OK. You caught my attention <wheeze>.

It's a great post BHANKIII but I just laughed out loud at this statement in the article; "The end result will be E85 sold at the pump for about a dollar cheaper per gallon than gasoline, according to the company ".

It may be true that ethanol can be produced for a dollar per gallon but that doesn't mean the consumer will see a reduction in price at the pump. Personally I like the idea of E85 because I can run a 12:1 compression ratio which takes advantage of the fuel's 106 octane rating.

My dream would be to see this system miniaturized to fit within the average 8'X6" shed, completely automated, producing ethanol and of course, in my backyard.

It does sound good, the photo looks real too.

For the process to be truly efficient it needs to be small, so a farmer could produce it on-site, as taejonkwando has said, fully automated etc.

Meanwhile Ethanol does cause problems with older cars, trucks and tractors, because the seals need renewing, along with fuel lines and other parts, which often swell, causing flammable leaks.

Kind Regards....

I think this is a good step in the right direction.

The article did state that there is a lack of infastructure. Although it is a good idea and seems to have proven results, it will be a slow battle to get the E85 to the consumer. In order to see a dramatic change over to E85 the consumer is going to need a visible means of availability and a visible means of savings. In addition, car manufactures will need to focus sales towards their flex fuel vehicles. Sometimes a short term sacrifice is worth the long term result. If car manufactures can invest in implementing ethonal at more than 50% of the existing fueling stations and invest in hard sales of ethonal vehicles, we just might see a reduction in our oil dependence.

I am all for ethonal but I'm not going to go out and spend money on a new car with only a possible guarantee that there will be E85 availible. I've only seen two E85 pumps; one in Illinois and one in Indiana. Considering that I live in Washington, I think I will wait.

From the Wired article:

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 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."

So the process comes down to: proprietary microorganisms; and pervaporation technology (my guess vacuum distillation).

Scaling this down would be easy. A little more complicated mechanically than a home still.

Since the syngas has no solids the lees are the only residue in the fermentation process. (syngas or ethanol could be used to power syngas production)

That being the case, a continuous process could be developed and your major cost is the distillation. After the cost of the starter culture that is.

2bits from

Brad

Here is an interesting link to more information about GM's involvement and the process itself.

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/01/gm-aligns-with-coskata-on-cellulosic.html

Thank you taejonkwando,

Much better information on the process.

Small production would be easy but GM will never not milk it. Their stock holders will cry fraud if they did.

The process could be scaled to replace oil in five years but I'll be darned if I'd do it for them for free. If I thought the public would benefit, That would be another story.

I guess I'm a cynic but cheap fuel, I'll have to see it.

A friend of mine has a good idea that I'll have to persue. If that works fuel could be cheap and green. (sorry but still in planning/theory) It would not work for local production but the out put is hopefully solid hydrogen.

I have to finish up my current project first

Thanks again

Brad