[solarguy]

The problem with cellulose----->ethanol is that mother nature (or God, depending on your world view) spent a lot of time and care making cellulose exquisitely difficult to take apart chemically. Hardly anything eats wood, with a few exceptions like termites. A few generations of organic chemists have tried to make the concept of alcohol from cellulose a net energy yield equation, without much success to date.

It's like fusion, they keep promising that in ten years, they'll be really close.

Yeah, or not.

The other problem is that topsoil depends on getting that cellulose back to maintain fertility and tilth. Take away all the cellulose, and you eventually wind up with poor to non-existent yields.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue research on cellulose, there's waste organic matter out there that we can and should use, It's just that it's never going to be the silver bullet that lets us all drive 12 mpg Explorers without environmental consequences.

Finest regards,

troy