how do you distill corn and other produce to make fuel?

Answer 1

The first step in any operation of this sort is to get the material to rot. But it has to rot in a particular kind of way. You need to have a soggy mass of material containing sugar and micro-organisms that convert the sugars into alcohol. So, you crush up the mass of corn or sorghum, or whatever soft, sugary plant material you happen to have (cereal grains are popular, or roots like potatos) and let it quietly ferment in a warm moist area for a while until you start getting alcohol runoff. Collect the liquid material and distill it by carefully heating it to a temperature where the alcohol evaporates, but the water and other liquids don't. Cool the alcohol vapor until it condenses, and collect it - you've got relatively pure alcohol that can be used as fuel for a variety of purposes. Note that this is grossly oversimplified, and rather tricky - alcohols can be quite inflammable, which makes having a heat source nearby rather dangerous. Still explosions or other accidents can be pretty nasty. Modern technology takes a good deal of the risk away, but human carelessness and stupidity can make up for a lot of safety measures...