February 8, 2010
Homemade Ethanol Pump
By Amity Addrisi, Reporting
Feeling the pinch of rising gas prices could make people skip the gas station and fill up at home. Go to a gas station, and you're paying over $4.50 a gallon. But at Tom Quinn's house, he pays a fraction of that for fuel. He makes ethanol with his new invention - the EFUEL 100 Micro-fueler.
Tom Quinn says "Our machine works just like a washing machine. you connect to 220 power, connect water in, water out." First sugar and yeast is mixed with water and fermented. Over 1-2 days, it's pumped into a distillation column where a vapor of ethanol and water passes through a nanotech membrane - water filters out tiny holes while ethanol continues through an exit port. Consider you need 12 pounds of sugar, per 1 gallon of ethanol. If sugar stays at 10-cents per pound, producing homemade ethanol costs $1.20 a gallon. But if you have access to a brewery or a winery's throwaways, producing ethanol from alcohol, will set you back just 10-cents a gallon and a few hours time. Homemade fuel comes with an upfront cost, The Microfueler's pricetag? - $10,000. But, you can siphon off a few thousand in tax rebates. |
Current Temp
53.0 °
Overcast
Upload directly from your mobile device. Learn howYouNews
This content requires the latest Adobe Flash Player and a browser with JavaScript enabled.
Click here for a free download of the latest Adobe Flash Player.
|
Most Popular
|

