Make Fuel at Home With Portable DIY Refinery + pic

[recall15]

OK,
quoted:
<font color="blue"> People were making ethanol at home long before there were cars. They called it moonshine. With gas prices going through the roof and everyone worried about global warming, a California company is betting people will jump at the chance to use the same technology to turn sugar into fuel for less than a buck a gallon.

E-Fuel Corporation has unveiled its EFuel 100 MicroFueler, a device about the size of a stacking washer-dryer that uses sugar, yeast and water to make 100 percent ethanol at the push of a button.

"You just open it like a washing machine and dump in your sugar, close the door and push one button," company founder Tom Quinn told us. "A few days later, you've got ethanol." [/COLOR]

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[reactor1967]

That is great but it is nothing new it just has a modernized spin on it. In the brewing industry the process has been automated for a long time now. Basically you do two things. 1st, you ferment, then you distill. This is good for those that don,t want to know how it is done but just want to do it and don,t care about spending all that cash. Here is how to do it basically for nothing.

A five gallon glass carboy bottle with a condenser from home depot and a bucket to put the condenser in(with ice) and a homemade fermentation lock made out of a glass of water and a plastic tube with a temperature controlled hot plate from wal-mart maybe a cracking tower/slobber box - (a can with marbles in it). Temperature is very important. If you can scrounge you can do this for less than fifty bucks. I got my parts for free just by keeping my eyes open. It didn,t cost me anything. It can take at least a few hundred dollars to convert a car over to ethanol unless you know something I don,t maybe less. On the glass carboy a real good cork with a hole in it for the condenser that is air tight and shoved in real good into the glass carboy will act as your safety valve. The cork should be of a good quality rubber. Another cork with a hole in it for the plastic tube going into a glass of water for the fermentation lock. The plastic tube can be bought at wal-mart in their fish/pet section. The can with marbles in it would have two holes(one on tope and one on bottom) one to plug into the cork on the glass carboy and the other would plug into the condenser. My brother is a plumber I had him seal it up for me. It is not suppose to be that hard. It will make the yield greater. I recommend buying a good yeast for a better yield but you can use a store bought yeast. If you want to take the time you can grow your own yeast culture and you won,t have to worry about it. In the old days the old timers kept their own yeast culture for making bread. It is nothing new or difficult. If you plan to do a lot of driving you may need to start off with a lot more than five gallons. That is my input. Good luck everyone.

 

[Darby]

You'll "still"

have to get the ATF's approval and license to produce ethanol fuel - but you won't have to pay the special liquor tax if its for fuel - and you can't run your vehicle on pure ethanol in the US.

This gadget is great but if it catches on you won't be producing fuel for $1.00/gallon. The estimate assumes a flat price for sugar. If sugar consumption increases then the price will also increase.

The real down side is that, once again, we will be turning food into gasoline. Americans don't consume as much sugar per capita as the rest of the world but many people around the planet depend on sugar as part of their daily diet. Turning rice, corn and sugar into gasoline is not the way to feed the rest of the world.

Why don't we just get the damned crude out of the ground that we have in abundance and turn food into...well...food?

(The answer is, unfortunately, that there is a very vocal and apparently powerful group of whacked out "enviro-terrorists" who have a desire for most of the human population to starve to death so they can save the world...for themselves.)

 

[reactor1967]

You'll "still" have to get the ATF's approval and license to produce ethanol fuel - but you won't have to pay the special liquor tax if its for fuel - and you can't run your vehicle on pure ethanol in the US.

Yes that is true. Without that approval it is a $10,000 dollar fine and you could be looking at time in the pen. When I checked in my state there was a $200 dollar fee, logs have to be kept, taxes paid depending on what your making, and if booze is involved those ingredients have to be grown inside the state. Fuel can not be drinkable. And, the feds can pay you a visit from time to time to make sure your legal. That was just for my state I can,t speak for other states. Reactor

 

[Darby]

reactor,

Yeah - dem infernal revenuers.

There's two reasons why we can't use pure ethanol for fuel, One os the obvious: you can drink the pure (talk about having an open container. "Sir, have you been drinking" says the office while observing a long straw running from the driver's shoulder the the gas tank. "Nope - hic - I haven't."

The other is fire. If you don't mix the ethanol with some other additive any resulting fire is virtually invisible. That's why Indy racing outlawed pure alcohol fuel after several "invisible" pit fires that injured both drivers and crew.

 

[reactor1967]

Taking a look around lately I'm starting to notice where more and more alternative energy businesses such as bio diesel and places that convert or sell electric vehicles are popping up in relation to gas prices going up. This really amazed me. I didn't expect to see such a change but because of gas prices it is there. As gas prices go up our country demand for alternative energy is increasing and businesses are starting to respond to that demand. We are still going to see the cost of living go up until oil is replaced with a better alternative. So far any relief the government can give would only be temporarily and that is only if it does not get vetoed by Bush before it can become law. Reactor