The Gulf Ethanol Corporation is claiming a "breakthrough" in cellulosic ethanol production. They call it the vortex implosion disintegrator and it sounds extremely impressive. I'm not going to attempt to tell you how it works, because their press release is pretty vague. But it basically takes anything that contains cellulose and, using a "high pressure, high velocity process" with "sudden polarity shifts" and "molecular repulsion," turns anything that contains cellulose into cellulose powder.

Creating cellulose powder is just the first step in producing cellulosic ethanol, but it's an important first step. For example, many people hope to use trees, and agricultural waste, to produce cellulosic ethanol. But though all plants contain lots of cellulose, they contain lots of other stuff as well, and separating the cellulose from the other stuff has become an expensive problem.

Depending on the viability (cost) of the technology, this could dramatically lower the price of cellulosic ethanol, and that would be fantastic.

If you're not sure of the difference between cellulosic ethanol and regular ethanol, the great thing about cellulosic is that it comes from non-food (often waste) plants. So instead of using corn to create fuel, we can use the corn stalks...which no one wants anyway.

We'll have to wait and see how this pans out, but it seems like the future is getting brighter for cellulosic ethanol every day.

Via TheDailyGreen

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