[Optimist]

Don't be daft. The only enzymatic conversion is cellulose to glucose. This part is called hydrolysis, as water is used to split the polymer into its monomers. The glucose is then used as a feedstock for fermentation (the same process we use to produce drinks) to produce the ethanol. Fermantation means growing yeast, which remains as the nutrient-rich stillage I mentioned.

[frankthetank]

Better yet, how about we start walking/biking a use coal to transport what needs to be transported. Grow gardens in the backyard and shit in buckets and toss it on the garden.

???

Screw sugar...want to see how Brazilians/amongst others do it?



Yeah..that looks really sustainable

[Leanan]

Fill 'er up with caramel

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')eftover halloween candy might not seem like fuel for anything but dental cavities, but Xethanol, a firm based in New York City, may change that perception.

Since 2003, Xethanol has operated two Iowa plants that can cheaply distill a gasoline additive called ethanol from bizarre sources such as stale butterscotch candy. When technicians mix the sweets with a special form of yeast, fermentation results, producing ethanol. (Typically producers of ethanol derive the clean-burning, high-octane fuel from corn.) Big oil companies then combine it with unleaded gasoline to reduce the cost of gas and the air pollution it causes.

Xethanol isn't just relying on candy for its fuel supply. This year it plans to introduce a process that will make it possible to turn all kinds of things--including cornstalks, grass clippings, and old newspapers--into ethanol. If all goes as planned, 59-year-old CEO and founder Christopher d'Arnaud-Taylor projects revenues of $15 million this year, up from $2.5 million in 2005--and the first-ever profit for Xethanol (www.xethanol.com), which he started in 2000 and took public last February. "Where there's muck, there's money," he quips.

[emersonbiggins]

As Kunstler well-noted, it's as if we're turning towards eating our own excrement to gain the last bit of nutrition to run our car-based world for a few years longer. Sad, indeed.

"Honey, what's for dinner?"

[Leanan]

I have a feeling future generations are going to look back and be amazed that we burned food to power our vehicles.

[me]

To my knowledge Kunstler hasn't even commented on the potential of cellulosic ethanol. None of the PO Apocalyptic-types have. It is the BIG biofuel story.....But alas its too late, buy a gun, ger ready for soylent green....

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('me', 'T')o my knowledge Kunstler hasn't even commented on the potential of cellulosic ethanol. None of the PO Apocalyptic-types have. It is the BIG biofuel story.....But alas its too late, buy a gun, ger ready for soylent green....

[me]

That just it....Cellulosic doesn't take land out of agricultural production AND the enrgy input-output ratio is higher than for corn.... Do a search....we're talking agricultural waste-products including grasses, woodchips, etc....
Read up on it @ Renewableenergyaccess.....

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('me', 'T')o my knowledge Kunstler hasn't even commented on the potential of cellulosic ethanol. None of the PO Apocalyptic-types have. It is the BIG biofuel story.....But alas its too late, buy a gun, ger ready for soylent green....

[me]

Cellulosic conversion is not the same technology as thermal depolymerization....it involves one of two processes, either enzymatic hydrolysis or acis hydrolysis... Do your own search, wiseass

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('me', 'C')ellulosic conversion is not the same technology as thermal depolymerization....it involves one of two processes, either enzymatic hydrolysis or acis hydrolysis... Do your own search, wiseass

[Eli]

What disturbs me the most with all this talk about alternatives is the complete lack of discusion about rethinking our transport system and no real talk about conservation.

We are addicted to oil but we are not talking seriously about cutting back on our habit, it is all about other stuff that will get us high too.

[Chicken_Little]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('me', 'T')hat just it....Cellulosic doesn't take land out of agricultural production AND the enrgy input-output ratio is higher than for corn.... Do a search....we're talking agricultural waste-products including grasses, woodchips, etc....
Read up on it @ Renewableenergyaccess.....

[Revi]

There's no excess anything. If you use all the grass to make gasoline you are impoverishing the soil. There's and old saying, the grain is for the farmer and the straw is for the soil. There's no way we can turn our forests and farmlands into car fuel and not pay a price in progressively lower harvests some time in the future. We need to eat more than we need to drive around.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'W')hat disturbs me the most with all this talk about alternatives is the complete lack of discusion about rethinking our transport system and no real talk about conservation.

We are addicted to oil but we are not talking seriously about cutting back on our habit, it is all about other stuff that will get us high too.

[aflatoxin]

When it comes to combustion, if you follow the energy trail. it's ALL solar energy

Does not matter is it's coal, oil, tar sands, ethanol, firewood, or whatever. A storage device is a battery, log, a bushel of corn, a gallon of diesel, or whatever. Photosynthesis turns CO2 into carbohydrates=>hydrocarbons, eventually these become our fuels. The only important difference is how many calories of sunlight we can turn into calories of fuel. Then the next step involves efficiency of use. That is a bigger problem IMHO.

Too many people with too many cars.

[Novus]

I read somewhere that we burn up several hundred years worth of stored sunlight every DAY.

[lorenzo]

Soon, your laptop will run on biomethanol.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4794920.stm
http://www.atlanticbiomass.com/page3.html

Also, biomethanol makes it possible to replace the methanol used to produce biodiesel. Thus we go full circle, and biodiesel will become entirely hydrocarbon free.

This is good.

[eric_b]

Please don't feed the trolls.

Even the good natured ones.

[Caoimhan]

How about the denatured ones?