Alcohol fuel - The obvious answer, Yes or No?

Ethanol, yes or no? I have no idea, buying from Brazil seems more rational. The point is that the government shouldn't make that decision, the market should. If the main concern is carbon emissions, then the best solution would be a neutral carbon tax. That way, the market can 'figure out' what gives most energy for least carbon emission (i.e. lowest price) - the same way so many other problems are solved by the market.

Letting government picking 'green' energy resources is an open invitation for more inefficient subsidies to subgroups of our society. This is evidently happening with the ethanol subsidy.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

In long term, batteries will surely play big role, probably even for cars, if something like the cheap rugged ancient iron/nickel battery is revived. (Was used in mines and typically still going strong after 30 years when the mine was closed.) Only China still makes them. They could be in basements and pay for them selves in a few years by the use of time-of-day metering discounts. They solve the "rapid recharge" of electric car at your house problem (Intrinsically that is much higher power level than the house service can provide).

But smaller than US cars with "flex-fuel" and tropical, sugar-cane alcohol does seem to be the shorter term answer.

Some locations in the long term need not be mainly base load nuclear as is possible with a big battery in most homes - see first paragraph again.

England may be wind powered - and the above batteries could help that a lot also as the wind is not always strong enough to meet demand. (Surely remote "load sheadding" will be part of England's electric gird system also.)

"... Britain unveiled plans Monday to generate enough electricity through offshore wind farms to power every home in the country by 2020, increasing production more than 60-fold and changing the look of its coastlines. Britain's wind-swept coasts and shallow waters are ideal for offshore turbines, but wind generated power currently accounts for less than 2 percent of its energy generation. ..."
See more at:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/12/10/news/Britain-Wind-Energy.php

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Thanks for the link. There I read that they only charge (no problem) and discharge (a problem for rapid recharge of battries in electric car) slowly. If this is true, it may rule out much of their potential for solving the rapid recharge of electric car problem. I had been assuming they pulled elevators up mine shafts (high power required), but perhaps not.

In that case, I will return to my "first love" - the supper flywheel instead. It can have nearly an order of magnitude greater energy desity than batteries now used in cars and intrinsically need not be expensive. For example even only radial glass fibers spinning in vaccum as the "flywheel."

 

Billy, the new batteries work better because they are made better. There is something about a nickel-iron battery that makes it last a long time and it did not need to be improved for the uses that the railroad needed it for. In fact, any attempts at change could hurt reliability and railroads are big on reliability.

A big problem is the fact that if a battery tends to last forever, the company that makes it tends to go out of business. What are they going to do for money if the battery that they make lasts for generations? Production lines are expensive. Even maintaining the ability to make and repair the batteries is expensive.

Everlasting batteries would lead to the scenario of a very few factories producing a few thousand batteries each year and making very little money from that.

 

There is some truth to what you say, but fact that houses ALSO last for 30 years does not make house building an insignificant part of the economy.

I was only suggesting that a battery (or supper flywheel) which last as long as the house might be a good thing. It would come with the house, like the basement floor does, and probably never move from its initial location on the basement floor, and be part of the mortgage.

If your logic were valid then nothing, houses included, that last for 30 years would be of much importance to the economy.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Perhaps you are correct. I.e. it is not the sub-prime loans, but the fact houses last for 30 years that has the US economy in or near a recession.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Housing either has to expand or be replaced to support the building trade.

 

I would love to have a Topaz nuclear reactor. Of course, I would also love to have a ship powered by it.

 

General Motors Invests in Coskata, Who Claims it Can Produce Ethanol for $1.00/gallon:

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/01/general-motors.html

"General Motors is investing in Coskata, a start-up biofuels company that says it can produce ethanol from a wide range of feedstocks for less than $1.00 per gal, compared with a wholesale selling price of more than $2.00 per gal today. GM will receive the first ethanol from Coskata’s pilot plant in the fourth quarter of 2008. Acccording to Chemical & Engineering News the first commercial-scale plant will be running in 2011, making 50 million to 100 million gal of ethanol (per year).

Coskata’s process is feedstock flexible, and enables the use of cost-effective, locally abundant materials to achieve the lowest ethanol production cost targets in the industry. This groundbreaking approach addresses many of the constraints lodged against current renewable energy options, including environmental, transportation and land use concerns.

Using patented microorganisms and transformative bioreactor designs, Their process can turn virtually any carbon-based feedstock, including biomass, municipal solid waste, bagasse and other agricultural waste into ethanol, making production a possibility in almost any geography. The three steps of the process are:

1. Incoming material converted to synthesis gas (gasification)
2. Fermentation of synthesis gas into ethanol (bio-fermentation)
3. Separation and recovery of ethanol (separations)

During gasification, carbon-based input materials are converted into syngas using well-established gasification technologies. After the chemical bonds are broken using gasification, Coskata's proprietary microorganisms convert the resulting syngas exclusively into ethanol by consuming the carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) in the gas stream. Once the gas-to-liquid conversion process has occurred, the resulting ethanol is recovered from the solution using "pervaporation technology."

Coskata's proprietary microorganisms eliminate the need for costly enzymatic pretreatments, and the bio-fermentation occurs at low pressures and temperatures, reducing operational costs. In addition, the Coskata process has the potential to yield over 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of dry carbonaceous input material, reducing both operational and capital costs.

Together, Coskata's proprietary microorganisms and bioreactor designs lead to the highest conversion rates of feedstock to ethanol in the industry, as well as greater resistance to phage infections and bacterial contaminants.

As syngas fermentation leads to lower ethanol concentrations than corn fermentations, the energy and cost to separate the ethanol from water is proportionally higher. Coskata's exclusively licensed membrane separation technology dramatically improves the separations and recovery component of ethanol production, reducing the required energy by as much as 50%.

Coskata’s process technology is ethanol-specific and enzyme independent, requiring no additional chemicals or pre-treatments; environmentally superior, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 84% compared to conventional gasoline; and has the ability to generate 7.7 times as much energy as is required to produce the ethanol, compared to corn ethanol which generates approximately 1.3 times as much energy according to Argonne National Labs.

The partnership between the two companies was revealed Sunday, Jan. 13, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit."

 

I too saw this, but was not very excited by it as I think it somewhat mis leading. The destructive distilation of wood has been used long time to produce what is called syngas. (Even by pre humans.)

Wood fires are mainly destructive distilation. - Note the burning jets coming out of a log in fire place. In WWII many German cars had oxygen starved furnace units attached to produce syngas. CO and H2 and water, which easly condenses out to make "syngas." Syngas is commonly produced from natural gas in a water steam reforming process and then used to produce most if not all the ammonia in use.

I.e. all they are claiming is some better "bugs" as all fermentation is at low temperature. They to have a high (very high for the destructive distalation) temperature step, but surely they are not just a "scam" unless GM is dumber than I thought. Perhaps GM is in it only for the PR value - to look like they are interested in switching from oil.

By thermally decompsing complex molecules, destructive distilation does avoid the the need for enzimes that can break these molecules down. (Corn, potatoes, etc. to alcohol process does require them.) - Part of why it is the more expensive way to make alcohol. In the alcohol production from complex molecules the enximes yield sugar, but they add significant cost and delay compared to simply crushing sugar cane, which is already high in sugar (and only one type, so the fermentation is easier also as does not need different types of yiest for each sugar type.)

I may be wrong, but think the enzimatic route to "celulosic alcohol" will be cheaper than the destructive distilation route, which can not be as cheap as only fermenting a natural sugar (in cane, sugar beets, etc.). What the "Celulosic Route" does add is greater yield /acre.

In the case of sugar cane, the feed stock (crushed cane) is already at the facility, no need to harvest it from the field so even the celulosic alcohol made from crushed cane stocks should be cheaper than from sawmill and forest limb waste etc. I do not know if converting these cane stocks (via enzimes that add expense and require a lot of water) into alcohol will ever be more attractive economically than just burning for electricity production or chopping up and using for animal food.* One must burn part to supply the heat used for distilation concentration of the "sugar wine" so there is no or very little incremental cost to drive a hot gas turbine generator and it can economically be of modest size.
----------------------
*One interestion version of this, uses animals in feed lots to make collection of the shit from the animals cheap, which is then "bio-reacted" (with anerobic bugs) to yield methane (and unfortunately water vapor so is a low heating value gas).

 

Answer to thread's question may depend on where you live. For Brazil the "yes" just became more clear:

"Sugarcane waste biomass, called bagasse, could supply 15% of the Brazilian electricity demand by 2015, ... “Today, electricity supplied by sugar and ethanol plants totals 1.6 million megawatts, a modest 2% of Brazil’s overall needs. ...
A large part of Brazil’s energy demand is satisfied with hydroelectric facilities,{MORE THAN 90%!}... “the {CANE} harvesting period, when more biomass is available, occurs during the dry season, when water levels are lower and hydroelectric facilities can produce less electricity. This makes the two sources of electricity complementary.

‘Brazil’s green energy revolution’, in which “sugarcane is processed to generate food, feed and energy in modern integrated bio-refineries that produce sugar, alcohol, fuel ethanol, bioelectricity and in the near future, bioplastics. ...
from:
http://www.openpr.com/news/36346/Br...-of-Brazilian-electricity-demand-by-2015.html

Also of interest (to some) is Netherlands site:
www.ethanolstatistics.com

which claims:
"Ethanol Statistics is a European market research and business information publisher. Through its website, it provides professionals in the ethanol industry the latest ethanol news, commodity prices, expert opinions and market analyses. "

 

Because any ICE can be refitted to burn E85 very, very easily. This way, GM (and any other automaker) gets to pat themselves on the back for standing up for the environment, but without drastically changing their manufacturing or hurting their business.

Incidentally, I'm considering running the corn juice in the car I race. All I'll need is a new fuel pump (the fuel cell is already rated for E85, or even straight methanol), lines, and injectors that won't dissolve in the fuel. It is a tradeoff between 100 octane race fuel ($5.61/gal at the tracks around here) or 106 octane E85 ($2.71/gal where I can find it). Then I can crank up the boost pressure and evaporate my tires for not all too much money and without detonation worries.. E85 wins there.

 

Cornell and UCLA both have shown corn based alcohol is both more polluting and net energy negative. Now Harvard and Boston U. have similar opinions. Only Un. of Illinois thinks otherwise (Illinois is one of the top corn producers in the USA. See bold text below.)

here are some details:
"... Henry Lee, director of Harvard's Environment and Natural Resources Program, says ... 'I think there is potential in biofuels, but corn ethanol is not efficient. You want a biofuel that takes less energy to make than it does to produce, and you want the environmental impact to be less than carbon emissions from gasoline. You could import ethanol made from sugarcane, which is more fuel efficient, easier and cheaper to make, but that's politically unpopular because it would back off corn ethanol. ...'

The US is the top corn producer in the world and corn prices have already doubled since last year because ethanol has created an artificial market. While nearly half the country's states grow the crop, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri grow the most.
...
The small batch biofuel distilleries that have been popping up all over the country are excused from conforming to EPA regulations; it's the only way they can run a profit, even with the subsidies. Henrik Selin, professor of International Relations at Boston University, points to the "Ethanol bust. ..."

From:
http://www.weeklydig.com/news-opinions/feature/200803/pollution-solution

Billy T SUMMARY: one more way (in addition to Iraq war, doubling national debt etc.) GWB has screwed Joe American and destroyed the dollar leading to the world's greatest depression is the elevation of Joe's taxes and food cost to transfer money to GWB's big campaign supporter like the privately owned Cargill corporation and others getting billions for the corn and alcohol subsides. Joe cannot buy US made products any more. Why some of Joe's friends have lost their jobs and homes etc. but corporate profits are up - Making the products in Asia for sale in Dubai etc. More than half of all income of the companies that make up the DOW index is now from their foreign sales. The US and EU are going down the tube.

GWB probably will retire in the Arab Emirates as soon Joe will understand why his kids are hungry.

 

Recent issue of TIME Replied "NO" to the thread's question.

TIME blamed alcohol fuel for increasing food prices (true to a large extent, especially the diversion of US grown corn) and the destruction of Brazil's rain forest (Completely false* - I plan to start new thread soon by copying, compressing and editing some posts I have made at the EliteTrader forums. - I am BillDick there, if you can not wait.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

)

A somewhat more accurate POV, in English, than TIME 's article is here (from the Dallas News):

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...s/DN-landers_08bus.State.Edition1.c50449.html

*The rich desiring pretty woods, like mahogany, are destroying the Rain Forests. A wood from a single mahogany tree can be worth more than $8,000 in the US port of entry. Very illegal to cut them down in Brazil, but area is large and it only takes a day before it is converted into boards with labor cost of less than $10/ per day.

The valuable trees are selectively harvested, and then the forest is burned to hide the crime. After the locals can no longer get the cash they need by illegally catching and selling animals, especially parrots, they are reduced to subsistence farming the poor soil (a cow or two, some pigs and lots of chickens scratching for food among the fallen burnt trunks), but soon they give up and then some rich absentee land owner completes the clearing and seeds the land as pasture. (Grass will grow in almost any soil, with rain.) Some pasture is being displaced for food crops far to the south. There is no sugar cane grown in the old rain forest - it is more than 1000 miles away for the market for alcohol and cannot compete with the cane fields that are used. - Most of those are within 100 miles of either Rio or Sao Paulo. Also note that less than 1% of Brazil's agricultural land is growing cane. The TIME article is very inaccurate if applied to tropical sugar cane.

Perhaps it is not profitable / good for circulation / for TIME to honestly tell its readers that they are the true cause of the destruction of the Rain Forest?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

I have not seen that article in the Brazilian edition of TIME. Perhaps I missed it or perhaps they know it is false when generalized to apply to tropical sugar cane.

Quite a few copies of TIME do sit on mahogany coffee tables or on mahogany book sheves. etc.

 

The world will move to bio-fuels as they become cheaper than oil. This will cause starvation as poor third world people can not afford to pay as much for food as wealthier third world people can afford to pay for fuel.

Eating more meat will also cause starvation. As wealthier third world people are willing to pay more to feed livestock than than the poor third world people can afford to pay for food the poor will starve. Getting fat will also cause starvation as people who can afford food will pay more to eat extra food for pleasure than the poor can pay to eat the food they need to survive.

 

The Egyptian government has already had to subsidize bread due to the recent increase in wheat prices: http://digg.com/world_news/Shortage_of_Bread_in_Egypt_Causes_Riots_and_Political_Crisis

What we need is a way of harvesting solar energy without using arable land. Giant energy ships out at sea perhaps?

 

Interesting, but not original, observation that much of the sunlight absorbed by the sea immediately is converted into heat. (All not reflected back into space eventually will, but it could be used to make food and other products man needs first as it is very high quality energy.) Perhaps even electrolsis of water with simple discard of the O2 and storage inside the gas bag of a blimp is economically feasible? I.e. leave land base with load of H2O ballast and as O2 mass is discharged, take on more water from the sea, effectively converting the initial mass of the water load into an equal mass of H2 before returning to land base to deflate most of the H2 in to some chemical plant steel storage tanks, which can hold it in much smaller volume at higher pressure than the blimp can.

There are now flexible solar cells that could cover one top/side third of the blimp to catch energy, some of which would drive the electric motors, which at least in low wind conditions keep the axis of the blimp orthogonal to the sun for maximum collection efficiency. (Perhaps even in high winds, if they are blowing the blimp westward for more hours of sunlight in the "day." - Just be convected along, get back later or go all the way round the Earth.)

When the autonomous, un-manned, (GPS as ref to return to home base) blimp leaves with its initial H2O load, the gas bags* are slightly above atmospheric pressure with H2 and when it returns they are full of H2 to near the rupture pressure.

----------------
*There would be a multitude of internal bags. The one on the axis would have the highest pressure when coming home. The skin of that bag would contain only a small fraction of that pressure. Most would be counter balanced by the adjoining hexagonal cross section surrounding bags. Etc all the way to the outer skin. You might naively think such internal subdivision would add too much weight, but it does not. - It actually reduces the weight of the blimp for a given "near rupture" load of H2 returned to the base. Also if internally divided the computer controlling the pressure can "roll" the blimp as the sun sets so that the solar cells are always orthogonal to the sunlight via shifting any water on board or slight pressure differences in the gas bags when the H2 mass is much greater than the mass of H2O.

The mass of a long cylinder, or set of smaller cylinders, required to contain a given mass of gas, at "rupture pressure," does not depend up the radius of the cylinder. Proof: The wall thickness required by the pressure stress increases linearly with the cylinder radius.* The circumference of the wall is also proportional to the radius. Thus, the mass of the wall required for an isolated cylinder, such as an undivided blimp, is proportional to r^2. Likewise, the volume of gas contained in the cylinder is proportional to r^2. Thus, the ratio of gas contained to wall mass (and the cost of containment cylinder is approximately proportional to that mass.) does NOT depend upon the radius.

There are several advantages to having many smaller tubes compared to one large diameter tube. - This is why trucks delivering compressed gasses (H2 and He mainly, as they will not liquefy at reasonable temperatures) always use many small steel tubes.

Note that the inner hexagonally tube walls can be much thinner than if they were isolated and trying to hold the same high internal pressure. This is why your intuitions that subdivision of the blimp adds weight is exactly backwards!
---------------
*If this is not obvious to you, imagine the cylinder as two "half cylinders" glued together. - What force is acting on the glue seam? How does it depend upon the radius?


PS1: A more cost effective idea may be to seed some parts of the ocean with iron, I think it is, that is deficient and limiting the growth of photo-plankton. (To get more fish at the end of the food chain) This also will remove more CO2 from the air and becomes more attractive economically if "carbon credits" are allowed.

PS2: The great Von Nueman, of computer fame, thought along these same lines about the energy wasted in sunlight producing heat directly in the sea. He like to think about the limts of automation. He made a rather complete study of the feasibility of making autonomous, un-manned, self-replicating boats, made of mainly alumimium, which they extracted from the sea. Periodically men would go and harvest a few of them as a source of Aluminium! Perhaps that is a better idea - more economical than harvesting H2via blimps?

PS3: Some of my old idle thoughts about these Al boats:
If those boats did exist, and mankind became extinct, what would aliens later visiting the Earth think? "Metalic life form evolved?" Even more interesting as the sea became crowded with these boats, would some evolve guns to sink the competition for the decreasing Al concentrations in the sea? Or perhaps they would notice the sunlight falling "wasted" on the land and evolve legs to go and capture it? Eventually, with legs, even mine the much richer ore deposits of the land and evolve different, more specialized forms, so they could kill the Earth invading aliens when they arrive and try to destroy the complex of metalic life forms and their society?

 

While de-bunking some ignorance about hydrogen fuel cell car in:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1833979&postcount=14
I also stated:

“ Oil companies do NOT “produce oil” – They “de-sequester” it. It was carbon “safely sequestered” deep in the Earth until they sold it for you to pollute the air, add (who know how much, but something) to global warming. ”
{More anti- oil, pro tropical alcohol at thread of:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1814392&postcount=315 – this post is correcting errors in recent TIME article, which Roger Cohen also corrects in the NY Times article of yesterday or day before.}
And:
“Sugar cane alcohol is now more than half the car fuel used in Brazil and that scares the S--- out of the oil companies.”

Here I just note that two oil companies seem to have seen the hand writing on the wall and are moving into tropical alcohol – the car fuel of the future as we now seem to be at peak of peak oil, judging by the rapid rise to $120/barrel price. (On the down side from the peak the price will climb very rapidly - $200/ barrel and $10/ gallon gas may be less five years away, even with US falling into depression due to the rapid growth of Asian drivers and need for of petroleum as chemical feed stocks for fertilizer and these growing Asian economies.)

British Petroleum just agreed to pay 1.66 billion Brazilian Reais (about 1 billion US dollars) for 50% of Tropical BioEnergy, which is a joint venture of two Brazilian companies with facilities in / near city Edeia that should start production this July. Initially processing2.5 million tons of sugar cane and increasing to 4.8 million tons by 2010. (This facility’s initial yield is about 200 million liters of alcohol annually.)

Brazilian oil company PetroBras, which at present has no alcohol production (buys what it sells and makes very little on it, even currently selling below cost as many alcohol producers are with the production exceed demand) is planning big expansion into alcohol. Has goal of 10 refineries and 4.5 billion liter production by 2012. Will also build a 1,056 kilometer long alcohol pipeline to a port, spending about US$ one billion on it. PetroBras has signed agreement with Japanese company Mitsui to export between 30 to 40% of the production to them.

Local expert (V. Pinto of Unibank) states that (in translation to English): “This movement of BP and PetroBras reflects a global change in the {petroleum} sector. The petroleum companies no longer perceive themselves as petroleum companies, but as “energy enterprises.” That may not be true of all but alcohol has them all running scared now. Brazil has lead the way into the alcohol fuel future – passed the half way point now as more alcohol than gasoline is used by its fleet of cars and it is rapidly growing.

Japan has about a year ago agreed to build a new large refinery for the company I own stocks in (San Martinho) and as I understand the deal the repayment will be 30% of the production for 30 years. Japan definitely planning to follow Brazil’s lead and convert to alcohol as the dominate fuel for cars. Another Japanese /Brazilian joint venture company is building a fleet of alcohol tankers for the transport.

Brazil currently uses less than 4% of the land in current agriculture production (only 7.7 million hectares) for alcohol production or less than 1% of what can be put into production, without any destruction of the native forests. (There is a lot of abandoned pasture and perhaps some of the planted forests will convert if alcohol is more profitable than wood and pulp fiber production.) The car fuel of the future is tropical alcohol, definitely not Iowa corn alcohol.

The dream of “cellulosic alcohol, may be just that – a dream, but to cover my bets I do own stock in one of the most advanced VRNM or Verenium which was one of three the Dept of Energy helped fund at the pilot plant level, but see
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=3927
To understand how rough the enzymatic route to cellulosic alcohol is. (Basically it takes many different enzymes to brake the cellulose down just to get a mess of different sugars, each of which needs it own yeast.
For some information on the alternative, destructive distillation, route to cellulosic alcohol see:
www.forbes.com/2007/11/03/energy-khosla-fuels-tech-cz_kd_1105fuels.html?partner=daily_newsletter
I liked VRNM (back when they were Diversa) as they turned to termites to learn how to get energy out of cellulose. Also they are global leaders in the field of enzymes and have partnership with DuPont, Cargill, Bunge oil division, Syngenta and many others.
Plus they are already selling many enzyme products and getting “research milestone” payments from these other companies. For an example, from my news files on them:
“8Jan08 achieved an important technical milestone associated with a research program with Syngenta AG. As a result of this achievement, Verenium will receive a $500,000 payment from Syngenta.”

I.e. they will not go under, even if cellulosic alcohol is just a non-economical dream, as I suspect is the case.

 

If real (And GM does not have money to throw away, so may be) this is great news:

"...these technologies represent what we see as the best in the cellulosic ethanol future and cover the spectrum in science and commercialization. Demonstrating the viability of sustainable non-grain based ethanol is critical to developing the infrastructure to support the flex-fuel vehicle market." —GM President, Fritz Henderson
...
Mascoma is developing a Consolidated Bioprocessing (CBP) approach to cellulosic ethanol. CBP involves the use of a single microorganism or group of organisms to break down plant matter through a one-step conversion process of biomass into biofuels—a single-step cellulose-to-ethanol method. This lowers costs by limiting additives and enzymes used in other biochemical processes. Mascoma’s process consists of a mild pretreatment followed by the introduction of cellulose-utilizing and ethanol-fermenting {proprietary} microbes that both hydrolyze and ferment the sugars into ethanol.

Mascoma has raised significant equity from venture capital investments and secured more than $60 million in state and federal grants, including the recent awarding of a $26 million grant from the US Department of Energy.
...
Mascoma is one of the partners in the DOE BioEnergy Science Center (BESC). BESC, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), is strongly focused on the fundamental understanding and elimination of biomass recalcitrance—the resistance of cellulosic biomass to enzymatic breakdown into sugars.
...
Mascoma is testing its CBP technology and expects to begin producing ethanol later this year at its demonstration plant under construction in Rome, NY. Mascoma also has partnered with The University of Tennessee to develop a switchgrass-to-ethanol pilot facility near Knoxville, TN, and is pursuing opportunities in the state of Michigan.

GM’s multi-dimensional involvement with Mascoma will include projects to evaluate materials and other fuels for specific engine applications as well as collaborating on Mascoma’s efforts to expand its commercialization projects globally, including promotion of increased biofuels distribution. ..."

FROM: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/05/gm-enters-strat.html#more

Billy T P.S. to Mascona if reading:

More than half of cars in Brazil NOW are flex-fuel and we have lots of sun, fresh water, cheap land, cheap labor, wood farms and other feed stocks, plus we are building more than 1000Km of alcohol pipelines to a port and a fleet of ocean tankers for alcohol in partnership with Japanese company. Come have a look.

BTW two days ago the strong and growing stronger Brazil economy government bonds were recognized as "investment grade." - Stock market rose 6.5% in one day in response. Get in on the "ground floor" Brazil is where much the alcohol will come from in the future. - Don't get left out (or stuck in dollar collapse depression in the USA).

More (study of the bug's DNA) at:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/08/integrated_geno.html
More (GM's help to coskata which developed the "pre-treatment") at:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/gm-and-coskata.html AND
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/11/mascoma-corpora.html

Plant being built in Holand too. See:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/11/mascoma-corpora.html