From: Glen Closson (glen_closson@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon May 15 2006 - 20:52:26 PDT
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195543,00.html
TULLAHOMA, Tenn. - The still - standard equipment of any moonshiner - has a
shot at becoming the must-have accessory of penny-pinching motorists.
An upstart Tennessee business is marketing stills that can be set up as
private distilleries making ethanol - 190 proof grain alcohol - out of
fermented starchy crops such as corn, apples or sugar cane. The company
claims the still's output can reduce fuel costs by nearly a third from the
pump price of gasoline.
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Buyers of stills need a federal permit to make ethanol on private property.
In what amounts to an honor system, they are to add a poison to their
homemade alcohol so it isn't white lightning.
"We make it very clear that it is against the law to drink what comes out of
it," said Shelley McClanahan, a spokeswoman for her family's business,
Dogwood Energy.
Phones are ringing with orders at the business that mostly sold pellets for
wood stoves before pump prices bounced high by Hurricane Katrina focused new
attention on a modified still designed by McClanahan's father,
inventor-mechanic Bill Sasher.
Since word started getting out in recent weeks about Sasher's still, Dogwood
Energy has added 10 employees, McClanahan said.
Sasher's new creekside assembly warehouse in south-central Tennessee - down
a backwoods road, next door to a noisy rooster and less than 5 miles from
the distillery that makes Jack Daniel's whiskey - has orders for about 45
assembled stills.
The company is building four or five stills a day and has sold 45 in recent
weeks, more than 125 since September, to meet the demand from customers
ranging from small businesses to thrifty individuals.
"You can save a lot of money. That's what this is all about," McClanahan
said.
A bushel of the fermented starch crop, mixed with yeast, water and sugar,
and allowed to sit for about 2.5 days, then strained and heated to boiling,
makes about 2.6 gallons of ethanol, which is then added to gasoline to
produce a blended fuel.
Dogwood Energy says it costs about 75 cents per gallon to make ethanol at
home. Adding 15 percent ethanol to $3 gasoline reduces the cost of a fill-up
to $2.40 per gallon, McClanahan said.
A blend with 85 percent ethanol cuts the cost to $1.09 for a blended gallon,
she said.
Sasher's stills, which stand about 6 feet tall and easily fit in an airy
garage corner, sell for about $1,400 each. Blueprints each sell for about
$45 and buyers who are good salvagers can build a still themselves for less
than $1,000, McClanahan said.
Marrcus Mollenarro, a Kenosha, Wis., businessman, has bought one of Sasher's
stills to make it cheaper to run his six personal and business vehicles.
"We don't have to use oil from the Middle East. There are options,"
Mollenarro said
Dubose Porter of Dublin, Ga., a state representative and editor of The
Courier Herald, said the newspaper has ordered a still to help offset
delivery costs.
"The still idea is intriguing for a small company like ours," he said.
Using ethanol to power cars isn't new. The Model T Ford was originally built
to run on alcohol.
Sasher said any modern-day car can run on a mixture of 15 percent ethanol
and 85 percent gasoline. Most vehicle engines can use blends of up to 25
percent ethanol.
More than 30 models of new flex-fuel cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles
- including General Motors' Yukon and Ford's Taurus - can use up to 85
percent ethanol, known as E85 fuel.
McClanahan said most of her customers go to the gas pump "fill up 80 percent
Her company advises its customers to check their owner's manual and consult
full and fill up the rest with alcohol."
with the manufacturers to see what blend of ethanol their cars can use. The
Web site http://www.e85fuel.com provides advice, too.
The Dogwood Energy still is one that Sasher, 57, developed by modifying
designs that date to the 1970s gas shortages.
Its great advantage is cooking the mash at just the right temperature, 170
degrees, according to John Franklin, a former engine company design engineer
and educator in Evansville, Ind., who has ordered two of the stills.
"If the temperature is too high then you are losing the alcohol. If it is
too low you are not able to recover enough of that alcohol that is pure
enough, that is fuel grade," Franklin said.
"It really isn't rocket science," Franklin said. "He makes it to where it is
much more automated. He does that with that mechanical temperature control
valve. That is half the expense of the still. His still is much more
automated and much more precise."
Ethanol already is routinely added to gasoline in New York, Connecticut,
California and the Midwest, and makes up about a third of the gas sold in
the U.S., according to Kristin Brekke, a spokeswoman for the Sioux Falls,
S.D.-based American Coalition of Ethanol.
Finding E85 gas is more of a problem. The 30 or so states with public E85
fueling stations are mostly in the corn belt.
Brekke said demand for ethanol is increasing, with about 4 billion gallons
produced last year in the United States. With 97 plants producing and 34
under construction, output is expected to increase by about 1 billion
gallons in 2006.
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil industry, is all
for putting ethanol into gasoline but questions the wisdom of doing it
yourself.
"Normally when people fill up with gasoline with ethanol in it, it is
blended by professionals," API spokesman Bill Bush said. "If we are talking
about doing something other than that, by people who don't normally blend
their own gasoline, that raises safety considerations."
McClanahan said no customers have reported accidents with the stills.
Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association that
represents ethanol producers, has heard of Dogwood Energy.
"You've got to appreciate Americans' entrepreneurial spirit," he said.
He hasn't heard of anyone making homemade ethanol, though.
"The only ethanol I know being made at home is still the beverage," Hartwig
said.
Brekke also doesn't know anyone using the still but she understands the
motivation to buy one.
"People just want to do something to try and make the situation better as
far as gas prices," Brekke said.
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