Posted on 05/09/2008 8:35:13 AM PDT by 300magnum
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that won't spike food prices.
E-Fuel Corp unveiled on Thursday the "MicroFueler" touting it as the world's first machine that allows homeowners to make their own ethanol and pump the brew directly into their cars.
The portable unit that sells for $10,000 resembles a gasoline station pump and nozzle -- minus the slot for a credit card, or the digital "SALE" numbers that whir ever faster at retail pumps as global demand pushes fuel prices to record levels.
Instead of tapping gasoline from an underground tank, the pump's back end plugs into home power and water supplies to make ethanol for as little as $1 a gallon (3.8 liters), according to E-Fuel.
The company says one of the machine's top selling points is its sweet tooth. It ferments fuel from sugar, the price of which is historically cheap as global supplies are glutted.
That means it avoids the Achilles heel of today's U.S. ethanol system -- reliance on corn -- which has been blamed for helping to spike global food prices.
"There's no mother in America crying that their kids aren't getting enough sugar," Tom Quinn, CEO and founder of E-Fuel said in an interview.
Regular table sugar alone is too expensive, so E-Fuels says it will link customers to cheaper surplus supplies, including inedible sugar from Mexico that sells at a fraction of the price. It also hopes to get users to help pay for feedstock by selling carbon credits for using the machine, since making ethanol from sugar emits fewer greenhouse gases than making it from corn.
"We will break the traditional ethanol system," said Quinn a California computer and computer games inventor, who has bankrolled the company with what he calls "millions, but not multimillion" of dollars.
He said despite the steep upfront costs, the machines will pay for themselves quickly. For a two-car family that drives about 34,500 miles a year, the MicroFueler will pay for itself in less than two years, assuming average gasoline prices of $3.60 per gallon, the company said. The unit makes up to 35 gallons (132 liters) of 100 percent ethanol per week.
Others are not so sure that the MicroFueler is a good investment.
"I doubt it will work," said David Pimental, a professor at Cornell University who has studied the economics of ethanol for decades. He said the history of the fuel has been one of moving to greater and greater scales to increase the efficiencies of making the fuel.
E-Fuel says the machine is efficient in a way that big ethanol plants aren't because it removes water from the fuel with special fine filters that reduce the fuel costs of distilling the water out.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Marguerita Choy)
Mr. Fusion.
“How far do we have to stick our heads up our a$$es before we finally realize we have to DRILL?”
The day that you are refered to the dentist for colon exam.
How about they actually try a real Energy plan in DC for a change. Instead of mindlessly repreating the same absurd nonsense (Ride the Bus, Investigate “Big Oil”, Turn down the Termonstate, do with less) the Political Class have been screaming in DC since the 1970s, maybe they should sit down, shut up and listen to what the People are telling them.
We could sit down here on Freeper and come up with a better National Energy plan in 30 minutes then the entire political class in DC has managed to put together in 30 years.
The day that you are refered to the dentist for colon exam.LOL! Or the day you need a colonoscopy to check for tooth decay.
Carbohydrates into hydrocarbons. Think how fast you could go on some ‘everclear’?
We could sit down here on Freeper and come up with a better National Energy plan in 30 minutes then the entire political class in DC has managed to put together in 30 years.30 milliseconds:
DRILL!
No one is going to manufacture tractors to burn ethanol today. Farmers converted from gasoline to diesel engines in the 50’s to late 60’s and never looked back.
There are plenty of antique, smaller tractors that burn gasoline and could burn ethanol, but they’re not suitable for use on big acres.
Many growers could get ethanol at cost, since they bought into the co-operatives that produce ethanol. There’s no need to deal with hobby quantities like this.
Notice it says “up to” 35 gallons a week. Plus, you get fewer miles per gallon with ethanol.
Also, what kind of waste does this device produce?
Why not have your church or synagogue buy one? The donations from the congregation would be less than the 10 grand and the donations tax deductable. Purchases of sugar through the church would be tax deductable also...
“Works for me. The more self sufficient I am, the better off I am. Works for food, works for energy.”
This only works for wartoads and haven’t met many. LOL!
Actually I would buy one for use on the farm if tractors, my truck, and cars were 100% ethanol compatible. I too raise most of my own food. Food raising is a dirty business often requiring hard labor which most folks wish to avoid.
This machine is illegal because of the leftists running our federal and state governments:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1849311/posts?page=14
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1843692/posts
His cut? Heck, I want my subsidy. Hook me up to that government teat!
If this could be solar powered without acres of cells, and you had an 5-10KW generator and some batteries, you could take yourself pretty much off the grid anywhere you had enough sunlight.That would be fine for some grad students doing energy "research" in some cabin somewhere (with some evening cannabis research thrown in). But you're not going to power a CITY with this BS. You're not going to grow an ECONOMY with this BS. And you're not going to reverse the flow of all our wealth into the hands of muzzies with all this BS.
This is a flight of fancy as silly as windmills. Do you know that all the windmills in existence don't create as much power as a single small nuke reactor? All this green is all so much BS. Unless you want us all to live in paleolithic squalor (and die-off 90% of humanity to enable even that).
“Each of ten families would only get 3 1/2 gallons per week.”
If they were mixing it as E-10 then this would provide 35 gallons a week. The value would then depend on how cheap it was to produce the sugar alcohol. If they were using E-85 then this would be around 4 1/2 gallons. My car gets 25 miles to the gallon, and I seldom drive anywhere close to 112 miles a week.
I’ll wait to have an engine that will burn SALT WATER! :-)
Wish I could make a car that runs on pee, always lots of that to spare..
No one is going to manufacture tractors to burn ethanol today. Farmers converted from gasoline to diesel engines in the 50’s to late 60’s and never looked back.
There are plenty of antique, smaller tractors that burn gasoline and could burn ethanol, but they’re not suitable for use on big acres.
Many growers could get ethanol at cost, since they bought into the co-operatives that produce ethanol. There’s no need to deal with hobby quantities like this.””
I didn’t buy into the coop and the switch to diesel was fine when the cost was acceptable.
Also, what kind of waste does this device produce?”
The waste is a high protein livestock feed.
Exactly. Also, I wonder why the ethanol producers aren’t using this inedible sugar?
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