MicroFueler Makes $1/gal Homebrew Ethanol From Sugar
Homemade ethanol guru Floyd S. Butterfield and Silicon Valley entrepreneur and innovator Thomas J. Quinn want to see you making ethanol in your backyard. Their creation, called the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler, is a stacked washer-dryer sized reactor that can convert sugar into ethanol for (they claim) $1.00 per gallon.
Before you get too excited, please note that the unit is probably too expensive for your next block party, unless you’ve got an extra $9,995 lying around somewhere. Fortunately, state and Federal tax credits can halve this, but that still keeps it out of the price range of the average American.
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How could making ethanol be so expensive? As Thomas Quinn quipped, this is “third-grade science. You just mix together water, sugar and yeast, and in a few hours, you start getting ethanol.” That’s not the hard part; what’s difficult is purifying ethanol to the degree that it can be mixed successfully with gasoline.
Ethanol has been made from yeast-fermentation of grain, fruits, and vegetables for thousands of years. Distillation, which gets around the 15% alcohol concentration limit that kills yeast, followed shortly thereafter. Adding ethanol to motor fuel takes things one step further. To mix properly with gasoline, ethanol must be anhydrous (containing no water) at 100% pure, or 200-proof. Homemade ethanol stills can easily produce 95% pure, or 190-proof, ethanol. But getting that last 5% of water out of the ethanol can require just as much energy as it did to get out the first 95%.
It could be the ingenuity of putting several thousand years of knowledge into one box makes the MicroFueler so costly. It can fill its own 35-gallon tank with E100 (100% ethanol) in about a week by fermenting the sugar, water and yeast internally, then separating out the water through a membrane filter.
Compared to homebrewing biodiesel, which can be done with less than $100 worth of equipment, making ethanol for motor fuel seems complicated and expensive. While sugar appears to be a cheap, ubiquitous resource, according to one expert it takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of ethanol. Right now, raw sugar sells in the United States for about 20 cents a pound.
Although the cost of each gallon of ethanol produced in the MicroFueler depends on the price of sugar, electricity, and water, Thomas Quinn maintains that it can be made for somewhere around $1 per gallon. The company is trying to make inedible sugar available from Mexico, which can be bought for as little as 2.5 cents per pound.
I like the idea, but this probably isn’t something that will go mainstream unless the price comes down. If you want more information about homebrewing ethanol, or plans to make your own still (which would be substantially cheaper), see these resources:
Posts Related to Ethanol and Biodiesel:
- Study: Your Car Can Run On 20% Ethanol
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- Cellulosic Ethanol Sugar Diverted to Algae Biodiesel Production
Via: NYT
Photo Credit: Popular Mechanics
Someone’s math seems to be a bit off. The $1 a gallon claim is entertaining but if it takes 10lbs of sugar to make one gallon and a lb of sugar is 20 cents that is already $2 per gallon without taking into account expended energy costs such as heating fuel or electricity or the recaptured costs of “them thar facy gadgets to makes me some sugar brew”, etc.
[...] MicroFueler Makes $1/gal Homebrew Ethanol From Sugar [...]
Not being an environmentalist, I don’t really give a shit as to what happens to the earth for future generations. I’m all for drilling anywhere including the North slopes of Alaska, or even here in my back yard. All these hippy turned yuppy politicions have their heads in there ass.
That’s great Robert, I’m not an environmentalist either, but if I have kids I want them to have the same opportunities I’ve had. The only way to guarantee that is to consider the implications of the status quo and our ongoing actions on future generations. Drilling for more oil is just shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s time to move on man…
Its definetely goin to be sad seein our big gas guzzling v8’s hit the scrap yard. I agree with Chris tho, ethanol sucks and is not the answer to the crisis at all. Its only gives u like 66% the gas mileage of gasoline, uhh my dodge ram will need a gallon to get me to the grocery store. This may actually make it possible for people to hang on to their v8’s for a little while longer lol. yippeee global warming
ohh hey i just thought of a little downfall as well, it takes 10-14 lbs of sugar per gallon. Lets say that drives very modestly uses ohhh 8000 miles per year at 20 miles per gallon (about honda accord on ethanol). That person would need 4000 to 5000 pounds of sugar. Ummm delivery cost, storage cost. There goes ur 1 dollar per galllon.
it is like making homebrewed ethanol……could be illegal?!
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I would like to know how E85 would affect a vehicle not design for it? I have a 07 Trailblazer and I would like to install the flex-tek conversion kit. I would love to purchase the microfueler but not at the current price. Because I move every few years the microfueler is bulky to move with.
Compressed methane, natural gas, is easier to make and can be made from more types of bio-mass, but is harder to store. ..HG..