Biofuel Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for 1 Dollar a Gallon
January 25, 2008 | 6:25 pm | by t-blender |Rate It:
wired.com: A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn’t interfere with food supplies, company officials said.
Coskata, which is backed by General Motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol.
“It’s not five years away, it’s not 10 years away. It’s affordable, and it’s now,” said Wes Bolsen, the company’s vice president of business development.
The discovery underscores the rapid innovation under way in the race to make cellulosic ethanol cheaply. With the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requiring an almost five-fold increase in ethanol production to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022, scientists are working quickly to reach that breakthrough.
“It signals just how hot the competition is right now,” said David Friedman, research director of the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There are a lot of people diving into this right now, trying to figure out how to crack the nut. This increases my confidence that someone will do it.”
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