garbage by ~miss-vomitWhat a great idea!
DETROIT — General Motors (GM) says it is investing in a fledgling company that claims its secret process could be able to make ethanol from waste in large quantity as soon as 2010 for $1 a gallon or less, half the cost of making gasoline.
Bill Roe, CEO of 18-month-old ethanol maker Coskata, says the company's process uses bacteria developed at the University of Oklahoma and existing gasification technology to generate 99.7% pure ethanol, plus water. He says the method should leapfrog cellulosic production, which has been seen as the next step from today's ethanol production using corn.
GM won't disclose its investment, but Roe says it's enough to make Coskata "a speed-to-market play. I don't think most people saw this coming," he says. "Most talk about cellulosic ethanol is futuristic."
Coskata's process can use garbage, old tires and other waste, but Roe says wood waste probably will be used at first because it's available, cheap and easy to handle.
More from General Motors finances ethanol maker Coskata
Hat tip to Wagga for this find.
In other news, January 13 through 19 is Slow Down Week.
15 comments:
Hi akubi,
I'm sure it is a net energy loser. They are still thinking in terms of dollars. That thinking will cause a lot of needless pain. We waste more fuel in this country than we could possibly get from ethanol. If they just want to make ethanol so Grandpa can drive his Winnebago 30k miles a year it is a worthless cause.
I bet you thought I would say something about the OU reference mirst. You was mistooken. :)
I'm going to wait and see on this one. The interesting thing is that producing the raw materials and trucking them to the plant is effectively free energy-wise as long as the plant is built at the landfill -- those are activities that we're already doing. Of course you still have to truck the fuel from the plant to wherever it's distributed.
@Edgar,
We waste more fuel in this country than we could possibly get from ethanol.
Due to this same wasteful tendency we also create a hell of a lot of garbage in this country. Why not make use of it? It could be far more efficient than the corn fiasco.
Yes, I did think you'd say something about the Oklahoma reference.
@Ogg,
If the waste is utilized landfill wouldn't require as much space and could be moved closer to the source reducing transport-related fuel costs.
In completely unrelated news, George W. Bush to run for the Parliament in Iran.
@akubi,
I've heard claims by some that they can make ethanol from anything, even porceline sinks and such. That is some fancy alchemy. I'd be impressed if they got enough ethanol from garbage to run the garbage trucks. Ain't gonna happen. They use natural gas to cook it, the use petrol all along the way. Ethanol won't even carry its own weight. Sorry to be so negative, but I feel it is a cruel hoax on a gullible public, and will only lead to more environmental degradation. They will be more likely to burn the garbage over the next century. I know, I'm so hideously negative.
From the NYT:
If it can be done economically, the Coskata process has three large advantages over corn-based ethanol, according to General Motors. First, it uses a cheaper feedstock that would not compete with food production. Second, the feedstock is available all over the country, a crucial point since ethanol cannot be shipped from the corn belt to areas of high gasoline demand in existing pipelines.
In addition, the process appears to require less electricity and natural gas, meaning that making it would not release as much carbon.
akubi, I hope it works. So far they don't even try to use solar or wind to process the ethanol which = they have no clue. Really, it would be nice, even if we ever get 1 mb/d of ethanol equivalent in net energy ahead I would be very happy.
Akubi beat treehugger to the story. Great scoop!
In initial tests conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory, the ethanol generated 7.7 times the energy used to produce it; corn-based ethanol, by comparison, only generates 1.3 times the energy used to produce it. Compared to gasoline, it also cut carbon dioxide emissions by 84%.
The start-up expects to have a commercial-scale plant with the capacity to manufacture 50-100 m gallons of ethanol per year going by 2011.
So then that one plant will produce 100 million gallons per year, carry the one, that's 65 barrels per day. Carry the one, that means in order to make 1 mb/d we'd need 15,385 similar plants.
Look what I found!
As much scientific jargon aside as possible, the Fuel Saver uses Molecule Reaction Technology to essentially break apart clustered carbon molecules present in the fuel, water and air systems. This, in turn, lets the fuel oxygenate and burn more efficiently – causing an increase in horsepower, fuel economy and the engines life.
Putting 1 of these devices in your tank will give you an increase of 15% in your fuel economy.
Clearly, putting six devices in will give you 9 times better fuel economy, and if you are brave enough to put the seventh device in, be ready to find a way to prevent overflow. All our problems are solved!
Oh! well, we still have cheny & the puppet.
read the comments
Well, I'm about to watch "One million years BC".
Apparently it's a movie about how some dinosaurs found a process to create pure ethanol out of dinosaur dung. It turned out that they drank it & forgot to jump Mrs. Dinosaur and now we don't have any dinosaurs any more.
Carry the one, that means in order to make 1 mb/d we'd need 15,385 similar plants.
Well, building and running all of those plants would make up for all of the jobs lost due to the mortgage meltdown.
@Wagga,
A few comments that caught my attention:
[-] Shan Fenderson on January 12,
"It does rather sound like snake oil." Indeed. Perhaps it would be better to find a bit of evidence that it's anything else before putting it on the front page of TOD. A report from "California Environmental Engineering" does not mean much once you google them and find out they've reportedly found similarly amazing results for such things as magnets placed near the fuel line.
[-] jmac70 on January 12, 2008 - 4:52pm | Permalink | Subthread |
I also have a foolproof gas saver design that I give away for nothing. It is a small piece of notched wood with a tie wrap that attaches to the underside of the gas pedal. It's called a poor mans governor.
[-] crobar on January 13, 2008 - 4:06pm | Permalink | Subthread |
You should rename it as a 'Clipped Signal Mode Restricted Amplitude Governer' and make it out of brushed chrome, you could sell hundreds at least.
[-] billp on January 12, 2008 -
VW microbus owner told me sniffing water works to improve mileage.
I was watching this PBS American Experience program about Lee Harvey Oswald and wondering how much Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Rummy learned from the Kennedy assassination and the benefits of propagating multiple conspiracy theories to convolute a real one or two or three...Some tin-foil hats are well worth wearing.
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