Start-up Working with Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. to Micro-Produce Ethanol With Discarded Beer Yeast

3 February 2009

E-Fuel, the developer of a home ethanol system—the Efuel100 MicroFueler—and Sierra Nevada have agreed to house MicroFuelers at the brewery in Chico, California, enabling Sierra Nevada to manufacture its own ethanol using waste from its brewing process.

Testing will commence in Q2 2009 with a goal of achieving full-scale ethanol production in the third quarter.

Today, most beer yeast waste is transported daily by trucks to be used as dairy feed on local farmlands. On average, Sierra Nevada resells 1.6 million gallons of unusable “bottom of the barrel” beer yeast waste to farmers each year. Containing 5% to 8% alcohol content, the waste includes enough yeast and nutrients to enable the MicroFueler to raise that level to 15% alcohol, allowing for an increased ethanol yield. The MicroFueler will remove water from the waste to produce a high quality ethanol product.

The EFuel100 MicroFueler portable ethanol micro-refinery system replaces the traditional ethanol reflux column system with a solid state distillation technology. The MicroFueler is both a pump station and an ethanol distiller reduced to an appliance-sized unit. To further simplify the distillation process for consumers, the MicroFueler uses sugar instead of starches, which cuts the distillation period.

The EFuel100 needs between 10 lbs to 14 lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. The MicroFueler is capable of producing 5 gallons of ethanol per day once fermentation is complete. The MicroFueler has a distillation-only mode, which allows the conversion of discarded beer, wine or distilled drinks into ethanol.