People were making ethanol at home long before there were cars. They called it moonshine. With gas prices going through the roof and everyone worried about global warming, a California company is betting people will jump at the chance to use the same technology to turn sugar into fuel for less than a buck a gallon.
E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler, a device about the size of a stacking washer-dryer that uses sugar, yeast and water to make 100 percent ethanol at the push of a button.
"You just open it like a washing machine and dump in your sugar, close the door and push one button," company founder Tom Quinn told us. "A few days later, you've got ethanol."
Is it really that easy?
Read more at the following link
blog.wired.com/cars/2008/...-own-e.html
E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler, a device about the size of a stacking washer-dryer that uses sugar, yeast and water to make 100 percent ethanol at the push of a button.
"You just open it like a washing machine and dump in your sugar, close the door and push one button," company founder Tom Quinn told us. "A few days later, you've got ethanol."
Is it really that easy?
Read more at the following link
blog.wired.com/cars/2008/...-own-e.html
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 6:13 AMWhether you call it moonshine or ethanol, I believe its still illegal. Dept of Revenue will be all over you. -
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 11:04 AMMight be hard to hide one in an apartment but there are other places; yeeehaw! :-)
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 1:21 PM
A permit from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms will allow you to make ethanol legally, but running 100 percent ethanol in your car is against the law. No problem, Quinn says. Mix it with gasoline to create E-85. Just put a few gallons of gas in your car, then drive home and top it off with ethanol. Quinn says running sugar-based ethanol will produce about 85 percent fewer carbon emissions than using gasoline. You're all set if you've got a flex-fuel vehicle. -
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 3:20 PM"Quinn says running sugar-based ethanol will produce about 85 percent fewer carbon emissions than using gasoline."
Quinn is an idiot! Gram for gram, ethanol contributes somewhat LESS chemical energy than straight gasoline, because it's already partially oxidized. Therefore a road trip on ethanol--or on E85--will produce somewhat MORE carbon emissions than the same road trip on straight gasoline. For the scientifically literate, his claim is absurd on its face.
What the hell do I know? I have an M.S. in chemistry. -
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 5:45 PM"''"Therefore a road trip on ethanol--or on E85--will produce somewhat MORE carbon emissions than the same road trip on straight gasoline. """"
there is the argument that bio-fuels cycle carbon that is already free in the atmosphere rather than introducing large amounts of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. Also, I'm sure that the emissions from ethanol are a hell of a lot cleaner/safer than those from gasoline and diesle. Regardless, I think there are other issues here. Where did that sugar come from? was it locally organically grown? I don't think so. the vast majority of it is going to be grown with chemical fertilizer (made from petroleum) sprayed with pesticide, planted and cultivated with machinery using fossil fuels, processed with non-renewable energy, transported with non-renewable energy until it ends up in your home still. Sounds like a nifty device, I wouldn't mind having one out in the shed, but sugar?? E-fuel my ass.
The practice of agriculture uses human and natural resources. We'd best not forget that. Crops take land and space, period. The last thing we need is more farms springing up, using up wild land and more resources to grow non-food crops, organic or otherwise. If farmed bio-fuels are a long term option they are going to have to be incredibly dense per acre, and we are going to need to trim our energy use, and reduce the human population. -
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Fri, May 9, 2008 - 6:33 PMA still can not produce ethanol that will mix with gasoline. The best still will produce ethanol of no more than 96%, or 4% water. That much water will make your ethanol impossible to mix with gasoline. The ethanol must be absolute or !00%. To remove the remaining 4% water is not all that easy. It usually takes other materials and energy. The simplist way that I've heard of is to use dry corn starch. This will take up the remaining water, can be filtered out and dried for reuse in a solar drier.
Any law that one can not use 96% ethanol alone as a fuel, would exist for just one reason, to protect the interests of big petroleum. Ethanol of 96% by itself is an excellent fuel. -
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 10:54 AMto hell with big buisness once and for all. The plants that are here on this earth that offer mankind an escape route to salvation have been deemed "illegal" by law and we all know who backs these "laws" with $$$, big buisness.
People are ging to have to use plants like hemp to save themselves regarless of what law enforcers say, -
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 12:34 PMLaws are illusionary barriers that are not often enforced. It's much easier to make them than to enforce them. And a sometimes more practical to ignore them than to abide by some of them.
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Re: E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler-
Sat, May 10, 2008 - 8:23 PMI don't really know what percentage of the blame for hemp illegalization can be place at the feet of big business, but I don't think all of it can. Regardless, hemp won't save us anymore than any other plant or technology will unless we apply them in a rational manner with clear goals and intentions. The last paragraph of my previous post applies to hemp as much as any other economic plant. It seems to me that many people's beliefs about hemp as an economic plant are ridiculously rosy and largely colored by their relationship with it as a (insert your descriptor/adjective of choice) drug... at least here in the land of green haze anyway. Stuff like social organization, belief systems and values and what we actually end up doing with plants and technology are more important than the actual elements themselves. I don't mean to minimize the value of hemp as an economic plant (at least not from a rational perspective) just to say that it's a plant, and like other plants, it takes stuff from the soil and requires inputs, energy, processing infrastructure etc... Context! context! context! Its all about context!
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