Home Brew Your Gas?

by Andrea Millar — May 25, 2008

OK, it's ethanol time again. Yes, here I am to tell you about yet another way we can pour food into our cars. But it's really, really cool:

The EFuel100 MicroFueler is the world's first portable ethanol micro-refinery system; it replaces the traditional ethanol reflux column system with a solid state distillation technology, making it possible for homeowners and small businesses to safely and cost-effectively create their own fuel, on-site. (Thanks to the Lazy Environmentalist for the tip!)

Yeah, that's right. For a cool 10 grand--just five Apple AirBooks--you can set up your own gas station at home. You pour the company's proprietary yeast/sugar powder in there at $16 a pop, and what emerges is up to 5 gallons of ethanol per day. You let it do its thing, stick the fuel line in your gas tank, and gas up in your living room. The E-Fuel Corporation doesn't offer a skeezy attendant to hold on to your bathroom key for you, though.

One really cool feature is called the "Discarded Alcohol Recovery Mode." Basically, every time you have a house party, you can round up those half-full bottles of Heineken and pour them into your MicroFueler and drive off what wasn't imbibed. The Web site also recommends hounding bars and breweries for their discarded spirits to bring gas back around to an idyllic $0.10/gallon. Just make sure you didn't bring the friend who always puts her cigarettes out in a beer can--any debris and it won't work.

You may be wondering how your car will run on this stuff; according to the Web site, most cars do fine or even better with a 20-35% ethanol content. When you make the leap up to 100%, you'll need an ethanol converter. Although this is great news, how will EFuel's success be affected by the food crisis? Will people be willing to trust new technology revolving around more food consumption?