the mixture, should hydrogenate the mixture and add oxygen to its corresponding parts. I am not completely sure this will work, and make sure to have water in your system, because ethene is less stable than ethane which is the first step in the mechanism, so if you heat too fast, there is a huge potential for this to explode. Be vary careful! Fermentation is a much simpler way to make alcohol.

Fermentation:

Take a packet of baker's yeast.
Add 1/4 cup warm water (100-120 degrees Farheinheit) and a few teaspoons of sugar). Make sure to keep the temperature just slightly warm. You will kill the bacteria if you raise it much higher, and if it is too low, they will not reproduce quickly.

Stir for 10 minutes.

Then take a milk gallon jug. Add 14 cups water, 3.5 cups sugar. Put cap back on, and shake violently.
Then, add your yeast mixture (teaspoon of sugar, yeast packet, and 1/4 cup water) to the milk jug.
Again, shake container violently.

Next, take a standard party- baloon. Put 5-10 pin holes in the balloon.
Cover the container with the balloon.
In 24 hours your jug should sound like a soda, and the balloon should be pointing up.

The purpose of the balloon: It lets CO2 out, but keeps oxygen from coming in spoiling your alcohol.
In 2 weeks, you will have a gallon of 10% alcohol wine, that actually tastes pretty damn good. If you are just trying to extract ethanol, you can distill this later at your own convenience. If you need simple distilling procedures, post this question to me or send me an email at [e-mail]

P.S. Make sure that when you have mixed your completed mixture, you put the balloon on the jug, instead of the cap. If you put the cap on. CO2 will build up in the milk jug, and the cap will explode off = BAD

Hope this helps!!

Answer 3

Ethene is ethylene, and it reacts with water, catalyzed by a acid like sulfuric.

CH2=CH2 ===> CH3CH2-OH

Yeast ferments sugars to ethanol, plus CO2.

The advantage of ethylene alcohol is that you deal only with ethylene, the alcohol, and enough water to react--only 18 lb H2O for every 28 lb ethylene. In fermentation, you have to grow the mold in a lot of water, then spend energy to get the ethanol out by distillation. Fermentation yields a solution of only about 12% ethanol in water. Also, ethanol and water form what is called an azeotrope at 95% ethanol. So you can't distil the alcohol to higher than 95%.

On the other hand, fermentation ethanol has the political advantage that it provides a market for U.S. farmers' corn, so the government will subsidize it as much as it takes. And government allows only fermentation alcohol in gasoline, not ethylene alcohol.

Answer 4

not form ethene but from fermentation yes think of yeast in bread and yeast used to make alcohol they both produce alcohol as a byproduct

Answer 5

Lancenigo di Villorba (TV), Italy

You wrote right!
Principal industrial processes for ethanol production are alcoholic fermentation and ethylene's hydratation.
I cannot write all about these processes.

Briefly, I said you former way permit employment of poor and recycling mass having biological origins. It may become a cheap process, nonetheless microbiological pollution tends to produce several products, so ethanol result in dilute concentrations and polluted by other alcoholic compounds.
The alcoholic broth which results must undergo to several distillations following in "downstream operations". In this way, you have necessary but very expensive secondary operations (too dilute alcoholic grade), see separation and recovery of many other volatile compounds (e.g. isomer of propylic and butylic alcohols, carbonylic compounds like diacetyl, furfural, etc.).
Chemical engineers cannot ignorate biological question about biological culture and prevention of microbiological pollutions (bacteria, other yeast which deriving by air, ground-powder, etc.), so they cannot ignorate biological kinetic about yeast-growth and yeast-alcohol's production. Thus, this process needs particular know-how and plant's adaption to biological troubles.
When you talk about bread-yeast you said about bakery-yeasts. Do you know that these yeasts take air's oxygen for give acid products although ethanol? Yeasts alcohol-producer belong to same family of bakery-yeasts but alcohol-producers derive by bio-lab's serious selection...you cannot buy them at bakery!!!
Ethylene's hydratation concerns gas-liquid reaction, in effect ethylene gas-stream flow upward in an acidic media (e.g. aqueous solutions of H2SO4 and/or H3PO4) where gas add water to form alcohol.
When you can exclude "carbocation reactions" (e.g. formation's mechanism of di-ethylic ether) you have neither isomery's trouble nor other organic products. The alcoholic mixture needs succeeding distillation for water separation unless ether presence. The global process needs energy supply but it results very exigent because reactor operate in high pressure conditions, so industrial plant involve serious building costs and leading's ones.

I hope this helps you.

Answer 6

you don't wanna know, pure ethanol will kill you!