US inventors claim to have perfected a device that allows people to make
their own ethanol fuel for as little at 50p a gallon.
Floyd Butterfield has started a company with venture capitalists to market
the $10,000 E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler.
The machine converts sugar and some household waste into ethanol. Butterfield
estimates that it is possible to provide fuel at a dollar a gallon.
"It is going to cause havoc in the market and cause great financial stress in
the oil industry," Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas Quinn, the man behind the
Wii motion sensor and a backer of the scheme, told the International Herald
Tribune.
The machine uses sugar, water and electricity in concert with a specially
developed yeast formula to make the fuel.
Quinn said that other fuels can be used, and that he collects waste alcohol
from local bars to make his own fuel.
Butterfield claimed that he has cracked several key problems with ethanol
production, including designing special filters to accelerate the process. The
byproduct of the process is drinkable water.
Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at
UC Berkeley, said: "There are a lot of hurdles you have to overcome, and it is
entirely possible that they have done it, but scepticism is a virtue."
Butterfield's company plans to launch in the UK, the US and China by the end
of the year.
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