Would you pay $ 10,000 for a machine that would make ethanol for as little as $ 1.00 per gallon?

Question

I ran across this in Yahoo News this morning.

Kick the oil habit and make your own ethanol

By Timothy GardnerThu May 8, 6:00 PM ET

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)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Questions or Comments

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Answer 1

eventually it would pay itself back...(not paying for $3.65+ gas)

Answer 2

Of course in the long run it would probably pay for it's self and save me money, plus it probably saver for the environment.

Answer 3

Cool, I will look into this.

Answer 4

no, i want to use iraq oil, i want to pay $5 per gallon

and i would like to drive poorly designed american suvs

Answer 5

I am skeptical that it can make ethanol for a dollar a gallon.  Also as an engineer, it is not safe to have unqualified people making ethanol.  I wonder if everyone will have the sprinkler density, and explosion protection needed?  See NFPA.  I give it 3 months before someone blows up there house.  For everyone who hates the oil companies.  The material they deal with nasty and dangerous.  It is probable the most risky operation in the world when considering quantities.  They actually do an incredible great job of this.  (No I do not work for the oil companies)  I do work in engineering risk.

I really doubt they can make it for the dollar.  If they could they would be putting in larger facilities to make the product.  They probable neglect the 7 cents a kW/hr of electricity.

Answer 6

No. I would support the Ford company, to start a distribution of engines running on ethanol, as used successfully in Brazil already for more then a decade. If no one will buy a gasoline, the engines would be put in to cars as priority.

Answer 7

Anybody with some technical knowledge and a little motivation can put together a small scale Ethanol manufacturing process (100-200 gal/month) in a small area of a back yard. The problem becomes where do you get the raw materials?  You have to buy some kind of grain product to feed the digester, and when you do the math, your labor and the cost of raw materials will discourage home manufacture.  Large scale livestock operations are having a high degree of success becoming self sufficient  creating Ethanol and or Methane from the waste byproducts... The process is as old as beer, the problem is the availability of stuff to ferment and distill....

Answer 8

All I got to say is Electric Cars!, coman my son power wheel run with a little battery for hours, how come cars can run like that, just faster. It would be more simple to fix, and to recharge.