May 14th, 2008

Make Your Own Ethanol with a MicroFueler

Posted by Jessica Jensen

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Sick of paying $4+ per gallon for gas and also concerned about your carbon emissions? But perhaps you also feel that making your own biodiesel at home may be a chemistry experiment beyond your scientific abilities.  Well we may have the answer for you.

A few times a year an eco-gadget comes along that gets us pretty excited. Enter the new E-Fuel100 MicroFueler. This machine has just been launched and it seems to allow you to make ethanol at home with very little hassle. (We say “seems” because we haven’t tried it yet– it’s available for pre-order but ships in Q4 this year.)  This new device is both a an ethanol-distiller and a pump in one box. Check the photo out below to see the device in action.

According to E-Fuel, ”Our technological breakthrough significantly reduces the size and weight of traditional fermentation and distillation systems needed to produce ethanol.”

How it works:  You simply load “feedstock” (sugar with ethanol yeast mix) into the fermentation tank and select the fermentation option on the control panel to begin the process. It will take between 10lbs to 14lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. (Okay– that’s a lot of sugar!) The MicroFueler is capable of producing 5 gallons of ethanol per day once fermentation is complete.

You can also use booze!   You can convert discarded beer, wine or distilled drinks into ethanol–any combination of discarded alcohol can be poured directly into the MicroFueler. Hook up with your local bar and get their leftovers. Heck, at the price of gas these days, buy some cheap beer and you may still save money.

The MicroFueler ain’t cheap– it’s $9995 now to get on their “priority pre-order” list, or you can put $3000 down now and get on the standard wait-list.

But hey, if you got everyone in your neighborhood together to invest in this device, you could save big bucks over time– especially as gas prices continue to rise. Or what if companies bought a machine for their employees? That would be a pretty great office perk.  And just think of the emissions reduction your company could brag about!

And yet we remain a bit skeptical….here are a few questions we have about this device that we hope we can get the company to answer:

   +  Distillation of sugar into ethyl alcohol is regulated by the ATF. Why isn’t this, or what do you have to do so it isn’t?
   +  You’re not supposed to burn ethanol in non-FFV (flex fuel vehicles). Won’t this void my warranty?
   +  Sugar costs around $0.50 / pound. Each gal of ethanol requires 10-14 pounds of sugar – how can this be cost-effective? They don’t explain much about their “carbon credit coupons”, which sound like a gimmick.
   + They are talking about shipping complex, $10K units in Q4 08, yet they’ve seemingly raised no outside capital. How can this be? Where’s their manufacturing?

Stay tuned for more on this interesting story…

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