Cellulosic Ethanol Inches Forward
A few years ago, large scale, billion-gallon-a-year cellulosic ethanol production seemed around the corner. Instead we’ve seen companies fail, or scale back and delay their plans, as they find it hard to secure financing or bring down costs. The technology seems to have dropped off the radar, except for the occasional news of opposition to a mandate requiring the use of cellulosic ethanol.
Still, there are signs of progress. This week ZeaChem announced it started production at a 250,000 gallon demonstration plant that is making chemicals that can be used to make ethanol and other things. Two companies, Ineos and Kior, have finished construction at larger plants that can produce 8 and 11 million gallons of fuel. They’re in the process of starting those plants up. And Poet and Abengoa hope to finish construction on even larger plants—25 million gallon ones-by the end of the year.
It’s still not clear that these companies can make ethanol profitably. ZeaChem is hedging its bets. It can make ethanol if that’s the most profitable option. Or it can convert the acetic acid it makes to chemicals such as propylene. Other advanced fuels companies, such as Amyris, are also pursuing chemicals at first.
But there are plenty of challenges involved in trying to break into existing chemical markets, especially if the chemicals are low-cost commodities. For example, chemicals like propylene are typically made by big petrochemical companies at huge well-integrated plants that make many chemicals, and have low costs that will be hard to compete with.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments.
Faults in a certain part of the immune system might be at the root of some long covid cases, new research suggests.
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora
The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.
Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.
Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.