E-Fuel looks to keep consumers full of cheap gas

Ethanol is a rather controversial technology. While many automotive companies are heavily investing in developing ethanol production, releasing ethanol vehicles, and building up the ethanol infrastructure, the process has been much maligned by the United Nations and academia. The UN and various professors have released regular statements blasting the technology for threatening to raise food prices on basic food stocks such as corn. They say that this is already happening, and is causing an increase in famine worldwide.

Still, economics isn't exactly a friendly sport at times, and one inventor, Floyd S. Butterfield, is putting his all into offering an ethanol homebrewer to consumers. Much like the auto companies, Mr. Butterfield is betting that despite the controversy, when customers see the low prices of ethanol fuel, they will jump to adopt it.

Butterfield, 52, has been making ethanol stills for years. In 1982 he won the California Department of Food and Agriculture's award for the best still design. After many long years of work and investment, he believes he finally has developed an affordable, profitable, easy to use, and practical design.

He has partnered with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas J. Quinn and together the pair started the E-Fuel Corporation. Their new home-fuel ethanol system will be called the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler. It will be about the size of a washer-dryer stack and retail for $9,995. Orders should start shipping by the end of 2008. Tax credits could cut the cost in half approximately, for many consumers.

The still uses sugar as its fuel source. The company distributes a specially formulated yeast that processes this sugar, making it into ethanol. Based on the cost of sugar, and the water and electricity that must also be used, E-Fuel says that it may cost as little as $1 per gallon of fuel.

Quinn does some ethanol making of his own. He collects leftover waste alcohol from bars in Silicon Valley and converts it into ethanol. His only expense is in the electricity needed for processing. He states that ethanol will contribute less carbon pollution as well; burning one gallon of traditional gas releases as much carbon as eight gallons of their ethanol on average.

Quinn believes the oil industry is in trouble. He states, "It’s going to cause havoc in the market and cause great financial stress in the oil industry."

Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley warns though that homebrewing isn't always as easy as putting in a deck or other outdoor projects. Such setups are often plagued with low quality-control and worse efficiency than commercial production. He states, "There’s a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It’s entirely possible that they’ve done it, but skepticism is a virtue."

However Quinn is no stranger to what it takes to succeed. He owns the patent on the motion sensor used in the wildly successful Nintendo Wii, the current console leader. He cut his teeth on the fledging PC market, as the product manager for Alan F. Shugart's iconic hard drive company, which pioneered the sales of the technology. Mr. Quinn states, "I remember people laughing at us and saying what a stupid idea it was to do that disk drive."

Butterfield considers the still as revolutionary as the personal computer in terms of societal impact. With the help of Mr. Quinn's team of 15 microelectronics experts, the company cut the energy useage during the production process in half. One key element is a new membrane filter, which separates alcohol from water at lower heat and with less steps. As the process uses sugar, it will have no odor, and the water exiting will be drinkable.

E-Fuel plans to deploy at launch, not only to the U.S., but also to China and Britain. A commercial version of the still is in the works. Also Butterfield is working on versions of the still which use feedstocks other the sugar.

To own a homebrew system you must obtain a permit from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which is a relatively simple process. There are thousands of homebrews in operation across the U.S.

However, homebrewed ethanol is often not very practical. Michael E. Salassi, a professor in the department of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University says it takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar typically to make a gallon of ethanol, and with sugar selling at 20 cents a pound or more, thats $2 to $2.80 a gallon, plus the cost of electricity and water used. Mr. Quinn counters these arguments, stating that starting next year the company will offer inedible sugar from Mexico at 2.5 cents a pound, which will be compatible with the system and lower the cost drastically. E-Fuel says its working to develop a distribution network for the sugar.

Yet there's still one more complication: currently it is illegal to operate a 100 percent ethanol-fueled vehicle on road in the U.S. This may change soon, but for now customers will have to settle for using a mix of ethanol and gas.

Despite the hurdles that must be overcome, Quinn and Butterfield promise success for the fledgling company.

http://www.dailytech.com/Wii+Sensor+...ticle11618.htm

Kinda cool. At $5k-10k though you have to drive a lot of miles even if the ethanol could be $3 cheaper than gasoline.

 

This is a good thing. Stills will become cheaper and cheaper. I just wish we would stop messing around with corn and start using Switch Grass. Alas, I am from the corn belt and I know how strong they lobby.

 

http://www.coskata.com/

 

Nice site. Loads of information on that one.

 

I think a better solution would be to sell slightly larger ones to filling station owners so that they could offer ethanol. It would be more cost effective than each person having their own, and could be easily mixed with gas to the needed levels.

 

I made a still in high school for a science experiment (almost got suspended for it, long story ) and it is relatively easy. That said what's to stop anyone who buys one of these "home brew" kits from bottling the ethanol and selling it as "white lightning"? (Which essentially is what you got if you don't mix gasoline with it.) Is getting a permit really that easy? And if you do, doesn't that mean the ATF may drop in from time to time to make sure all that ethanol is going in your fuel tank?

Plausible? Yes. Practical? Hardly. Myth busted.

 

I'd brew my own fuel if it came out to be similar $/gal as buying it the old fashioned way, if only for the convenience...

Although it's not like gas stations are hard to find.

 

It would take something ridiculous like 10x the surface area of the United States growing switch grass to replace gasoline, so what exactly are you referring to? Just use less corn and use more switch grass? I don't think it's much of a realistic option.

 

It will cost $1/gallon until demand for sugar increases 1000-fold. Unless this requires some inordinantly small amount of sugar due to the chemical reaction with the yeast.

 

This is what I see too. It's just like when bio-diesel first started, everyone was saying you can get used cooking oil free! Now that it's caught on, most people only want to sell it to you.

 

Where is my damn Mr. Fusion by now?!

Crikey!

 

Who said replace? I believe switch grass would reduce foreign oil. Which would change the U.S. economic landscape a lot. Also, Grass has multiple harvest. So, it wouldn't take "10 x the surface area of the United States".

 

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/mis...s-profile.html

Read that link, specifically where it talks about how you can harvest switch grass once or twice in a year for fuel concerns. Then if you do the math I think it's something like the surface area of texas. Also you need to consider the fact that ethanol pollutes too and people like to overlook that.

So we could plant a whole ton of switch grass, see a marginal return, and keep polluting. Not a good alternative to me. I used to be very big into the possibility of cellulosic ethanol but when you really break it down it becomes less appealing no matter the source.

Oh, and you can't use herbicide to keep other weeds out of switch grass fields.

 

If you don't denature the ethanol with gasoline, then it's liquor, and you'll need to pay the appropriate state and federal taxes on it or the ATF will come calling.

If you do denature it with at least 4% gasoline, and then run it on a public road, then it's motor fuel and you need to pay the appropriate state and federal taxes on it or the DOT will come calling.

 

Tax, tax, tax.