Cooking up a load of bioethanol

Vast volumes of potential transport fuels are being buried in refuse landfills, says a visiting United States scientist searching for non-food sources of bioethanol for petrol and diesel substitution.

Bill Orts, a Californian-based Department of Agriculture research leader, says a high proportion of cellulose from discarded paper packaging makes municipal refuse a lucrative would-be fuel source.


He suggested to an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority conference on biofuels and electric cars that the annual US refuse stream of about 500 million tonnes could theoretically yield up to 13 per cent of his country’s transport fuel.

“That’s a pipedream – but roughly 15 per cent of our oil comes from the Middle East, so strategically it wouldn’t be bad if we could displace that.”

New Zealand Herald