Monday, May 12, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Are Backyard Ethanol Brewers an Answer to High-Priced Gas?
A company banking on drivers' weariness of skyrocketing gasoline prices unveiled a home refinery device on Thursday offering another option: ethanol. E-Fuel Corporation says its EFuel100 MicroFueler can produce up to 35 gallons (132 liters) of ethanol a week that consumers can pump directly into their cars and trucks. There is no combustion inside the device, which runs on a standard household 110- to 220-volt AC power supply (consuming about 150 watts per day) and uses a membrane system to distill the sugar, yeast and water solution required to make ethanol rather than combustion heating elements, as commercial ethanol producers do.
Interested drivers in the U.S. can put in their orders now for their own EFuel100 MicroFueler at the company's Web site with a $3,000 down payment toward the total $10,000 tab; the first units are expected to ship some time this fall. The company, which has plants in Los Gatos and Paso Robles, Calif., as well as Hong Kong, also plans to sell MicroFuelers in Brazil, China and the U.K.
The prototype rolled out at a press conference in New York City yesterday is 72 inches (1.8 meters) high, 42 inches (1.1 meters) wide and 72 inches long, but the company says the consumer units are likely to be a bit smaller.
Ethanol fuel is made from a combination of water, yeast and sugar, Tom Quinn, E-Fuel founder and CEO, said at the press conference, adding that the process was no more complicated than what is taught in "third-grade science." The adoption of ethanol has been held back because drivers do not have access to the fuel, he said, pointing out that there are only 1,200 ethanol stations in the U.S., compared with about 176,000 gas stations.
To make ethanol in the EFuel100, feedstock (consisting of sugar and yeast) or discarded liquor is loaded into the device's 200-gallon (757-liter) tank. Using the LCD screen located on the front of the device (next to the pump), the operator places the EFuel100 either in ferment (for feedstock) or distillation (for liquor) mode to begin the process. The EFuel100 is hooked up to a water source—much like one's washing machine or dishwasher is—and regulates the amount of water flowing into its tank to begin the ethanol-conversion process.
Once the feedstock is fermented, the device transfers the solution to its distillation system, where it is vaporized in a vertical column tube and sent through a membrane that separates the alcohol from the water. The distilled vapor is then cooled back into liquid form and sent to the 35-gallon storage tank, from which it can be pumped into an automobile using a 50-foot (15-meter) retractable hose. The process of turning sugar into ethanol fuel takes nearly a week (although alcohol distillation can be done in a matter of hours).
The cost of operating and maintaining the EFuel100 vary, depending on rebates (a $1,000 federal tax credit is available) and the cost of the sugar feedstock—it takes 14 pounds (6.4 kilograms) of feedstock to produce a gallon of ethanol. E-Fuel also offers its Carbon Credit Coupon Program, which will allow its customers to buy discounted E-Fuel–certified sugar feedstock for an estimated 15 to 30 cents per pound, the company said Thursday. One of the company's main objectives with the program is to keep the cost of ethanol less than $1 per gallon.
The company says that families would save a barrel of cash in the long run. It estimates, for instance, that a family will save about $4,200 per year on fuel (assuming gas costs $3.60 per gallon and ethanol costs $1 per gallon) if it has two cars that get 22 miles per gallon (9.3 kilometers per liter) and are driven a total of 34,500 miles (55,500 kilometers) annually. Automobiles do not require their fuel to be 100 percent ethanol, so greater savings are possible if drivers dilute the finished product with water (as long at that mixture contains at least 65 percent ethanol).
E-Fuel chose sugar as its raw material (instead of corn feedstock or cellulose) because of its ease and abundance: corn feedstock or cellulose have to be broken down into sugar before they can be turned into ethanol. But E-Fuel said it plans to eventually build corn and cellulose versions of its microfuelers, although no time frame has been set. A version that uses corn is lower priority, Quinn said, because corn, unlike sugar, is an essential part of the world's food supply. As Bruce Padula, the company's vice president of sales and marketing puts it, "Doctors aren't telling you to eat more sugar." Still, much of the ethanol-producing infrastructure in place is designed to use corn feedstock—corn-based ethanol accounts for most of the total ethanol produced in the U.S. at this time, according to Louisiana State University's Agriculture Center.
However, the company's claims about the environmental friendliness of ethanol are in dispute. E-Fuel touts ethanol as cheaper and more environmentally sound than gasoline, claiming that it produces 85 percent fewer climate change–causing carbon emissions than gasoline. But Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering, says ethanol is no better for air quality. Jacobson last year published a report in Environmental Science & Technology noting that ethanol produces less benzene and butadiene than gasoline, but it releases more formaldehyde and acetaldehyde into the atmosphere.
Although ethanol is made from seemingly innocuous materials (like sugar or corn), it becomes dangerous when broken down in the atmosphere into acetaldehyde and acetic acid (the latter of which is corrosive and irritates the eyes), Jacobson says. "[Ethanol] kills people," he says. "Just like cigarette smoke, you're breathing in particles that are harmful."
Criticism by Jacobson and others against this fuel that many hope will become an alternative to high-priced, foreign-sourced petroleum is an issue E-Fuel and other ethanol backers will have to address, no matter how much cheaper their product is.
Link to the article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=backyard-ethanol-brewers
Interested drivers in the U.S. can put in their orders now for their own EFuel100 MicroFueler at the company's Web site with a $3,000 down payment toward the total $10,000 tab; the first units are expected to ship some time this fall. The company, which has plants in Los Gatos and Paso Robles, Calif., as well as Hong Kong, also plans to sell MicroFuelers in Brazil, China and the U.K.
The prototype rolled out at a press conference in New York City yesterday is 72 inches (1.8 meters) high, 42 inches (1.1 meters) wide and 72 inches long, but the company says the consumer units are likely to be a bit smaller.
Ethanol fuel is made from a combination of water, yeast and sugar, Tom Quinn, E-Fuel founder and CEO, said at the press conference, adding that the process was no more complicated than what is taught in "third-grade science." The adoption of ethanol has been held back because drivers do not have access to the fuel, he said, pointing out that there are only 1,200 ethanol stations in the U.S., compared with about 176,000 gas stations.
To make ethanol in the EFuel100, feedstock (consisting of sugar and yeast) or discarded liquor is loaded into the device's 200-gallon (757-liter) tank. Using the LCD screen located on the front of the device (next to the pump), the operator places the EFuel100 either in ferment (for feedstock) or distillation (for liquor) mode to begin the process. The EFuel100 is hooked up to a water source—much like one's washing machine or dishwasher is—and regulates the amount of water flowing into its tank to begin the ethanol-conversion process.
Once the feedstock is fermented, the device transfers the solution to its distillation system, where it is vaporized in a vertical column tube and sent through a membrane that separates the alcohol from the water. The distilled vapor is then cooled back into liquid form and sent to the 35-gallon storage tank, from which it can be pumped into an automobile using a 50-foot (15-meter) retractable hose. The process of turning sugar into ethanol fuel takes nearly a week (although alcohol distillation can be done in a matter of hours).
The cost of operating and maintaining the EFuel100 vary, depending on rebates (a $1,000 federal tax credit is available) and the cost of the sugar feedstock—it takes 14 pounds (6.4 kilograms) of feedstock to produce a gallon of ethanol. E-Fuel also offers its Carbon Credit Coupon Program, which will allow its customers to buy discounted E-Fuel–certified sugar feedstock for an estimated 15 to 30 cents per pound, the company said Thursday. One of the company's main objectives with the program is to keep the cost of ethanol less than $1 per gallon.
The company says that families would save a barrel of cash in the long run. It estimates, for instance, that a family will save about $4,200 per year on fuel (assuming gas costs $3.60 per gallon and ethanol costs $1 per gallon) if it has two cars that get 22 miles per gallon (9.3 kilometers per liter) and are driven a total of 34,500 miles (55,500 kilometers) annually. Automobiles do not require their fuel to be 100 percent ethanol, so greater savings are possible if drivers dilute the finished product with water (as long at that mixture contains at least 65 percent ethanol).
E-Fuel chose sugar as its raw material (instead of corn feedstock or cellulose) because of its ease and abundance: corn feedstock or cellulose have to be broken down into sugar before they can be turned into ethanol. But E-Fuel said it plans to eventually build corn and cellulose versions of its microfuelers, although no time frame has been set. A version that uses corn is lower priority, Quinn said, because corn, unlike sugar, is an essential part of the world's food supply. As Bruce Padula, the company's vice president of sales and marketing puts it, "Doctors aren't telling you to eat more sugar." Still, much of the ethanol-producing infrastructure in place is designed to use corn feedstock—corn-based ethanol accounts for most of the total ethanol produced in the U.S. at this time, according to Louisiana State University's Agriculture Center.
However, the company's claims about the environmental friendliness of ethanol are in dispute. E-Fuel touts ethanol as cheaper and more environmentally sound than gasoline, claiming that it produces 85 percent fewer climate change–causing carbon emissions than gasoline. But Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering, says ethanol is no better for air quality. Jacobson last year published a report in Environmental Science & Technology noting that ethanol produces less benzene and butadiene than gasoline, but it releases more formaldehyde and acetaldehyde into the atmosphere.
Although ethanol is made from seemingly innocuous materials (like sugar or corn), it becomes dangerous when broken down in the atmosphere into acetaldehyde and acetic acid (the latter of which is corrosive and irritates the eyes), Jacobson says. "[Ethanol] kills people," he says. "Just like cigarette smoke, you're breathing in particles that are harmful."
Criticism by Jacobson and others against this fuel that many hope will become an alternative to high-priced, foreign-sourced petroleum is an issue E-Fuel and other ethanol backers will have to address, no matter how much cheaper their product is.
Link to the article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=backyard-ethanol-brewers
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Lighting The Way In India
While greed is infectious, it hasn't touched Harish Hande. Unlike many entrepreneurs, Hande didn't dream of great wealth, luxury or power as he built SELCO India, a rural solar energy company.
At a time when his fellow Indian Institute of Technology engineering alumni were drifting aimlessly into the domestic IT industry, Hande stayed focused on his major: energy engineering. After earning a Ph.D. in the specialization from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Hande headed back home in 1993 to provide reliable, clean energy to unelectrified areas of rural India.
“We believe that in anybody’s daily life, reliable energy like solar electricity or solar lighting, can lead to a better quality of life," Hande says.
SELCO, short for Solar Electric Light Co., sells small-scale, modular solar photovoltaic systems to households and businesses in villages in the southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
He started small, buying one solar-lighting system with $300 he had left over in scholarship money.
To find workers to do installations on a larger scale, he went to village TV stores in Karnataka. Hande described what he was doing, and asked if anyone was interested. They were, since many of them didn't have electricity in their homes, relying on candles and kerosene lamps for light after sundown. This gave him confidence that he could build a team and that there was a market for what he wanted to do.
Join the discussion: What do you think of Hande's solar business? Should more entrepreneurs be concerned about economic development? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments below.
Since most rural Indians are poor and can't afford to pay for SELCO's systems out of pocket, Hande needed to obtain bank financing. In late 1996 he convinced Malaprabha Grameen Bank in Karnataka to finance 100 solar-lighting systems, “probably because they were getting fed up with me more than anything else,” Hande jokes.
He then leveraged the bank's backing to get other banks to finance more solar-lighting systems. “That was our biggest code to crack, since our entire model is based on banks providing the financing,” Hande says.
In addition to providing a source of safe, clean lighting to rural people, SELCO also helps them generate much-needed income. With light after dark, they can keep shops open later and stay up at home working on crafts. Some of his customers told Hande they can now make two to three baskets a night, selling them for 30 rupees each.
This gave Hande the idea to create a business plan for a tribal community in Karnataka, with four-year bank loans under which they would pay for their solar-lighting systems with the proceeds of basket sales.
So far, SELCO has installed close to 100,000 solar-lighting systems, and in the process, it has brought light to people who were considered too poor to be part of the capitalist system.
I use the term "light" both literally and metaphorically, since Hande’s thinking went far beyond solar lighting system installations. What he did was innovate at a much deeper level by connecting energy services to income generation.
Sadly, Hande says few of his fellow Indian Institute of Technology energy engineering alumni are working in alternative energy. “When I went back to IIT last year, all 26 seats in energy engineering went to [work in] software," he says. "There is an extreme shortage of energy engineers.”
I recently wrote an open letter to IIT students asking them to look beyond software--and maybe do something electrifying, following Hande’s example.
Join the discussion: What do you think of Hande's solar business? Should more entrepreneurs be concerned about economic development? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments below.
Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Link to the article: http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/02/mitra-hande-solar-tech-science-cx_sm_0502mitra.html
At a time when his fellow Indian Institute of Technology engineering alumni were drifting aimlessly into the domestic IT industry, Hande stayed focused on his major: energy engineering. After earning a Ph.D. in the specialization from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Hande headed back home in 1993 to provide reliable, clean energy to unelectrified areas of rural India.
“We believe that in anybody’s daily life, reliable energy like solar electricity or solar lighting, can lead to a better quality of life," Hande says.
SELCO, short for Solar Electric Light Co., sells small-scale, modular solar photovoltaic systems to households and businesses in villages in the southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
He started small, buying one solar-lighting system with $300 he had left over in scholarship money.
To find workers to do installations on a larger scale, he went to village TV stores in Karnataka. Hande described what he was doing, and asked if anyone was interested. They were, since many of them didn't have electricity in their homes, relying on candles and kerosene lamps for light after sundown. This gave him confidence that he could build a team and that there was a market for what he wanted to do.
Join the discussion: What do you think of Hande's solar business? Should more entrepreneurs be concerned about economic development? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments below.
Since most rural Indians are poor and can't afford to pay for SELCO's systems out of pocket, Hande needed to obtain bank financing. In late 1996 he convinced Malaprabha Grameen Bank in Karnataka to finance 100 solar-lighting systems, “probably because they were getting fed up with me more than anything else,” Hande jokes.
He then leveraged the bank's backing to get other banks to finance more solar-lighting systems. “That was our biggest code to crack, since our entire model is based on banks providing the financing,” Hande says.
In addition to providing a source of safe, clean lighting to rural people, SELCO also helps them generate much-needed income. With light after dark, they can keep shops open later and stay up at home working on crafts. Some of his customers told Hande they can now make two to three baskets a night, selling them for 30 rupees each.
This gave Hande the idea to create a business plan for a tribal community in Karnataka, with four-year bank loans under which they would pay for their solar-lighting systems with the proceeds of basket sales.
So far, SELCO has installed close to 100,000 solar-lighting systems, and in the process, it has brought light to people who were considered too poor to be part of the capitalist system.
I use the term "light" both literally and metaphorically, since Hande’s thinking went far beyond solar lighting system installations. What he did was innovate at a much deeper level by connecting energy services to income generation.
Sadly, Hande says few of his fellow Indian Institute of Technology energy engineering alumni are working in alternative energy. “When I went back to IIT last year, all 26 seats in energy engineering went to [work in] software," he says. "There is an extreme shortage of energy engineers.”
I recently wrote an open letter to IIT students asking them to look beyond software--and maybe do something electrifying, following Hande’s example.
Join the discussion: What do you think of Hande's solar business? Should more entrepreneurs be concerned about economic development? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments below.
Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Link to the article: http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/02/mitra-hande-solar-tech-science-cx_sm_0502mitra.html
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