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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."
TFA mentions that the device requires 14 Lbs. (6.5kg) of NAFTA-approved nonedible sugar from Mexico, which costs approximately $0.025 per pound in addition to several other "ingredients". Regular "edible" sugar costs about $0.20 per pound.
Apart from the blatant inefficiencies present in transporting these quantities of raw materials, I imagine that the cost of sugar will skyrocket even if the thing actually works.
Probably not a good thing...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
They didn't mention the little fact about having to get a frelling federal ethanol production license. I looked into this a few years back, and...YIKES. (Pay lots of money. Send in a sample. Keep logs of your activities, etc. etc.)
Oh, and how about calculating in electricity costs?
That would take a LONG time to "pay for itself" and this doesn't even take into consideration the various restrictions on the use of such devices that will most assuredly follow shortly after competing interests start buying laws to that end. Further, what will the cost of unprocessed materials be? Ah yes, they'll go up in demand and the prices will rise too.
This doesn't strike me as a good alternative.
You've got the energy cost in growing the raw sugar, transporting a LOT of raw sugar, and distillation. WHich means a LOT of energy goes into this. And you only really save on taxes (beacuse otherwise, they could just do this in a big factory and bring it too, duh, gas pumps).
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Count on other things to go up as well.
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
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They already have consumer ethanol appliances, they go by other names: bread makers, home beer breweries, and the like. Won't help me much on getting around in my car, but I'll be too full and drunk to care.
Then you just distill it to concentrate the ethanol. You'd probably have to make two or three passes through the still to get it up to E85 level.
There's a couple of fairly significant problems with this scheme, though. One is the energy that's used to operate the still; where does that come from, how much does it cost? And the other one - and one that'll be very difficult to overcome - is that ethanol is the stuff we drink. Dilute ethanol with distilled water at about 50/50 and you get some so-so vodka. Add this or that flavor and you've got a party.
The BATF isn't going to like this one little bit. Liquor taxes are an important source of revenue; they'll insist that you comply with their bureaucratic regulations if you're going to make any kind of product that contains ethanol.
And if this magic box will produce 170 proof at $2 per gallon - how much of that is going in the car and how much will be going into mixed drinks? Imagine the parties; gallons and gallons of alcohol and more being produced in every neighborhood every day. I suspect the law of unintended consequences is going to kick in on this one...
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.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Is this "the answer" for our consumption and supply issues with gasoline? Of course not. There is not going to be a single answer, at least not until we figure out a better battery combined with a global solar grid. Meanwhile, prepare for a myriad of small solutions, like biodiesel, ethanol, heavy crude sources like tar sands and shale, converted coal, none of which are perfect on their own, but which, together, can bridge us to the next big thing.
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
I am sure the International Ant Coalition will have something to say about this. It could get ugly folks.
Sinful ?
What does that mean ? It can vary from faith to faith, and within faiths, and even then changes as religion evolves along with society.
Calling things sinful, is simply meaningless, as it projects your theist views on others, who may have differnet interpretations of sinful.
Some followers of Yaweh, will tell me that the yummy, healthy, normal sex I has last night is wrong and a sin.
I can't take that crap seriously, so I can't take you comment about "sin" seriously.
This is NOT a signature.
This whole Ethanol idea is a disaster waiting to happen.
A simple fact - Mexico produces a total of 5 million tons of sugar a year. That amount, according to the article, is enough to make about 800 million gallons of ethanol. US consumes 400 million gallons of gasoline a DAY for transportation. That means the entire crop of Mexican sugar would be completely used up by cars in TWO days. What would we do the rest of the year I don't know. And guess what this would do to sugar prices. Also - no more sugar in your food either.
And if the proposition is to use this as an addition to oil-based fuels, well - we are talking less than 1% of total gasoline requirement from entire Mexican crop. This would hardly make a dent in oil consumption, but sure as heck would wreck havoc on the sugar and food markets.
We Irish had an advanced civilization long ago based on this technology, but then we started drinking the damned stuff...
The premise of the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler is you pay 10K to have a pre-made still (for lack of a better word) to make ethanol. Then you take your home-brew and put it into your car. I'll let others poke holes in this approach.
For $10,000 you can convert your gas powered car to be powered by electricity. "A typical conversion, if it is using all new parts, costs between $5,000 and $10,000 (not counting the cost of the donor vehicle or labor). The costs break down like this:
- Batteries - $1,000 to $2,000
- Motor - $1,000 to $2,000
- Controller - $1,000 to $2,000
- Adapter plate - $500 to $1,000
- Other (motors, wiring, switches, etc.) - $500 to $1,000"
The advantage here would be a form of daily transportation with zero-emissions, using a quiet motor that's cheaper to operate per mile (3).References
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
Some followers of Yaweh, will tell me that the yummy, healthy, normal sex I has last night is wrong and a sin.
Wheras on Slashdot you'll be told it was imaginary.
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