Home Distillation = Fuel Alternative
Is this why the passed the Prohibition Act?
When Henry Ford invented the Model-T the 'Gas Station' did not exist but Alcohol-Ethanol was plentiful.
Then along came Prohibition.. Henry Ford had it right after all.
Watch video:
http://www.efuel100.com/
A company called E-Fuel Corporation has introduced EFuel100 MicroFueler “the world’s first home ethanol system.” According to the company, the MicroFueler allows consumers to create ethanol with “sugar, yeast and water, and a standard household 110-220 AC power supply.” They claim that businesses, such as breweries, bars and restaurants can even use discarded alcohol beverages to create ethanol, for as little as $0.10 per gallon.
The home-brewed ethanol maker is the brain child of entrepreneur Tom Quinn and ethanol scientist Floyd Butterfield. They unveiled the machine at a press event Thursday in New York. Quinn says the device, which is about the size of a refrigerator, is so simple to use that anyone can do it. “You just open it like a washing machine and dump in your sugar, close the door and push one button,” he says. “A few days later, you’ve got ethanol.”
Quinn claims his invention will create a paradigm shift similar to the personal computer. “Just as the PC brought desktop computing to the home, E-Fuel will bring the filling station to the home.”
Besides the $10,000 to buy the Micro-Fueler, a consumer will also need a permit from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms to make ethanol legally. In addition, the ethanol will have to be mixed with gasoline even for flex-fuel vehicles so the company recommends putting in a few gallons of regular gasoline and then topping off with the home-made brew.
The Micro-Fueler could also be eligible for federal tax credits that can bring the price down by about $3000 and the company is creating a distribution network for “ethanol-grade” sugar from Mexico that could cost as little as 3 cents a pound, compared to 20 cents for regular sugar. They claim the machine can make ethanol for as little as $1 a gallon and could pay for itself in less than two years.
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Well DP'ers, what do you think about this? The one major problem I see is that you have to obtain city/county 'Alcohol Permits' and I don't see that being an easy process. The other is that it will take between 10lbs to 14lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. The MicroFueler is capable of producing 5 gallons of ethanol per day once fermentation is complete.
I would like your input on this and if you think it's worth consideration:
http://www.efuel100.com/t-technology.aspx
Sugar + Yeast + Water
Also makes a pretty good Vodka....
oops I meant to post below
oops I meant to post below
Check this out
I had come across this on my message board here at work, just today.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4217016....
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
wow!
now this would be something!
******************************************
The Delegate Rule Book for the RNC
Read It--Learn It--Know It! Don't let the GOP violate the rules.
Who knows you could learn a few tricks of your own.
pdf file:
www.gop.com/images/2008_Call_FINAL.pdf
Mathew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Very cool.
The "air car" is a great way to get rid of pollution at ground level and in congested cities. But it does not reduce pollution overall unless the energy source is, as the comments suggest, solar etc.
Another reason this might be preferable to batteries has to do with weight. Compressed air is way lighter than comparable batteries and therefore the entire set up should be lighter.
h-daddy
One would think
that a fed. permit would not be required. I can make beer and wine and, as long as I don't sell it, I don't need a permit of any sort.
Anytime you can harness mother nature (yeast, bacteria, plants) to perform a chemical reaction you will come out ahead.
For home fuel I think methane generation would be more practical than alcohol production.
h-daddy
No, don't overlook the
No, don't overlook the monstrous difficulty in getting that BTA alcohol producer's permit ---- it is all but impossible. A relative of mine looked into what was involved in it while contemplating starting a relatively small-scale vodka business, and it was LUDICROUS how convoluted, difficult, and expensive the whole process was. I am not an expert on all the details, but from what they told me, to do this legally is almost certainly out of reach of the average person --- not to mention the illegality of the fuel-tax issue. It seems you'd be screwed from ten different directions trying to do this "legally".
I don't think one would even need a permit from BTA. Are
you suggesting that one cannot make alcohol for one's own consumption? If so then there must be a couple million folks making beer illegally. Of course, the US Constitution certainly doesn't grant power to the federal government to regulate "home-brew" any more than they can regulate what I grow in my garden.
However, there are thousands of microbreweries in the US so it can't be that difficult.
h-daddy
H-daddy, there is a HUGE
H-daddy, there is a HUGE difference, legally, between producing beer or wine (whether for your own use or for sale) vs. DISTILLING and producing spirits or pure alcohol --- the feds are OBSESSIVE in all but preventing the latter. Hence their fervent and obsessive mania in shutting down moonshiners. In fact, if you want to almost guarantee a "visit" from the feds, just call the BTA and suggest that you are interesting in distilling alcohol --- believe me, they will take GREAT interest in your plans!
I have no reason to doubt
you, akak, because you are usually "spot on". But, making beer or wine is making alcohol, right?
I don't think distilling alcohol is a very good idea but if I were doing it I certainly wouldn't tell the BTA or anyone else ;) Just make it and burn it and certainly don't bottle it!
h-daddy
Yes, H-daddy, of course beer
Yes, H-daddy, of course beer and wine are alcoholic beverages, but their regulation falls into a whole different league from distilling, as illogical as that may seem. The production and sale of beer and wine is more regulated on the state level than the federal level, but for distilling, it is more the opposite. Which is not to say that the regulatory burden for producers of beer and wine (for sale) cannot be heavy as well, as I have discovered in researching the matter in regards to my own business, but it is going to vary from state to state, and locality to locality.
As for home consumption, one is allowed to produce a certain, "reasonable" amount for personal use of both beer and wine, as long as you are not selling it. But ANY level of home distillation is illegal, and subject to heavy penalty.
No wonder I'm a libertarian.
I want the freedom to distill alcohol for my own use! I wonder what Dr. Paul thinks about this topic?
h-daddy
Most people are shocked to
Most people are shocked to learn that typically 80% to 90% of the price of a bottle of alcoholic spirits (whiskey, vodka, gin, etc.) is taxes! Without all the federal and local taxes, most 80 to 100 proof alcohol would not be much cheaper than bottled water.
You've been suckered, Hawkiye
BigT is 100% correct in everything he's said. I've been researching renewables for 2 decades and have tested many and ran the equations on many more. I've hunted down the best and am tackling them now in an effort to make them more cost effective to get to the masses. The comment about subsidies is dead on also. They are the ONLY thing killing the alternatives that do work. Be that as it may, I can guarantee you that this is at best hyperbole designed to sell something for more value than it's worth. I haven't read this book, so I won't comment other than to ask if sales have gone up by its eutopian claims.
I won't argue the physics, gas laws, energy content (IN BTUs!) or other technical aspects of this debate because you obviously are not as knowledgable on those as you should be for that discussion. Seriously, I mean no offense, but to those of us who live this stuff, and have invested every liquid dollar we could for decades, it's a bit arrogant to suggest that your one-book education compares.
As far as the machine goes, consider this. There are gassifiers, reactors, stills and the like available everywhere. It doesn't take $10,000 to build one. Go find the free plans on the internet. They exist for about any distillation process you can imagine. These processes have existed for a long time and if you want, you can turn just about anything with carbon or hydrogen into a fuel. The problem is the economics. You have to add up all the costs of the inputs to the amitorized cost of the machine and divide by the value of the fuel out (in work units, not gallons. Gallons have no value without considering the work it produces.) Literally thousands of companies, large and small, are risking everything they can to solve this last problem.
I really hate to bear this bad news to you, but you're buying into the hype that good salesmen spew when they learn enough tech to talk over the average person's head. Those of us with genuine solutions looking for investment capital now can't enter into fair deals anymore due to the complete flooding of the market with scammers who have ruinied it for everybody.
Assumption and Rational Discussion
Why do you assume my education is in one book? I have been living this for years also experimenting but this particular book opened my eyes that many of my experiments were based on false premises. The same ones I keep hearing here and elsewhere.
Ok look I would rather have a rational discussion then get into a pissing match where emotions take over and nothing gets accomplished. Lets take one thing at time and look at opposing views, where they come from, and the evidence for or against them, sound fair?
So Instead of telling me I am not knowledgable enough why don’t you give us an example of my lack of knowledge And lest see if I can refute it or not. Y9u can start by trying to refut my analogy on BTU vs joules, keeping in mind we need to keep to try and keep it as simple as possible so others can at least have an idea what we're talking about. Simply each of us proclaiming ourselves as supreme keeper of the secret knowledge accomplishes nothing.
And BigT truce ok? Let’s have a rational discussion instead of an emotional argument? And yes I am as much to blame as anyone for letting it go there… Fair?
Also let me clearify one thing that got lost in the emotion; A car tuned for gasoline will see some drop in mileage by just running ten to twenty percent alcohol. However at 45 cents a gallon we can afford to lose some mileage With some minor modification we can see increased mileage it is that simple. Currently e85 and flex cars are not optimum and selling the fuel at inflated prices. The point is to make are own or start small regional plants for our communities. So how we do it is an important part of the equation also, however it’s not rocket science it is arguably the easiest of our solutions and perhaps the most viable with great worthwhile benefits. If we leave it up to government and just expect an easy smooth transition and boom cheap better fuel it will never happen
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$10 per gallon?
First off, I wasn't trying to be harsh but rather strict. I wasn't referring to all your education coming from this book, but rather all your new insights you refer to. I am very against those in the renewable business that make wild claims and give the rest of us a bad name or a tougher road to travel.
Straight from their FAQ page. "It takes approximately 13 lbs. of sugar to create one gallon of ethanol. The MicroFueler is capable of producing 35 gallons of ethanol (using 470 lbs of sugar) weekly which will fill the average fuel tank twice."
Now, I search for 50 lb bags of sugar on multiple sites and find it very stable at $37. That means you'll need $347.80 in sugar to make 35 gallons of Ethanol.
Then we find, "It takes approximately 170 gallons of water during fermentation mode to make 35 gallons of ethanol fuel. This is equivalent to the amount water used by a household washing machine doing four laundry loads." So now we have 135 gallons of waste leaving it somehow. At a normal price, this 170 gal would cost about a quarter.
Then we can't forget the electricity used. I can't find any specifics except that they require a 20 amp breaker on a 120 V circuit. Looking at their block diagram, I can't make anything from it other than it has a few motors and a ThermoElectric cooler and a CPU. So let's assume around 10 amp to be fair. That's 168 x 1200 / 1000 or 202 kwh or around $10.
All in all, that's over $10/gal plus a LOT of hassle buying 10 fifty pound bags of sugar every week even before we add in the $10k cost of the machine. If you have other info on how they can estimate their costs, which range from $0.45 to $1.25 plus "the price of the sugar feedstock may go up", then by all means please post. Your original post estimates that sugar can be purchased for as little as $0.03/lb but I don't see it happening. For this ethanol to be as cheap as gas is now ($3.49 was used in their calc), a 50 lb bag of sugar would have to be $13.
Basically, you can spot the errors in the site when they fail to list any details that correlate with each other or when they don't give the requirements of this 'special yeast' or how much it costs.
But you didn't ask for all this. You wanted to know about Joules and BTUs. They're not the same thing but they relate with each other based on time. You first have to know about energy and work. Energy is stored or available somehow. Work is un-storing it for a use. Heat is a form of energy without the time limitation. 3413 BTUs of energy is the same energy as you'll find in one kilowatt-hour. That's a kilowatt (work) used for a total of an hour. A kilowatt is the same as 1.34 horsepower. You can see that unless you take into account the time that energy is doing the work, you can't compare work numbers in their power (work) form (HP, kW). If you have 3.6 million Joules, that's the same quantity as 1 kilowatt-hour (worth $0.08) or the work you get out of a 1.34 hp motor running for an hour. See how the Joules doesn't need the time aspect and heat is a perfectly valid form of energy. Good enough?
You have misunderstood me. I
You have misunderstood me. I am not for the micro fueler I agree it's a crock. I was the first to say on this thread You don't need $10,000. You can do it for much less building your own and without buying sugar. The book is excellent, if your as involved as you claim I think you'll find the book pleasantly surprising.
I do understand Btu vs Joule my posts are all over this page do a page search for my handle and read all my posts first I explained in laymens terms why the BTU is not an accurate comparison for fuel
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Economics still rule
My appologies for attributing you to promoting the microfueler. However, if you are using this process... as explained in their FAQ... it is not economical. Many Bio-whatever processes fail to take into account all that goes into them. This is why the current policy is pushing corn ethanol. They didn't do a full life cycle analysis first and ignored the Stanford report that showed it was only making 29% more energy than it used up to make.
I'm not saying it's not possible or not being done somewhere. There are many setups that can be cost effective, but only when the feedstock is locally available and usually considered a current waste product. I am convinced, however, that it will become better as processes and equipment hit mass market status. Maybe this book even lists the first one of the 'winners'. I'm sure it would be a good read, but my task list is too long to begin another project. If you look at my posts, you'll find that I'm running a startup to put solar thermal in competition with PV for home power. You might also find that I'm spearheading a web project to counter the mainstream media on propaganda.
As far as BTUs not being an accurate way to compare fuels, it depends on whether you're referring to purchase price / energy content, power per volume, work performed per pound, energy stored per full tank or the most important work performed per dollar spent. They're all ways to compare but differently important to different people. The assumption in this thread was saving money by making your own ethanol. That assumes an unchanged scenerio (unmodified engine tuning) with the purchase of the machine. I still stand by my comment and BigT's that it's not possible by the information given. I was then applying that same assumption to your comments.
I would enjoy continuing these comments and trading stories with both you and BigT in private Email. Consider this an invite. [lastname] at gmail.
You still haven't addressed
This is why I am emphasizing reading the book it doesn't have to be a waste product and it is being done now. There is no new or experimental technology needed the book lays it out fully. It is one of the best researched and well documented source cited books I have ever seen. This is not pie in the sky stuff this is 30 years of real world application and research.
OK you still haven't addressed my post on btu. If we want rational discussion then we must quit proclaiming ourselves right with no refutation of the others premise. I gave an analogy further down in the thread of BTU measurement and why it is not an accurate comparison. proclaiming I am wrong without refuting my reasoning and analogy is meaningless.
I can sit here and proclaim I am right and stand by my premise too and I win by default because I provided evidence instead of just proclaiming my rightness.
In the interest of rational discussion I will repost it in this post:
"It's work generated not heat (Btu) that counts. BTU is a heat value measurement, it measures the amount of BTU generated by perfect combustion of the material with an ideal amount of oxygen, such as in burning wood for a fire.
As an example the heating value of one and a quarter pounds of wood, a cup of gasoline, and four pounds of dynamite are about the same (7000 Btu) but the work each of those generates is vastly different,
In an engine what we care about is how well the fuel drives the piston. To measure the energy of work the standard unit is the joule. That's about the amount of energy it takes to toss an apple vertically a foot. It's the force against the apple ( or a piston) multiplied by the distance.
In general since there is a limited amount of time to complete the combustion of fuel in an engine, the speed at which it burns determines how efficiently the engine converts the fuel into power (watts)
If heat were the valid way to compare fuels why don't we run gas engines on diesel fuel or candle wax since they have far more heating value then gasoline?
It is simply not a correct way to compare the two.
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By the way..
Your statement, "As an example the heating value of one and a quarter pounds of wood, a cup of gasoline, and four pounds of dynamite are about the same (7000 Btu) but the work each of those generates is vastly different," is incorrect. Assuming you're correct that they're all 7,000 BTUs, the work generated from all those fuels is indeed the same. It's the force that's different. The wood will take longer to produce it than the dynamite but the totals are the same.
Go to google and type in, "convert 7000 BTU to Joules".
Energy
Energy comes in many forms but they're all energy. Heat is a form of energy just like the inertia of a spinning flywheel. When you combust a fuel it creates heat. This heat then causes pressure by the universal gas law, that expands the mixture in the cylinder. Therefore, the force on the piston is derived from the heat created. However, the time this force acts on that piston determines the amount of work done. Since we're talking about gas mileage, we want to know how much work is being done in total we are not as concerned with the forces and the subsequent power created (again in total - key point) as the total energy put to the wheels. Picture a hose filling a water tower. Too low of force won't push the water high enough, but beyond that it only determines how fast it will fill. None of this has anything to do with how much water reached the tank. That's total work done.
Efficiency is how much work was wasted in the process. Again that's independent of time. Years ago, I built a 455 olds engine with 600 hp and got 24 mph with it. If I wanted to go fast, I found the mileage as low as 4 gal/mile.
In addition to all this, there are many other factors affecting the mileage of one fuel vs. another. For example, ethanol is a dry fuel which washes the cylinder walls and valve guides of their normal lubrication amounts. This isn't as big of a problem for a racer that rebuilds every race or two, but I'm going on 300,000 miles on my current vehicle. Also, even the shape of the intake runners affects the atomization and mixture of the air/fuel mixture so that should be different for different fuels.
All I'm saying is that they're all interelated and you cannot discuss one without qualifying it with the 'given conditions' of the others and it's not comparable if those conditions are equal. Saying the heat energy doesn't matter is a naive statement. That is the universal measurement of potential energy you can start with when using that as a fuel.
Economics
Myth: It takes just as much energy to make ethanol as you get out of it.
Fact: The most exhaustive (and least-cited) study on the energy
balance, by Isaias de Carvalho Macedo of Brazil, shows an alcohol
energy return of more than eight units of output for every unit of
input—and this study accounts for everything right down to smelting the
ore to make the steel for tractors.
Public discussion of this issue has been dominated by the American
Petroleum Institute’s aggressive distribution of the work of Cornell
professor David Pimentel and his numerous studies. Other researchers
have shown conclusively that Pimentel distorts key calculations, and
cite his unfamiliarity with farming in general, his ignoring of studies
from Brazil that disagree with him, and his poor understanding of the
value of co-products and their contribution to an accurate portrayal of
energy accounting in the ethanol manufacturing process. In fact, he
stands virtually alone in portraying alcohol as having an energy return
on energy invested (EROEI) that is negative—producing less energy than
is used in its production.
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Apples to Apples
I never said 'it' had an EROEI of less than one. I actually did say it was 29% higher than 1.00 and I attributed that to corn ethanol. This was from the Stanford study which came out pretty close in timeframe and outcome to Pimentel's which I didn't quote. This may be a little low if you account for recent developments but it sure isn't the 30:1 that oil stands at right now. For the relevance of that statement, consider putting one barrel's worth of CO2 in the air for us to power cars 30 barrel's worth (Barrel of Oil Equivalent - aka BOE) of work. Ethanol has different CO2 equivalents, but 1.29 or even 5.00 BOE (the most optomistic estimate I've seen anywhere) from that same barrel used puts more CO2 up there. Same thing for oil dependency if you can't grow enough corn here to cover the first barrel.
That said, there are other methods to make ethanol, of which sugar cane is usually cited as the best in terms of both economics and EROEI. The problem is that the US doesn't have the sugar capacity to import or grow sugar on that scale so it will cost more here from the supply/demand balance.
By the way, if you want energy from a source that's got an EROEI of around 200:1 (even nuclear is only 100:1), then look into concentrated solar thermal (CSP). There's nothing anywhere beating it. If you're serious about getting it to market as quick as possible, I take donations. :)
Alcohol fuel has been added
Alcohol fuel has been added to gasoline to reduce virtually
every class of pollution. Adding as little as 5–10% alcohol can reduce
carbon monoxide (CO) from gasoline exhaust dramatically. When using
pure alcohol, the reductions in all three of the major
pollutants—carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides (NOx), and hydrocarbons
(HC)—are so great that, in many cases, the remaining emissions are
immeasurably small.
Ah Sugar cane is not the optimal crop while it is good there are a number of crops that can be grown in America that are as good or better then sugar cane.
There at least 30 crops, most of which are more viable for ethanol production than corn, and many of which do not compete with food production. In fact, some of the most significant feedstocks for ethanol production are plants that are not food crops at all. Examples are cattails, buffalo gourd (an arid climate crop), mesquite (which grows all over the arid southwest), and even ocean kelp. by using just the example
feedstocks listed, we can easily produce enough ethanol to
eliminate our Mid-East oil imports and probably replace all our US
automotive consumption with ethanol without having any impact on our
food supply. And that's not to mention the many high energy fuel crops
that can be grown in rotation with currently grown crops.
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Careful reading.
I did not say ethanol caused more pollution. I said more CO2 and that was for the entire energy chain - well to wheel as it is called. This is mostly due to it's lower EROEI overall than oil. CO2 is not a pollutant as of yet. It is, however, the product of perfect combustion so better burning increases it and higher heat value 'tends to' decrease it on a per BTU basis.
I also did not say that sugar ethanol was the best process. I said it is 'usually cited' as the best and it is usually cited. Yes, there are many but how are you going to tell a million farmers to dump their traditional farm equipment and grain bins, etc. so they can begin farming gourds or kelp? Another factor not usually brought up is the soil depletion resulting from various crops being farmed on it.
Soybeans and corn are well known high (note I'm not saying they actually are the highest) tolls on the soil. They not only require more fertilizer, but more tractor-miles driven on the land. This compacts the bug holes in the ground - basically packs it solid - so the irrigation and excess fertilizer end up in the river basins. Any huge national push for a biofuel of any kind needs so many things considered that it's just not a snap decision.
This is why subsidies are bad. They are politicians snap-deciding for the rest of us and then mandating alternatives that the free market would not necessarily stay with.
Don't bother
I really wouldn't try this...unless you want to pay some massive fines and risk prison time...not kidding.
Essentially...if you brew your ethanol at home (even if you have permits and all) you cannot put it in your vehicle and drive on a public road. The fed will then view you as a tax evader (since you haven't paid fuel tax) and will come after you. Far fetched you say? No...it really has happened...don't have a link for it right now, but the fed recently fined someone driving with homemade biodiesel from french fry grease.
Make your homemade moonshine, but if you want to avoid the IRS on your back, mix it with orange juice instead of gasoline.
What do you think about the war on drugs?
How about Operation Wall Street?
Shout it today!
http://www.youshouts.com/index.php
Logicaly ..
If one intended to put in all the time and effort of making their own fuel, in order to avoid suffering from the price runup which clearly appears to be government orchestrated ... then why in the heck would they then alert that same government by applying for a permit?
I would suspect the only problem one might have is if they were lame enough to try to sell the product or if the were the typeof personality that enjoyed bragging to one and all.
Yes...but
It's bad enough to run afoul of the IRS...as they'll only steal your money and maybe put you in jail.
It's another thing entirely to run afoul of the ATF. I know it's probably flying under the radar to run a still in your basement, but is it really worth it to risk having 2 federal agencies potentially able to ruin you financially, take your children away, put you in jail, and even murder you to drive a little cheaper?
I'm all for non-violent resistance to tyranny, but pick your battles.
What do you think about the war on drugs?
How about Operation Wall Street?
Shout it today!
http://www.youshouts.com/index.php
This is Spam
...and irrelevant.
I Have Seen The Constitution
...And, yes, I have seen The Constitution
Home Distillation = ..."holy
Home Distillation = ..."holy SH*T im DRUNK!!!!" * falls down in a pile of vomit...*
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