MicroFueler: brew your own moonshine biofuel
As you may have noticed, we're all about DIY home brewing here at Green Daily. But, up until now, it never occurred to us that brewing our own biofuel would be a workable option for the hobbyist. With the help of a new piece of equipment from a start-up called E-Fuel, ethanol enthusiasts will soon be able to become the proud owners of a backyard fuel refinery. The MicroFueler is an ethanol distillery about the size of a stackable washer-dryer that offers DIY types the opportunity to produce fuel at $1 per gallon.The cost of the ethanol still will be about $10,000, but according to the NYT article, the cost could be almost halved when tax credits and government incentives are taken into account. According to E-Fuels, users will simply add sugar or feedstock into the MicroFueler along with a proprietary yeast formula that E-Fuel has come up with and watch it do its thing. Sounds easy enough, but will these stills really start popping up in backyards across the land?
There are plenty of obstacles and criticisms for a product like the MicroFueler to overcome. First and foremost is the fact that it's illegal to drive a car on 100% ethanol. It is possible for property owners to get a permit to produce their own ethanol, but that doesn't mean it will necessarily be cheaper than buying it at the pump -- on account of the high cost of sugar and electricity. Each brewer will have to crunch their own numbers to find out if it's worth it.
Nevertheless, I say that homebrew biofuel sounds like a DIYer's dream come true. My concern is that the potential of DIY ethanol will be crushed by regulations. Will ethanol be the moonshine of the 21st century?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-10-2008 @ 8:43PM
don said...
sounds interesting to me I am thinking about the preorder.
Reply
5-13-2008 @ 6:26PM
Charles said...
I have been reading about biobutanol over the last few months and have come to the opinion that ethanol is the wrong path. Butanol seems to offer so many attributes that are more desireable to us as a motor fuel than ethanol has to offer.
One of the key items to condsider in our conversion to alcohols as motor fuels is the distance the the feedstocks used to produce the alcohols must be transported from their source to the fermentor. Butanol can be made from many different feedstocks . It seems to me that relatively local fermentor of various sizes could be built to receive whatever types of feedstock material is located in the area. Mesquite in Texas, whey near the cheese plants, grass clippings and landscape waste in the cities, hog manure on the hag farm etcetera.
Do some reading on biobutanol and I think that you ewill see why I have come to this conclusion.
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5-14-2008 @ 5:29PM
Terranos said...
Re: biobutanol
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have been researching biofuels for a few months but never ran across biobutanol. Now though, I can put together a plan to power my pickup, car, and motorcycle on fuel I make from my grass clippings. Thanks for helping me stick it to the man!
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5-20-2008 @ 12:33PM
Matt said...
"Will ethanol be the moonshine of the 21st century?
"
Ethanol is the moonshine of EVERY century...
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