CA: " Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup "

[Don]

Source: New York Times.com

April 27, 2008
PROTOTYPE
Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup

By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
WHAT if you could make fuel for your car in your backyard for less than you pay at the pump? Would you?

The first question has driven Floyd S. Butterfield for more than two decades. Mr. Butterfield, 52, is something of a legend for people who make their own ethanol. In 1982, he won a California Department of Food and Agriculture contest for best design of an ethanol still, albeit one that he could not market profitably at the time.

Now he thinks that he can, thanks to his partnership with the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas J. Quinn. The two have started the E-Fuel Corporation, which soon will announce its home ethanol system, the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler. It will be about as large as a stackable washer-dryer, sell for $9,995 and ship before year-end.

The net cost to consumers could drop by half after government incentives for alternate fuels, like tax credits, are applied.

The MicroFueler will use sugar as its main fuel source, or feedstock, along with a specially packaged time-release yeast the company has developed. Depending on the cost of sugar, plus water and electricity, the company says it could cost as little as a dollar a gallon to make ethanol. In fact, Mr. Quinn sometimes collects left-over alcohol from bars and restaurants in Los Gatos, Calif., where he lives, and turns it into ethanol; the only cost is for the electricity used in processing.

In general, he says, burning a gallon of ethanol made by his system will produce one-eighth the carbon of the same amount of gasoline.

“It’s going to cause havoc in the market and cause great financial stress in the oil industry,” Mr. Quinn boasts.

He may well turn out to be right. But brewing ethanol in the backyard isn’t as easy as barbecuing hamburgers. Distilling large quantities of ethanol typically has required a lot of equipment, says Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, he says that quality control and efficiency of home brew usually pale compared with those of commercial refineries. “There’s a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It’s entirely possible that they’ve done it, but skepticism is a virtue,” Mr. Kammen says.

To be sure, Mr. Quinn, 53, has been involved with successful innovations before. For instance, he patented the motion sensor technology used in Nintendo’s wildly popular Wii gaming system.

More to the point, he was the product marketing manager for Alan F. Shugart’s pioneering hard disk drive when the personal computer was shifting from a hobbyists’ niche to a major industry. “I remember people laughing at us and saying what a stupid idea it was to do that disk drive,” Mr. Quinn says.

Mr. Butterfield thinks that the MicroFueler is as much a game changer as the personal computer. He says that working with Mr. Quinn’s microelectronics experts — E-Fuel now employs 15 people — has led to breakthroughs that have cut the energy requirements of making ethanol in half. One such advance is a membrane distiller, which, Mr. Quinn says, uses extremely fine filters to separate water from alcohol at lower heat and in fewer steps than in conventional ethanol refining. Using sugar as a feedstock means that there is virtually no smell, and its water byproduct will be drinkable.

E-Fuel has bold plans: It intends to operate internationally from the start, with production of the MicroFueler in China and Britain as well as the United States. And Mr. Butterfield is already at work on a version for commercial use, as well as systems that will use feedstocks other than sugar.

Ethanol has long had home brewers, and permits are available through the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. (You must be a property owner and agree to make your ethanol outdoors.) But there are plenty of reasons to question whether personal fueling systems will become the fuel industry’s version of the personal computer.

For starters, sugar-based ethanol doesn’t look much cheaper than gas. It takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of ethanol, and raw sugar sells in the United States for about 20 cents a pound, says Michael E. Salassi, a professor in the department of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University. But Mr. Quinn says that as of January this year, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, he can buy inedible sugar from Mexico for as little as 2.5 cents a pound, which puts the math in his favor. While this type of sugar has not been sold to consumers, E-Fuel says it is developing a distribution network for it.

In addition, it’s illegal in the United States to operate a car on 100 percent ethanol, with exceptions for off-road vehicles like Indy cars and farm equipment. Mr. Quinn has a federal permit to make his own fuel, and believes that if MicroFuelers start popping up like swimming pools, regulators will adapt by certifying pure ethanol for cars.

Despite all the hurdles, Mr. Quinn and Mr. Butterfield may be on to something. There are plenty of consumers who want to reduce their carbon footprint and are willing to make an upfront investment to do it — consider the success of the Prius.

And if oil prices continue to rise, the economics of buying a MicroFueler will become only better and better.

[427 S/O]

Ethanol is BS as it is now, If a person were to grow the corn, sugarcane and have a solar powered still, then it just might be feasible?.

[Wayne Maybury]

This will never happen. There is no way that governments will allow individuals to produce pure ethanol as the potential tax and duty losses will be astronomical. Let's see: I will produce 10 gallons ethanol for my car. 9 1/2 gallons go in the gas tank and 1/2 gallon goes behind the bar for later. The production of ethanol or ethyl alcohol is extremely tightly controlled. Allowing individuals to do this in their back yards will be out of the question.

People also seem to completely ignore supply and demand. If even a small percentage of the population begins to run their cars on 100% ethanol, the price of sugar will go through the roof just as corn and other grains are doing now.

Wayne

[Don]

Wayne, I agree, in a similar manner, the use of electric motors or a combination with the internal combustion engine, will or already has had an impact on state & federal taxes paid at the gas pump. As this approach grows, appears there will be some creative method to tax electrical power used for personal transportation, or possibly ,everyone will have a tax sur-charge added to their utility bill.

An example is the all electric Telsa:

http://www.teslamotors.com/

Is anyone aware of a state having a unique registration classification ? A challenge will be in the tax calculation based upon miles driven. I wonder if the state registration systems will accept " 0" ( zero ) for the number of cylinders in the engine.

In a number of the retirement communities, electric powered golf carts are allowed on the public roads. The gas powered golf cart owners are paying the taxes

"Enjoy the convenience and security of "Hometown Living," where all the comforts of home are just a golf car ride away!

We've designed The Villages with your enjoyment, security and convenience in mind. By utilizing the latest concepts in neighborhood and community planning, The Villages has been able to better serve its residents' needs without sacrificing its small town charm and intimacy.Virtually every convenience our residents need on a day-to-day basis can be found in The Villages and all are a golf car ride away. "

http://www.thevillages.com/

[bomelia]

Well, this IS interesting... but if everyone did this, the price of sugar would go through the roof! Not to mention the fact that sugar for sugary uses would be impacted. I wanna eat my snickers bar, at a reasonable price, not stick it in my car's fuel tank! Look whats happening with corn!

No, BTUs are BTUs. The world demands so many BTUs to function everyday. The price of BTUs will reflect itself properly, no matter where (or what) you suck them out of.

Mike

[Don]

Can Big, Fast Cars Be Eco-Friendly?

By Joseph B. White, The Wall Street Journal
Last update: 3:47 p.m. EDT April 25, 2008

Nothing outruns my V-8 Ford. -- Chuck Berry

American culture is fickle. Fashion fads come and go. But Americans have consistently celebrated the freedom to jump behind the wheel of a powerful automobile and ride the open road. What does that have to do with the latest round of the debate between Washington and Detroit over fuel-efficiency standards? Everything.

The Bush administration's 417-page fuel economy plan lands at a turning point in America's relationship with cars. Its assumption is that technology will enable Americans to conserve huge amounts of oil without substantial discomfort or dislocation . History suggests that is a leap of faith, indeed, and that ending what Mr. Bush called our "addiction to oil" will require a more-fundamental transformation of the American lifestyle . Here's a rough idea of what the plan means: Instead of the average car achieving the mileage of Ford's V-6 Taurus, it would have to be as fuel efficient as today's Ford Focus subcompact.

The Administration says the technology to achieve the mileage goals will add about $649 to the cost of an average car and $979 to the cost of an average light truck. In return, the administration says, Americans will save $100 billion compared with the fuel costs they would pay under a do-nothing scenario. The problem is that mandating higher fuel economy hasn't stopped Americans from burning more petroleum on the highways. Starting in 1975, after the first of the oil shocks that made life miserable in that decade, car makers have roughly doubled the average mileage of new cars.

However, the number of miles driven more than doubled from 1975 through 2006. Total gasoline consumption rose by 61% during the same period and 17% on a per-capita basis This brings us back to Mr. Berry. He captured a basic truth about post-World War II culture. Americans like things that are big, fast and cheap. Rules designed to compel us to accept only what we need typically are ignored or circumvented.The rise of the sport utility vehicle in the 1990s was a mutual show of disrespect by auto makers and consumers for the government's rules, which curtailed supplies of powerful sedans but opened a loophole for SUVs.So long as Americans could afford to flout government fuel-economy standards, many of them did. From 1987 through 2007, the average American vehicle gained nearly 900 pounds, nearly doubled in horsepower and was 8% less fuel efficient.

The excesses of late 20th Century American life -- oversized houses far from city centers, overabundant food that made us fat, and super-sized gas guzzlers -- all depended on oceans of cheap oil. Now, cheap oil is gone. Will the lifestyle that went with it go, too?As gasoline prices have risen above $3 a gallon, consumption has started to fall. In many metropolitan areas, homes in suburbs distant from job centers and stores have lost value more rapidly than those closer to towns, economist David Stiff of Fiserv Lending Solutions says.

Some already believe expensive oil will lead more Americans to return to cities, with potentially profound implications. Maybe the demand that auto makers boost mileage will allow Americans to avoid that difficult conversation. Probably not.

In the meantime, anyone thinking about updating "Maybellene" will have to consider new rhymes and rhythms. "Nothing outruns my Eco-boost Ford" just doesn't have the same ring.

Send comments about Eyes on the Road to joseph.white@wsj.com.

[Wayne Maybury]

Don

I wasn't referring to the tax dollars lost at the gas pump, but rather the tax dollars lost at the booze store. Governments make a ton of money off liquor and 100% ethanol is the finest vodka you will find. If ordinary people started making pure ethanol in their back yards, it wouldn't be long before they were drinking more than they were burning in their cars.

Wayne