one more ethanol piece....
three ethanol stories in a row then back to the madness....
's funny i used to not like ethanol, a lot. Especially the way megahuge agro- farm companies were sucking up government Pork to basically, well, to basically make more cash.... And when it's all made from corn, it goes from stupid and wasteful to evil (unless we have more food than we need, and no more 40,000 babies starving to death on the planet every day. Until then food turned into fuel is simply evil).
But now there's switchgrass, and as you will see below, a number of positive indicators that you can get more bang with ethanol than the lame corn based ethanol ever could... so that's pretty exciting. Now here's something that will make it even more exciting! it's called the "UW Madison Process" and here's the guy, Dr. George Huber:
As is widely known, traditional ethanol production yields around 1.1 units of energy for every 1 that is put into the system. So sure, good reason to not like it very much... But Dr. Huber and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (the midwest's version of Eugene OR), have found a way to double the output.
While its most likely going to be used as an additive for biodiesel, it shows great promise for ethanol as well; "It's a very efficient process," says Huber. "The fuel produced contains 90 percent of the energy found in the carbohydrate and hydrogen feed. If you look at a carbohydrate source such as corn, our new process has the potential to creates twice the energy as is created in using corn to make ethanol."
kinda neat, imnsho.... oh and hey, if you want to keep up to date with the whole biofuels issue, you might want to check out C. Scott Miller's BioconversionBlog. I didn't see much about the "UW-Madison Process" there but the guy is a bioconversion nut!
's funny i used to not like ethanol, a lot. Especially the way megahuge agro- farm companies were sucking up government Pork to basically, well, to basically make more cash.... And when it's all made from corn, it goes from stupid and wasteful to evil (unless we have more food than we need, and no more 40,000 babies starving to death on the planet every day. Until then food turned into fuel is simply evil).
But now there's switchgrass, and as you will see below, a number of positive indicators that you can get more bang with ethanol than the lame corn based ethanol ever could... so that's pretty exciting. Now here's something that will make it even more exciting! it's called the "UW Madison Process" and here's the guy, Dr. George Huber:
As is widely known, traditional ethanol production yields around 1.1 units of energy for every 1 that is put into the system. So sure, good reason to not like it very much... But Dr. Huber and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (the midwest's version of Eugene OR), have found a way to double the output.
While its most likely going to be used as an additive for biodiesel, it shows great promise for ethanol as well; "It's a very efficient process," says Huber. "The fuel produced contains 90 percent of the energy found in the carbohydrate and hydrogen feed. If you look at a carbohydrate source such as corn, our new process has the potential to creates twice the energy as is created in using corn to make ethanol."
kinda neat, imnsho.... oh and hey, if you want to keep up to date with the whole biofuels issue, you might want to check out C. Scott Miller's BioconversionBlog. I didn't see much about the "UW-Madison Process" there but the guy is a bioconversion nut!