Over a dozen cellulosic ethanol plants going up in the U.S.
Photo by Eric Charlton. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Everyone who follows the biofuel industry knows that the future of ethanol lies in cellulose. While corn is today's big feedstock, the potential to make ethanol cheaper and with less of an impact on food prices and the environment by using cellulosic materials is calling venture capitalists, the auto industry and many others. In the U.S. today there are more than a dozen companies that have gotten at least a few steps down the path of building cellulosic ethanol plants. There's a list of each company with an explanation and an interactive map of the plants over at earth2tech.
Companies like Coskata, Mascoma, Range Fuels, Poet and Verenium are familiar names on AutoblogGreen, but earth2tech also mentions ZeaChem and Abengoa Bioenergy, among others, which are less frequent visitors. While all of these companies are using their own production methods to turn wood waste or old tires or waste sludge or whatever into ethanol, no one has a lock on the future of cellulosic ethanol. Good.
[Source: earth2tech]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MikeofLA 10:21AM (6/04/2008)
Stop Ethanol Production! In favor of this http://www.sapphireenergy.com/
100X better!
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Peter 10:42AM (6/04/2008)
You need to answer a lot of questions when hyping new energy sources. Some of them:
1: Resource usage: (petroleum,land,rare elements etc..)
2: Energy in/out
3: production Costs
4: Scalability
5: Capital costs
6: Infrastructure requirements
7: Environmental costs: Pollution, deforestation, GHGs
When you don't take these factors into account you get pointless boondoggles like Corn ethanol that barely yields more energy than it consumes. Hydrogen which consumes much more energy than you input (it produces none, it is net loss).
There are dozens of alternatives currently vying for Venture Capital and government handouts. We need a critical eye turned on all of these.
I think we should dump on any claims that don't answer these basic and fundamental questions. The world doesn't need another Corn Ethanol Fiasco.
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ebra 12:05PM (6/04/2008)
Mike; If web sites could fuel cars, this would be really a great product, since their site is slick. Label me unimpressed until they actually deliver a tankfull at a competitive price.
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Hulseman 12:59PM (6/04/2008)
I have read that the DOE says we can only produce 30% of current gasoline consumption from biomass sources. Not sure how they can to this conclusion.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/biomass_basics_faqs.html
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scott 3:51PM (6/04/2008)
Let's say that we 'could' shunt enough biowaste into cellulosic or other biofuels, using all available organic detritus ranging from cornstocks to pigpoop and all of our grassclippings and treetrimmings between.
Does anyone have info on the enviromental consequences of diverting all this organic carbon from the carbon cycle? Will our grandchildren end up with barren soils and sterile lakes and rivers?
I think waste-to-energy is an enticing field but after the corn-ethanol fiasco, I don't want to turn a blind eye to any other possible unintended consequences
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Flankyl 8:42AM (6/05/2008)
I believe that Poet wants to use corn cobs for ethanol. Cobs take around 2 years to decompose and consume as many nutrients to break down as they give back the soil. So it is being said that removing cob will have little to no effect on nutrients.
With the price of fertilizer I am fairly sure that farmers are not going to give any more nutrients than necessary.
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