Denatured alcohol has to be made in a dis tillery, and a bonded warehouse must be erected on the premises, and accommodation provided for a revenue officer to watch the process. Dealers in denatured alcohol and manufacturers who use it must secure permits from the col lector of internal revenue in that district. Manu facturers using the "special" grade have to give bonds.
To protect denatured alcohol from accidental handling as ordinary alcohol, the Government requires that it he put up in cans of light green color, not smaller than five nor larger than 135 gallons, and that these cans be marked "Denatured Alcohol" in letters of red, at least one and one-half inches long. Dealers in bever ages are forbidden to have such cans of de natured alcohol about their premises.
Denatured alcohol may be manufactured more cheaply than ordinary alcohol by using cheaper materials, such as are unfit for use in making a beverage. Ordinary alcohol is made from grain, either Indian corn, wheat or barley. Alcohol for industrial use may be made from any starchy vegetable substance, or a waste by product, as the poorest grade of molasses, or the waste of a canning-house. In the Louisiana sugar belt and in Hawaii, where molasses is cheap, that is probably the best material; in Maryland, where there are many canneries, fruit waste could be used; in Kansas and Oklahoma in the years when there is an oversupply of corn, it can be made into denatured alcohol ; where potatoes are very cheap, these can be employed. In such ways denatured alcohol can be produced at a cost low enough to justify its use in lamps and for fuel, and for operating engines of the gasoline type, as for automobiles.
Since wood alcohol is the principal and most important article used in denaturizing, the en deavor of the trade is to cheapen it, but while wood pulp and sawdust (the raw material) are cheap, they do not yield a large quantity of alcohol, hence much material has to be handled in its manufacture. Any woody fibre or cellu lose can be used, however.
Alcohol does not burn with a bright enough flame to make a good illuminant, but by using its heat to render a mantle incandescent it gives a good light, that is safer than kerosene, arid presents no nuisance of smell and accumu lated carbon.
As a fuel, denatured alcohol is convenient, clean and safer than petroleum. As a motive power fluid, it is cleaner and better in some ways than any of the petroleum products, but is also more costly. It requires an engine and carburetter specially designed for alcohol to render it practicable for automobile and similar engines.
Denatured alcohol is commonly used in the manufacture of aniline dyes, electric apparatus, starch, transparent soaps, tobacco, shellac var nish, celluloid, paints, hats, shoeblacking, insect powders, disinfectants, cements, gas mantles, cartridges, anti-freezing mixtures and in clean ing and polishing preparations.
For the fiscal year ended 30 June 1915, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue reported the manufacture of 5,386,647 gallons of com pletely denatured alcohol and 8,599,822 gallons of specially denatured alcohol.
Bibliography.— Brachvogels, 'Industrial Al cohol) (1907) ; Herrick, 'Denatured or Indus trial Alcohol) (1907) ; Wiley, 'Manufacture of Denatured Alcohol) (1910).