Consider this, ethanol burns stronger and cleaner than gasoline and can be grown within the United States and other nations that have a climate which supports corn or switchgrass. The energy density of Ethanol is substantially less than conventional gasoline (31.1MJ/kg vs 47.1 MJ/kg) but it burns stronger because it’s less volatile (i.e. higher octane) and you can cram more of it into an engine cylinder without it auto-igniting. There is an ongoing debate about the true energy and CO2 savings that Ethanol fuels provide, and we have written about it here, here, and here. Ethanol has several obvious benefits. Unfortunately, unless you live where it is commercially available (the Midwestern United States) you probably haven’t considered converting your car or buying a flex fuel vehicle. If you do live in one of these states however, or if you’re a rebel and have converted your car in a state like California where it is currently illegal due to smog emission standards, then you’re reading this article because you’d like to produce your own Ethanol. Note: you can “convert” a car to run on Ethanol and it can still use Gasoline (or some combination of both), that’s where the term “flex-fuel” comes from, the type of fuel required to run is flexible.
A called E-Fuel from Los Gatos California has been creating a lot of buzz with a product that looks and functions much like a standard gasoline pump, only it serves up homemade Ethanol. This pump is sometimes referred to as the MicroFueler but its official name is EFuel100. If you want to learn more about E-Fuel definitely check out their website at www.microfueler.com.
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing we have not heard back from E-Fuel, which we contacted to do an interview and get a few details checked out. We can’t even say whether they are still in business considering the 2009 Copyright notice on their site, but it is most likely that they are just busy, especially considering the high profile press that they have been getting from other clean technology blogs.
Their idea is novel and the outreach they have been doing on YouTube is very exciting. That said, the listed price of $10,000 per unit is a bit steep, even the advertised price of $7,000 after tax rebates and incentives is hard to swallow. One site we found, hosted for free on tripod.net, sells plans for $30 to make your own distillery which would function much like the EFuel100, possibly a bit slower. Based on the search engine history, ranking and vintage site design we estimate the tripod site is several years old and fairly credible. The device certainly isn’t the prettiest thing (especially compared to the MicroFueler), but the end product won’t cost but a fraction of the EFuel100 shown below.
Aside from its cost, the Micro Fueler and E-Fuel Company are easy to admire. They have plans to do a carbon offset program, much like TerraPass, and have been recommended to me personally by the founder of Change2E85.com (which we reviewed here and found to be the most legitimate E85 conversion specialists on the web). The EFuel100 can produce five gallons of ethanol per day which will get most commuter cars over 100 miles, and it will only cost you about 60lbs worth of sugar (which at current sugar prices is around $23). The EFuel100 needs between 10 and 14lbs of sugar per gallon. For the sake of argument let’s assume it only takes 10lbs and a five pound bag of sugar is currently $2.50 at your local Safeway, that’s $5 per gallon with a maximum of $25 in fuel per day that the machine will produce. This scenario does not include the ethanol yeast mix and water which are also required, or the cost of taxes that you will pay to Safeway, or your time going to the store… But hey, you can probably drop your gym membership after carrying around all that sugar, and that will save a few bucks.
The story isn’t quite finished though because E-Fuel has one more feature that’s worth mentioning. If you drink bear, whiskey, or other alcoholic beverages, live near a college frat house, or are friends with someone at a bar… you can use leftover brew in your EFuel100 to produce Ethanol for your car. That’s right, college RA’s and bartenders everywhere could be recycling that leftover alcohol instead of flushing it away each night. E-Fuel claims that by approaching the conversion process this way, one can produce Ethanol for just $0.10 per gallon! If you’ve got the energy and interest in clean car power to give it a try this could be a really neat way to run your car.
Before you get too excited remember that the unit cost’s over $7K and an E85 conversion kit is $500 (unless you go out and buy a brand new Flex Fuel car). It will take a long time to whittle away those up front costs but the trend is a positive one and with gas prices on the rise this is a good alternative.
Before we fully encourage anyone to actually purchase the EFuel100 or consider DIY Ethanol there’s one more point to make. The gray costs of Ethanol production can be enormous. Gray costs are those costs incurred over the long run by our planet as a result of irresponsible, short sighted behavior such as using Styrofoam cups everyday that never biodegrade and end up choking wildlife. There are many companies out there growing sugar and producing Ethanol for cars that are producing it in environmentally harmful ways. Slash and burn agriculture is often used on rain forest land to grow sugarcane which is then marketed as being environmentally friendly. This is covered in another TED video produced by Willie Smits and we have published another story here specifically about it.
