Kick the oil habit and make your own ethanol

Reuters ^ | Thu May 8 | Timothy Gardner

[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)

[AFPhys]

These will take off and the price of “cheap sugar” from Mexico will skyrocket.

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BINGO!!!

[Sicon]

[Deaf Smith]

Relative of Junior Johnson?

[zek157]

Ok, I’m sure every county/city has several ordinances about running backyard/garage stills. Aside from that aspect there are a few fire hazard issues working with stills & pure alcohol. I don’t see this being applicable to 97% of the population.

[zek157]

Add Washington State.

[count-your-change]

Would 35 gal./wk. keep the whole membership in good “spirits”?

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

There are biodiesel units out there that you can purchase for $3.5K

Where?

[Old Professer]

If you have any soldering skills you can build a 5 gallon/hr output compact still with a $30.00 investment here:

http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id3.html

[ex-Texan]

Look like the oil companies have people jumping through hoops. Like a lot of Goldfish Tricks to me . . . LOL !

[count-your-change]

uuhhh...yeah it does...with proper paperwork.

[fireforeffect]

For every gallon of ethanol you put in your tank, a child goes hungry that day.

For every tank full of ethanol you use, someone starves to death.

[kellynla]

“Where?”

say “please” LOL

[jonrick46]

With the technology that one could use to make a batch of meth, one could make ethanol from cellulose. I would rather be brewing up old newspaper than impacting the world’s sugar prices.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Pretty please?

[kellynla]

http://homebiodieselkits.com/

[Deaf Smith]

Good luck with that.

[samtheman]

It’s not the oil companies. I would love to give the oil companies free reign and let them drill to their hearts content. We’d be back down to gas wars and $.25 a gallon.

But that’s not going to happen. Not as long as the hate-America socialists who run the WH and Congress keep running the WH and Congress.

Which, by the way, is the main reason I won’t be voting for McCain. If we’re going to have a hate-America socialist running the country, I want it to be OBVIOUS, not STEALTH.

I’m SICK of stealth hate-America socialists. I either want them all gone, or I want it very obvious what’s going on.

[thackney]

Do you know that all the windmills in existence don't create as much power as a single small nuke reactor?

Quite a bit overstated there. in 2006, the US generated 26.6 Million Megawatthours by wind power.

Electricity Net Generation From Renewable Energy by Energy Use Sector and Energy Source, 2002-2006 http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1_11.html

The smallest commercial Nuclear plant I found is Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, 476 MW. If it could run 100% 24/7 for a year it would produce 4.17 Million Megawattshours. So US wind averaged 6.4 times as much power as our smallest Nuclear plant is capable of doing. But even Nuclear plants don't average 100% capacity.

Fort Calhoun Station near Omaha, Nebraska
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/fort_calhoun.html

Now, all plants, including nuclear plants, have down time. So lets look at the industry average. In 2006, we generated 787.2 Million Megawatthours from Nuclear.

Net Generation by Energy Source by Type of Producer, 1995 through 2006
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

There are 104 US Nuclear units in the US.

U.S. Nuclear Reactors
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html

So our average Nuclear reactor is producing 7.57 Million Megawatthours per year and our total wind generation is producing 3.5 times our average nuclear unit.

I am in favor of more nuclear plants and I am against targeted subsidies like those for wind. But I would like to see honest information used to make our decisions about our energy needs.

[Gilbo_3]

you ead my mind...bwahalolhehaha

pay 10 K for this machine, that probably devours electricity, which will convert mountains of sugar [sold separately] into ethanol, for only $1/gal...that few, if anyones engine will swallow without gagging...

then it gets even better by selling off carbon credits to offset the cost...

Now all we need is dingy pelosi to offer a tax credit and itll be a grand slam...

[samtheman]

Can you believe that this is adult humans coming up with this concept?