Solution to High Gas Prices: Your Own Backyard Ethanol Brewer?

Posted by Alex in Car & Vehicle, Home & Garden, Science & Tech on May 16, 2008 at 11:24 am


Tired of paying through the nose at the gas pump? A company called E-Fuel Corporation is offering a backyard ethanol brewer that can produce up to 35 gallons of ethanol a week that you can pump directly into your car:

To make ethanol in the EFuel100, feedstock (consisting of sugar and yeast) or discarded liquor is loaded into the device’s 200-gallon (757-liter) tank. Using the LCD screen located on the front of the device (next to the pump), the operator places the EFuel100 either in ferment (for feedstock) or distillation (for liquor) mode to begin the process. The EFuel100 is hooked up to a water source—much like one’s washing machine or dishwasher is—and regulates the amount of water flowing into its tank to begin the ethanol-conversion process.

Once the feedstock is fermented, the device transfers the solution to its distillation system, where it is vaporized in a vertical column tube and sent through a membrane that separates the alcohol from the water. The distilled vapor is then cooled back into liquid form and sent to the 35-gallon storage tank, from which it can be pumped into an automobile using a 50-foot (15-meter) retractable hose. The process of turning sugar into ethanol fuel takes nearly a week (although alcohol distillation can be done in a matter of hours).

The company’s goal is to keep the cost of ethanol to be less than $1 per gallon (which may be impossible to do), but first you have to ante up $10K to buy the device: Link


Previous post
this post? Please Email this               
Next post


FUN PRODUCTS FROM THE NEATORAMA SHOP:


COMMENT

18 comments to "Solution to High Gas Prices: Your Own Backyard Ethanol Brewer?"

  1. Otto
    May 16th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    Woohoo! Yer own personal moonshine maker! Tired of high booze prices? No pesky taxes, no pesky ID's required! Completely unregulated by the gov'ment! Be the most popular kid at school!

    Select "liquor".
    Distill.
    Collect grain alcohol in appropriate container.
    Party on!

  2. Stephanie
    May 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    "discarded liquor" ?

    No such thing.

  3. Ashley
    May 16th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Um, you need all sorts of environmental impact permits and such before you can make your own fuel. Just in case anyone was planning on dropping 10k on this.

  4. lux
    May 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    I imagine the wonderful Gov would want their "fair" share of taxes from this somehow.
    Not so long ago, there was a news article of someone being fined for evading taxes by creating their own fuel, If I recall.

  5. Christophe
    May 16th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    I agree : better buy this machine with a fake name, in cash and hide it in a remote barn...

  6. sparge
    May 16th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Hey great, I'll buy one of these, and I'll tell everyone I know to get one, and pretty soon the entire world will have one of these things and the sugar solution will cost more than the gasoline and poor people will starve because factory farms can earn more money by turning their yields into fuel instead of food! YAY!

    At least the shareholders would be happy.

  7. ukanduit
    May 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    Takes 10 to lbs of sugar to make one gallon of fuel. You can do the math.

  8. bento
    May 16th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    I'd rather buy a "Mr. Fusion" for my vehicles.

  9. Arty
    May 16th, 2008 at 9:04 pm

    Who's going to drop 10k on these things? Not only would you have to pay 10k, you have to pay for all the other stuff just to make ethanol (water, sugar/liquor/feedstuff, electricity, etc...). Paying for gas at the station's starting to sound cheaper.

  10. Sofar
    May 16th, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    I just want an electric car. Why can't I have an electric car? Screw it, I'm building my own out of an old Volvo. I'll steal the elevator motor from an abandoned building.

  11. dagamore
    May 17th, 2008 at 5:23 am

    But soem of you dont get it, ignore the fact that it will take 10lbs of sugar, ignore the fact that it will take your water, ignore the fact that it will take the 'special yeast', and ignore the fact that it cost 10K plus setup/install.

    You will be able to brew your own sub standard ethonal! Will wonders never end.

    just think soon everyone will beable to wast 10 to 12 bucks a gallon brewing their own e-100 at home. and then get smaked by the feds for road tax evasion.

  12. Gianni
    May 17th, 2008 at 7:48 am

    #

    Right now yes there is a low supply of fuel, but not to the point where we have to pay this much in gas.

    Oil companies are making the most they've ever made and were getting scammed especially here in Montreal where it's 139.1 Per Liter !

    I found this great article the other day that explains how to save 40% of gas...

    http://ezinearticles.com/?High-Gas-Prices-Leads-Many-People-To-Run-The ir-Cars-Using--Water-(As-Seen-On-Fox-News)&id=1167673

    I really suggest you read it, it's already been on Fox news an the number of people doing that are becoming more common especially in Europe.

  13. sparge
    May 17th, 2008 at 9:15 am

    I shouldn't even be responding to flagrantly self-promoting posts like Gianni's, but to anyone who might read his link:

    Don't be fooled. This engine doesn't use water as a fuel. It uses electricity. From the article:

    "The electricity in your car will use electricity from your car's battery to separate water into a gas called HHO (2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen). HHO, also called Brown's Gas or Hydroxy, burns smoothly and provides significant energy - while the end product is just H2O!

    So you start off with water, and end up with water. It doesn't take a degree in thermodynamics to recognize that you can't get any energy without using up your fuel!

    The energy comes from electricity, which is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, a process which is known as Electrolysis. This requires a large amount of energy from the battery -- energy which is gained back (although with less than 100% efficiency) by converting the hydrogen and oxygen back to water.

    In short, this is nothing more than a different kind of electric car.

  14. Sid Morrison
    May 17th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Hah hah.... So if you have free sugar and free electricity (and exactly how many kW*hr are required to make 1 gallon of EtOH??), this is just the ticket. Oh yeah, you need $10K also. Sigh... There are probably some morons out there who might actually buy something like this...

  15. Thomas
    May 17th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    I heard recently that there are so many products produced from one barrel of oil, that it can be worth as much as $10,000 in post-production goods, and that after plastics and the like are made from the oil, gasoline is left over, almost like a waste product, and is the least profitable part of the barrel of oil. Food for thought?

  16. sparge
    May 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    Thomas - it would be kind of silly to do it any other way. Engines can be optimized to burn just about anything, so they are designed to handle the stuff that isn't worth the cost of refinement.

    Gasoline is kind of a catch-all term for mixtures of hydrocarbons containing around 5-10 carbon atoms. After extracting the more useful compounds out of the oil, the rest is mixed together and turned into fuel.

  17. Jonny Wonder
    June 9th, 2008 at 6:29 pm

    $10k isn't that much. Do you know what sugar costs wholesale? 34 cents/lb...

  18. Ron Cook
    June 23rd, 2008 at 9:37 pm

    (A real solution to dump the pump)
    This is the challenge... Let's work together as an Internet community to design and build new and less costly means of travel, share ideas at no cost to our neighbors and beat the oil companies at their own game.

    Stop being an oil company's puppet.

    Build a folks wagon for Americans, by Americans.
    I have seen four wheeled carts with grocery baskets attached to the handlebars, driven by foot pedals and bicycle chains at the senior citzen's center where I work as a janitor. Convert one of these to take a 23 hosepower Briggs Stratton or Koler twin cylinder engine, from a riding mower, add a brake system and an umbrella and you will have a 100 mile to the gallon (CITY CAR) that runs 35 mph for city traffic and plenty of torch to climb hills. Drive it to and from work or to grocery shop or to run errands.

    People in rural areas will buy them to drive to town on the alternate fuel lanes and people in the city will buy them to run errands and get back and forth to work. Students will buy them to drive to school and since they are light weight they will drive them on campus. A vehicle that runs on pure Ethanol for pennies per day, produces less carbon exhuast, and is easy to work on would surely be as big a hit as the 1965 Mustang with everyone. I am already working to design one of my own.


PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT

Neatorama Comment Policy
You don't have to register or login to comment, but it's easier if you do so. Comments aren't censored, but those that are abusive or off-topic may be edited or deleted.


Stay updated on the comments with Comment RSS