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)

Very interesting,I wonder if these will catch on..

______________________________________________

At $10,000, I say you first.

Ethanol is only half as efficient as gasoline.

In other words, if you get 20mpg on gas, you'll only get 10mpg on Ethanol.

And diesel is almost twice as efficient as gas.

quote:

Originally posted by SteveSur:
Ethanol is only half as efficient as gasoline.

In other words, if you get 20mpg on gas, you'll only get 10mpg on Ethanol.

And diesel is almost twice as efficient as gas.

That being the case, I don't see very many sales in their future.

I'm waiting for a company to offer small nuclear reactors to power cars. That would be awesome. And other drivers would give you a wide berth.

How about a flux capacitor?

quote:

I'm waiting for a company to offer small nuclear reactors to power cars. That would be awesome. And other drivers would give you a wide berth.

Yeah it would be great for the Arab terrorists as well.No longer would they have to high jack planes to cause havoc.They could just steal enough cars in the country they choose to terrorize.Construct a bomb and detonate it without having to sneak from country to country.Rather convenient wouldn't you say?

Ethanol is not the answer. As mentioned above it is terribly inefficient, and burns much hotter than gasoline. The use of corn based ethanol in the U.S. was a political decision pushed by farm states. Most producers here had been buying ethanol very cheaply from South American countries until the U.S. put a huge tariff on it. South American producers have been making ethanol from alternative vegetable matter for quite some time.

The new generation of clean burning diesel engines is the next (interim) step.

It may end up to be a political issue because US manufacturers are behind in this technology when compared to Europeans.

quote:

Originally posted by SHEEPSHEAD BAY:

quote:

I'm waiting for a company to offer small nuclear reactors to power cars. That would be awesome. And other drivers would give you a wide berth.

Yeah it would be great for the Arab terrorists as well.No longer would they have to high jack planes to cause havoc.They could just steal enough cars in the country they choose to terrorize.Construct a bomb and detonate it without having to sneak from country to country.Rather convenient wouldn't you say?

My sleeper cell has been exposed.

It was a joke, Sheep. A joke.

quote:

Originally posted by SteveSur:
The new generation of clean burning diesel engines is the next (interim) step.

It may end up to be a political issue because US manufacturers are behind in this technology when compared to Europeans.

I've been waiting for BMW's diesel arrival (twin-turbo 3.0L) in the US for consideration as my next car. You get BMW power and performance with 35 mpg and near zero emissions. But with diesel prices well over $4 a gallon, the savings you get with higher fuel efficiency are lost with higher and higher prices.

Diesel is not going to break America's dependence on foreign oil.If everybody switched to Diesel imagine how much the cost of heating oil would be.

quote:

Originally posted by signalhill323:

quote:

Originally posted by SteveSur:
The new generation of clean burning diesel engines is the next (interim) step.

It may end up to be a political issue because US manufacturers are behind in this technology when compared to Europeans.

I've been waiting for BMW's diesel arrival (twin-turbo 3.0L) in the US for consideration as my next car. You get BMW power and performance with 35 mpg and near zero emissions. But with diesel prices well over $4 a gallon, the savings you get with higher fuel efficiency are lost with higher and higher prices.

I don't think that will be coming here any time soon anyway.

[quote]Ethanol is only half as efficient as gasoline.
In other words, if you get 20mpg on gas, you'll only get 10mpg on Ethanol.
And diesel is almost twice as efficient as gas./quote]

I heard the same thing too Steve. In CT the Govenor had mandated a change to ethanol blend in all state vehicles. Someone I know who manages a fleet said this will double or triple the states fuel bill partly due to less MPG and partly due to high cost of ethanol.

You think sugar is cheap? We subsidize the domestic producers and pay about 5x what the rest of the world does but rest assured, if it becomes a fuel source it will increase in price. Look at whats happening to rice and its not a fuel.

Does anyone know, I heard on the radio that pound for pound there are few crops better than tobacco for making ethanol? Its sacrilige but it gives the domestic farmers something to grow.

bio-diesel is where my head is - no engine modification, better lubricity than traditional diesel, plentiful foundation product, glycerine as a by-product, very easy and cheap to manufacture, and the list of positives goes on and on

the negative, as mentioned up, is higher particulate exhaust emissions - an efficient exhaust scrubber is the key

I have done a TON of research on bio-diesel; a college where I was an adjunct had a fuel program and one of the instructors was a bio-diesel engineer, so there was a lot of information avaiulable

soybean oil - it suffers because of the hit to food sources, but it is cheap; palm oil is the highest oil/weight ratio, but cultivation and extraction is expensive

the best source for oil for bio-diesel? algae - not as much oil/weight, and the extraction process is not super easy, BUT there is an inexhaustible supply of algae, it does not effect major food sources, and cultivation is cheap - economies of scale will make algae oil the winner, in my research

it just takes time, efficient exhaust scrubbing, quality diesel engines, and more willingness by fuel engineers to look over the horizin a bit

hell, re-claimed cooking oil just takes filtering, and a system for heating the oil to increase viscosity - there are some great re-claimed cooking oil kits available - some c ars on cooking/used oil approach 50 mpg, too

quote:

Originally posted by Smoker99:
Ethanol is not the answer. As mentioned above it is terribly inefficient, and burns much hotter than gasoline.

If you look at the economics vs. the energy return for ethanol from corn it makes absolutely no sense. I was at an AIChE seminar on alternative fuels with a few friends, and when the slides on ethanol from corn came up we all looked at each other and wondered who thought this was a good idea. The energy return doesn't justify the use of corn ethanol. I think it takes something like twice as much energy to grow and process corn into ethanol, than the energy that is actually in ehtanol.

If anyone is interested, a new crop they are talking about for ethanol production is switchgrass. Scientists theorize that ethnaol from switchgrass can yield up to five times more energy than it takes to grow and process.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Jonesy107,

You can make your own machine similar to the one being mentioned in the article for about $200. It's called a STILL and the regulations to own it and operate it would make a lawyer pull his hair out.

Snake oil.

Lol yeah they call it moonshine.