Effective cellulosic ethanol processes would help prevent forest fires
On the environmentally-friendliness scale, cellulosic ethanol already beats its corn-based cousin by using waste products - not crops - to power a motor. Chris Risbrudt, director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, tells the Wisconsin State Journal that an effective cellulosic ethanol process that uses scraps taken from the forest would also help reduce forest fires. Specifically, Risbrudt said:
"...we spent $1.3 billion fighting forest fires (last) year in the Forest Service; because nature is trying to remove that biomass and get back to the amount it should have. If we thin it to prevent or reduce the impacts of wild fire, it costs us $1,000 per acre because we're not making many products out of that stuff. We're trying to figure out how to make products out of that so we can reduce the cost of thinning national forests down to zero."
The obvious product is ethanol, and Risbrudt says once the "recalcitrant cellulose problem" is solved, then that $1,000-per-acre cost will be mitigated by selling the products collected in the thinning process. The most promising cellulose ethanol potential that Risbrudt mentions is Xethanol Corp.'s use of the yeast strain pichia stipitis. There was also news recently of Range Fuels building a wood-waste cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia.
Related:
- Range Fuels (ex-Kergy) will open wood-waste-using cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia
- Xethanol Juices Ethanol From Orange Peel
[Source: Wisconsin State Journal via Domestic Fuel]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris Schommer 11:02AM (2/20/2007)
This article is pure fantasy. Does he really think that we can just "thin" forests magically? Now, what he is speaking of is clear cutting and leaving a few token older trees for PR. So, if you want to talk about it, think of it as a dramatic expansion of the paper industry, not some fake pro-forest "things are just out of balance" line. It is the same language as the "Healthy Forests" initiative.
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iamhoff 1:26PM (2/20/2007)
It's a great idea in theory, but it likely wouldn't pass muster with NEPA and other environmental regs. Whether it truly would entail clearcutting like Chris fears, or whether it would simply involve removing much of the ground-based biomass (small plants, leafs, dead branches, underbrush, pine needles, whatever), the biomass likely serves as the habitat for several special interest, threated, or endangered species, if not actually containing such plant species.
Assuming that effective ethanol products could be made from the forest biomass, it seems like a rational idea...the forests will burn at some point. Why not reduce the cost and danger of that inevitability by helping reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Unfortunately, the issues and opinions surrounding it are anything but compatible, and finding a compromise position is probably impossible. Too bad, because if the powers that be could strike a balance between preservation and utilization, this could really have some positive effects.
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