Hi Sutty,
While my brain idles in some lost space.... I ponder the source of alcohol as a fuel. I GUESS it may be one of the first manufacturered liquid fuels, needing a distillation process to separate it from the water when fermenting grains and fruits to make beer and wine. Perhaps this goes back to the first-time distillation was used? - Making crude Brandy and Gin from wine and beer respectively? - Then people found the spirit was highly inflammable?
I heard that the Marie Celeste was found abandoned yet sailing, and believe it was carrying a cargo of alcohol (near pure) in barrels, from North America to Europe? - The suggestion being that the hold became full of alcohol fumes from seepage through the wood barrels, and to avoid the risk of fire from a lamp flame or anything, the crew simply abandoned ship...? Or maybe they were drunk from the fumes?
I was wondering how the first alchemist developed a distillation process, and after playing with various solutions that he distilled, managed to discover "hooch"?
I believe that paraffin (or perhaps turpentine?) was first discovered/distilled because people were drying wood in furnaces, then after fires and explosions, realised that cooking wood gave off flammable fumes, which when cooled were combustible oils? - But I think this was much later than the "natural" extraction of oils - e.g. by pressing olives and certain grains, nuts, etc, or by heating herbs, animal fats, etc, in water and extracting the oil from the surface. Maybe someone boiling a pot of something found that the condensate collecting on a cold surface above have a different flavour of properties to the solute? - Then invented distillation, and subsequently, the experiments led to bandy, gin, whisky, and Meths for burners?
A visit to "Wiki" is required!
K2
How about this?
Fractional crystallization
See also: Fractional crystallization (chemistry)
The ethanol may be concentrated in fermented beverages by means of freezing. For example, the name applejack derives from the traditional method of producing the drink, jacking, the process of freezing fermented cider and then removing the ice, increasing the alcohol content.[3][4] Starting with the fermented juice, with an alcohol content of less than ten percent, the concentrated result can contain 25–40% alcohol.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoonshineMedieval Muslim chemists such as Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Latin: Geber, ninth century) and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (Latin: Rhazes, c. 865–925) experimented extensively with the distillation of various substances. The distillation of wine is attested in Arabic works attributed to al-Kindī (c. 801–873 CE) and to al-Fārābī (c. 872–950), and in the 28th book of al-Zahrāwī's (Latin: Abulcasis, 936–1013) Kitāb al-Taṣrīf (later translated into Latin as Liber servatoris).[51]