Posted on 07/15/2009 7:14:27 AM PDT by Freeport
Biofuels are a controversial topic. Some support switching to using natural gas (primarily methane), a substance that is in great abundance in America. Others, particularly corn farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggest switching to an ethanol-based economy. Still others advocate using sugar cane in more limited ethanol or biodiesel deployments.
All of these approaches, though, share fundamental inefficiencies -- they require a car engine redesign to full take advantage of them. Modern dual mode vehicles can lose 15 percent or more efficiency.
Houston, Texas-based Terrabon believes they have the answer. They have refined and improved on a Texas A&M University acid fermentation called MixAlco, which can convert "anything that rots" (including lawn waste) into a gasoline-like substance. The company has built a $3.5M USD Energy Independence I facility to test the process. Malcolm McNeill, Terrabon’s chief financial officer states, "One of the reasons we built this was to find out what we didn’t know."
By the end of the summer the facility will be using chopped sorghum (a fast growing plant), to produce 300 gallons per day (7.14 barrels of gas). While that might not seem like much, that's over 2,500 barrels of gasoline over the next year.
Terrabon plans to soon open a larger plant in Port Arthur, Texas, with the help of San Antonio’s Valero Energy Corp. The company believes it can produce $1.75/gallon gas at the facility.
The company's plans are boosted by the 2007 Energy Law, signed by President Bush, which promises 36 billion gallons of biofuels to be used by 2022. Oil from algae and processes like Terrabon's seems the most promising mid-term solution (along with cellulosic ethanol). However, the company still faces tough challenges ahead as the ethanol industry is the favorite child of the biofuels world...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
Bring on the crab grass!
Too much potential. Zero will shut it down.
Put some kudzu in your tank! (talk about your “renewable resources”...)
Do they have a comparison of the fuel created to fuel used (transporting the lawn waste)?
Note: I’m not being a stick in the mud, but rather trying to be reasonably sceptical.
Appears to have gone nowhere.
Gig’em Ags! ...
Unless they grow their vegetation on site, it is too expensive to drive people’s yards clippings to their refinery and make a profit.
Remember, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Remember, ethanol was going to save the world...
Good point.
But think of it the other way around. Instead of trucking the current gasoline process anywhere from 10 - several hundred miles by truck, The local converter plant is 5 - 10 miles away.
Which just happens to be the typical range between most towns east of the Mississippi...
I understand that cow manure can be used to produce methane. Does that apply to the bull variety too? if so, all we have to do is stand by the doors of both houses of congress and the White House with shovels and our energy problem is solved.
I could make a fortune as a crab grass supplier.
Crab grass? Sorghum? Use the Kudzu, please!!
LOL just saw your post, GMTA!
Forget about it - if there’s any emission out of the tailpipe other than distilled water, the environuts will kill it before it even gets off the ground.
The comments at the site are a must-read LOL
From the site:
Through an advanced bio-refining technology, MixAlco converts materials such as municipal solid waste, sewage sludge, forest product residues and non-edible energy crops into a wide array of chemicals and secondary alcohols that can be further refined through separate, well-established processes to produce renewable gasoline, jet fuel or diesel. The gasoline produced through the MixAlco technology is not ethanol. In fact, it has a higher energy value than ethanol and can be blended directly with gasoline produced from hydrocarbons.
At least in the cities, lawn wastes are already being transported as so many people don’t compost.
“Lawn waste” ?
Why would you not be mulching to replenish your soil?
Everything should already be going back.
Historically speaking, NIMBY will prevent having such a distributed network of plants.
I hope I’m wrong, but that’s the precedent.
Back to burning trees for fuel! Brilliant!
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