Check out Butanol, it is much more efficient than ethanol, and can be made of a lot more different plant wastes. DuPont and another large company are looking into it. The BTUs on ethanol are 85,000, on butanol 110,000, and on gasoline 115,000, so you can see it is a lot more energetic than ethanol. Also it can be shipped through pipelines, is less volatile thus safer. The only problem is that it doesn’t smell so good. It may be marketable before cellulosic ethanol, or algae biodiesel, something to watch.
I read up on it. Apparently Butanol can be used as a one for one replacement for gasoline without problems and is nearly equal to gasoline in energy and can be produced from biomass or “fossil” fuels. My first and most obvious inference is that we should be making butanol from coal and or from KUDZU. KUDZU is the only known indestructible plant that will grow anywhere it is actively DIScouraged. Trying to kill KUDZU only results in more and stronger KUDZU so why not make it into fuel which will not require us to alter a vehicle in any way.
I only know what I read but it sounds good to me ;>)