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How is alcohol made?
Alcohol is a chemical compound class.
There are different types of alcohol: methyl alcohol, ethanol, butyl alcohol, etc.
What we usually call “alcohol”
is ethanol or ethyl alcohol
and we will only focus on this one.
We use alcohol for two types of use:
drinks and the other things.
The other things include household products,
cosmetic products or antifreeze and combustibles.
These uses match with two different manufacturing methods:
in former case alcohol is extracted from fruits and vegetables
which produce it naturally
and in the second case it is synthesised from petroleum products.
However, there is one notable exception:
the biofuel is also extracted from fruits and vegetables.
The synthesised alcohol in the petrochemical sector,
we call industrial alcohol
is the result of a reaction between ethylene and water.
As for it, ethylene is
directly made of the products of fuel refining.
Industrial alcohol is thus a fuel by-product.
Chemical factories are able to produce a very pure alcohol,
typically over 95 percent.
The alcohol intended for eating and drinking is extracted from fruits and vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables naturally produce alcohol when they ferment.
The fermentation is a biochemical reaction
which allows some living being to produce ATP
adenosine triphosphate.
The ATP is like the organism fuel
which gives it the energy required to work.
The most efficient way for an organism to produce an ATP is to use
the oxygen, collected with breathing,
to start a chemical reaction between glucose
and adenosine diphosphate or ADP present in the organism.
The products made by this chemical reaction are the water,
ATP and CO2 rejected by breathing.
However, in the absence of oxygen,
there is another method to create ATP,
and this is precisely the fermentation.
This time, the organism makes the glucose reacting
directly with ADP, without oxygen.
The products created during the chemical reaction are ATP,
alcohol and CO2.
This manufacturing method is especially used
by many microscopic fungi
we call yeasts.
As these yeasts are naturally present at the surface of fruits,
the fermentation starts spontaneously:
these fungi feed on glucose present in fruits
and transform it into alcohol and CO2.
To produce alcoholic beverages,
man often maximizes the conditions of fermentation
to improve and accelerate the process.
It can only consist in raising the ambient temperature
or add other yeasts
which are more efficient but they do not mature naturally on the fruit.
Once the sugar of the fruit has been turned into alcohol,
we obtain a mixture of alcohol, water and solid wastes
containing wastes of fruits and yeasts.
Of course, we have to extract alcohol.
To do so, we use a very efficient property of the alcohol:
its boiling point is lower than the other products, at 78 degrees.
Thus by heating the mixture,
the alcohol will evaporate in greater proportion than the other products.
By collecting the vapour produced by the condensation,
we obtain a product which percentage of alcohol increased.
Next, we just have to repeat le cycle
until we get the alcohol concentration we need: it’s the distillation.
At the end, the product obtained contains alcohol,
water and a whole series of wastes which give the alcohol its flavour
and make so that all wines doesn't taste the same.
Production: UNISCIEL/UNIVERSITE LILLE 1
Conception/ Production:Maxime Beaugeois, Damien Deltombeand Daniel Hennequin
Editing/Special Effects: Perrine Lefrileux
Music: Sébastien Ride, "Thunder Chacha" (SR Music)
Presentation: Maxime and Nina Beaugeois
Graphic design/ credits animation: Michaël Mensier