Current status of Cellulosic Ethanol technology
 

Found an interesting article on the subject. Lots of detail, haven't made it all the way through yet.

Turning grass into gas - Salon.com

Doesn't sound like much has changed.

turning a$s into grass is far simpler than...

Too bad this stuff is just fluff.

Algae made butanol would be nice for my gas tank.

They are doing the algae to fuel thing here in new mexico in Lascruses.
I don't see any reason why they cant scale it up. They take algae grown out side and turn it into fuel.
Its a lot different than taking clean wood chips, turning them into ethanol in a lab and then scratch your head when twigs, bark and some trash shut down your lab conditions only process when you try to scale it up.

They could always turn the wood chips into methanol, its been happening since WWII and the plant is already built (and it works).

Not just methanol, even gasoline has been made out of wood chips during WW2 in Poland after the Nazi invasion.

It sounds to me like this process is finally starting to actually generate fuel, I think that is good news.

In the time it took, politicians and investors have already abandoned the concept en mass. The mass media machine has been saying that it was a fairy tale for a couple years now. It was last year(or the year before?) that respected sources such as Pop Mechanics outright denounced Cellulosic Ethanol as anything but fantasy. Pure fiction spread by the Ethanol acolytes. Efforts to this day are being made to reduce/eliminate/defuse/eliminate Ethanol altogether.

Of course, we knew it was a slow process that would take a number of years before any significant production occurred. But it's happening now and more next year.
Commercial Scale Cellulosic Ethanol Is Real | Domestic Fuel
POET-DSM Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Ready in ’14 | Domestic Fuel

Since Brazil doesn't have any such program they're looking to export Cellulosic Ethanol to the US when it comes online. There's no market for it at home.
Brazil startup to export ethanol made from sugar cane's cellulose | Reuters

It's still too early to make any claims for or against Cellulosic Ethanol's future. Commercial production is just beginning while all the naysayers have been calling it dead even before arrival. That's progress at this point. :rolleyes: Now, about that Flexfuel mandate President Obama?

At least its beginning, articles like the one linked to are all we typically get which shades our attitudes.

Cellulosic is a definate advance, but only once places like the one you link to start proving out on both reliability and cost.

I think in the 3 step process we are still in denial and maybe a bit of violent opposition.

Get the cellulosic fuel in tanks and that will start to change.

That said I dope my fuel with a little e85 for better octane, since the mod (real cost) to have a car burn e85 is under a $100 it is foolish not to have every new car on the road at least partially ethanol ready.

Even better would be hydrous ready but I digress.

GDI could be used to better this end but thus far no one is using it for that purpose.

Ah well, more years to wait.

If I had a few billion laying around I would tap the local powerplant to distribute its waste heat in the winter for home heating and tap its exhaust to make ethanol / biodiesel & butanol.

Ah well.

At least in Brazil almost every new car currently for sale is flexfuel, and the automakers don't charge more for that feature (altough the currently predominating flexfuel system in Brazil relies on an auxiliary gasoline tank to improve cold-start ability since our ethanol is not blended with gasoline).


Direct injection would really be a great improvement to the current generation of flexfuel engines back here, attenuating the knocks while running on gas while still allowing an increasement in the compression ratio to get a higher efficiency with ethanol.