Good news for struggling ethanol plants. Microbiology professor Joy Peterson and fellow researchers at University of Georgia have whipped up a new technology that helps increase ethanol yields from biomass sources like sugar cane harvest waste, switchgrass and other grasses. Their technology is a breakthrough in the pretreatment portion of the process, and overcomes the difficulty of breaking down plant cell walls, a process that often utilizes unpleasant chemicals or expensive equipment. The new technology reportedly gets ten times more simple sugars out of the biomass while using environmentally friendly technology.

The tragedy of this post is that we can’t tell you exactly what the new technology consists of because the creators are hush-hush about it for now while they file their patent. We do know that the new process uses a “fast, mild, acid-free pretreatment process” and that using this mild process helps eliminate expensive chemical use and disposal on top of being supposedly wildly more effective. If the process pans out, this could be a significant breakthrough in our ability to use non-crop-based plant biomass for ethanol production, and an opportunity to eliminate hunts for new sources. We’ll keep our ears peeled for updates and information releases.

Via GoodCleanTech, UofGeorgia; Photo via Wili

Comments (5)

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Great except...
written by BBM , July 30, 2008

The ethanol plants that are struggling are corn ethanol plants. They are designed and built for that. You can't just slap on another tank and get cellulosic ethanol. More likely, new plants will need to be built from the ground up to take advantage of the technology IF it works out.

BTW, it is not a tragedy that the process is currently secret. It has to be that way, for the inventors to make money on it (as well they should). These advances are driven by the prospect of profit should it pan out. Take away that prospect and the level of energy put into research like that drops significantly.

Will help E85
written by techdude , July 30, 2008

This should be good news for E85

E85
written by techdude , July 30, 2008

so will the prices go down for E85 then?

http://blabtech.blogspot.com

Don't make a news aggregator out of ecog
written by ecogeekfan , July 30, 2008

I mean what made ecogeek appealing was its in-depth coverage of eco-related topics.

Only aying there is a breakthrough and there would be an "increase ethanol yields from biomass sources like sugar cane harvest waste" is rather useless.

Give us some figures to give ground to the news!
How better is this technical trick?

...
written by Stephanie , July 31, 2008

Great news! For anyone looking for more information on cellulosic ethanol, check out the renewable fuels association! http://www.ethanolrfa.org/resource/cellulosic/

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