Consumer Ethanol Appliance Promised By Year's End

Newscloud brings us news of a startup called E-Fuel promising to ship a home-brew ethanol plant, the size of a washer-dryer, for under $10,000 by the end of this year. We've had plenty of discussions about $1/gal. fuel — these guys want to let you make it at home. The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico at 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar, to use as raw material for making ethanol. A renewable energy expert from UC Berkeley is quoted: "There's a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It's entirely possible that they've done it, but skepticism is a virtue."

Comments

you won't save on taxes in some states

[Shivetya]

North Carolina will probably hunt you down and charge you with tax evasion. They did it in 2007 for a guy buying vegetable oil and converting it to biodiesel.

hell they have been known to test fuel at events, to see if people are using fuel they don't like. They check NC registered trucks to make sure they don't buy fuel over the border.

you think that they just won't slap a silly tax on the sugar?

The one thing people keep ignoring as cars become more efficient are tax addicted governments are going to have to raise them to make up for the losses because of our efficiency and if we circumvent the whole tax strategy they have they will simply make a new one

Stop turning food into fuel

[rjamestaylor]

Not only is Ethanol shortsighted it is exactly the wrong direction for us to take. Ethanol is taken from food sources and results in local, regional and, as it increases in popularity, global increases in food prices as well as predictable food shortages.

Besides the inefficiencies of transporting the raw materials, the finished product CANNOT be piped due to the inherent water in the ethanol rusting/corroding the pipes. So, the only means of transportation is truck, train or barge -- fossil fuel transportation systems.

[!-- insert face-palm photo here --]

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Re:Stop turning food into fuel

[littlerubberfeet]

Two points: I agree that ethanol is the wrong way to go. ANY distilled biofuel is a bad idea. We need to start differentiating between distillates like corn or sugar ethanol and refined products like biodiesel. Biodiesel is best made from non-food sources like switchgrass. Incidentally, many biodiesel materials stocks are not grown on food-producing farmland.

Second point: Trains use (1/5) the fuel of trucks per ton-mile, barges (1/10) and the engines are far easier to convert to biodiesel. Each cylinder in a train engine is something like 2 liters, and there are 12 of them. The engines are tolerant of crap. In fact on EMD locomotives, one never changes the oil, just the oil filter. I agree though, that using fuel to move fuel is not good.

The point of mentioning trains though, is that railroads have to pay HUGE property taxes on the one best solution to their pollution. The railroads would see their property taxes TRIPLE on electrification improvements. That, coupled with high capital costs means that railroads won't touch electrification.

If they did electrify, rail transportation could potentially be carbon-neutral. They merely need to buy the power from a renewable source.

Re:higher prices for everything

[xaxa]

A shortage of bread eventually? I don't think you've been reading the news recently.

how to solve global food crisis
end of cheap cotton is near
walmart restricts rice purchases
government to examine effects of biofuels on food prices
action to help poor with food prices