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Make Your Own Ethanol At Home: the Efuel 100 MicroFueler - EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

TACH"s Marc Rauch talks with Tom Quinn, Efuel"s CEO & Founder

• 100% Ethanol for less than $1 per gallon
• Produce up to 35 gallons in one batch
• Thumb your nose at the oil dictators

By Marc J. Rauch, Exec. Vice President & Co-Publisher

About two weeks ago, while Bob Gordon and I were in Las Vegas coveringthe Alternate Fuels and Vehicles Conference, we coincidentally carried ashort TV news story on The Auto Channel about a new home-based ethanolproduction unit, the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler.

It sounded like an intriguing idea, but I thought that there were toomany questions left unanswered, and that the proposition was too importantto be given the short shrift of a TV news sound bite.

Yesterday, I traveled to Los Gatos to shoot a video interview with Tom Quinn,Efuel Corporation’s CEO and Founder, to try to do justice to a veryexciting and promising concept. The following video is that effort...

Overview
E-Fuel’s MicroFueler is the world’s first home-sized fuelalcohol plant. Set up involves placing it on a level surface and connectingit to a source of water, power, and wastewater disposal, just like awashing machine.

The MicroFueler includes a fermentation tank with an enclosure on oneend that houses distillation and fuel dispensing equipment. The machineoperates automatically, managed by the user through an LCD interface. Theuser only needs to turn it on and fill it with E-Fuel feedstock, which isan inexpensive form of sugar, combined with yeast and yeast nutrients.

When this mixture is added to the fermentation tank, it is automaticallymixed with a measured amount of water and the fermentation process begins.In this process, yeast consume the sugar and convert it to ethanol, carbondioxide gas, and heat. A high tech control system manages the pumps,agitator, valves, fans, sensors, and thermoelectric coolers thatautomatically maintain the proper fermentation environment.

After fermentation, the ethanol must be concentrated to be a fuel. Overa period of several days, it is slowly pumped from the fermentation tankthrough a distillation column, which creates a vapor of ethanol and water.The vapor is fed to a unique membrane, designed specifically for theMicroFueler. The smaller water molecules pass through the wall of thismembrane while the larger ethanol molecules stream through the exit port. Anumber of heat exchangers and thermoelectric coolers convert the ethanoland water vapors back into liquids and make this process energy efficient.The water is recycled and the fuel grade ethanol is available for use.

Fuel is metered and dispensed just like at a gas station through aretractable hose and nozzle.

For more information about the Efuel 100 MicroFueler visit www.efuel100.com.