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Monday, January 14, 2008 Cheap Ethanol from Tires and TrashGM teams with a startup aiming to produce low-cost biofuels. By Kevin Bullis
Yesterday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, General Motors announced a partnership with Coskata of Warrenville, IL, a new company that claims it can make ethanol from wood chips, grass, and trash--including old tires--for a dollar a gallon. That's significantly less than it costs to make the biofuel from corn grain, which is the source of almost all the ethanol made in the United States. Coskata executives, who until the announcement had kept the company's existence and technology under wraps, say they have developed a hybrid approach involving both thermochemical and biological processes for making ethanol. Until now, most researchers have focused on developing either thermochemical or biological methods. Coskata says that besides being cheaper than other ethanol production processes under development, its technology uses less energy and water. GM will give financial, technical, and marketing support to Coskata to help it scale up its process, which so far has been demonstrated only at the lab scale. Coskata is completing a pilot-scale ethanol production facility and will announce locations for a 40,000-gallon-per-year facility and a 100-million-gallon-per-year commercial-scale plant later this year. Coskata joins a number of other companies looking for ways to make biofuels from alternative sources. A new federal mandate, signed into law late last month, calls for 36 billion gallons of biofuels to be produced by 2022; of that, 21 billion gallons is to come from sources other than corn grain. But so far technology for making ethanol from such feedstocks has not been proved commercially. The Coskata process begins with gasification, a well-known technology that involves heating up a wide range of organic materials until their components disassociate and form synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Then, instead of using chemical catalysts to convert the syngas into various alcohols as is done in conventional processes (see "Breaking Ground on Cellulosic Ethanol"), Coskata uses new strains of bacteria to convert it into ethanol. Since ethanol is the only product, the technique produces a better overall yield than catalytic processes. Bacteria are also easier to work with than catalysts in some ways. For example, they're not as particular about the ratio of gases in the syngas. "It is theoretically possible to feed our organism exclusively carbon monoxide and it will make ethanol from that," says Richard Tobey, vice president of R&D and engineering at Coskata. "You can't do that with the catalytic approaches." |
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Ethanol from Garbage and Old Tires
02/19/2008
Comments
kitk on 01/14/2008 at 2:08 AM
52
DJTal on 01/14/2008 at 4:11 AM
116
shomas on 01/20/2008 at 7:30 PM
20
Although i am not a chemist, it appears that "CO" carbon monoxide has energy of potential that i guess some bacteria can use.
In another article in TR, compressed air is looked at as an energy source for a vehicle. What is the feasibility of using both the chemical and the mechanical energy in compressed carbon monoxide.
Naturally we would expect that all the carbon monoxide is converted into carbon dioxide.
DJTal on 01/24/2008 at 11:15 AM
116
MakeSense on 01/20/2008 at 2:02 PM
67
DJTal on 01/24/2008 at 11:19 AM
116
Bytesmiths on 01/27/2008 at 12:09 AM
3
Not without a bunch of hydrogen, it isn't!
Ethanol, C2H5OH, has three times as many atoms of hydrogen as it does of carbon, and six times as much hydrogen as oxygen. So I don't know how one could possibly make it "exclusively" from carbon monoxide.
Maybe that was taken out of context. But statements like this blow my suspension of disbelief out of the water.
shomas on 08/02/2008 at 10:40 AM
20
Ethanol, C2H5OH, has three times as many atoms of hydrogen as it does of carbon, and six times as much hydrogen as oxygen. So I don't know how one could possibly make it "exclusively" from carbon monoxide.
It is completely true C2H5OH can not be made from strictly CO. i don't think the author considered water part of the organisms feed stock which it is. Chemist out there, please forgive my notations but wouldn't it take 2(CO) and 3(H2O) to make 1(C2H5OH) and 3(O2) oxygen molecule.