Making Bio Fuels, Textiles and Paper With Eco-friendly Wood Dissolution Process

Looks good. Rather than "fermenting" the world's food resources and leaving people starving, we can now utilise scrap trees and wood to supply our ever increasing demand for energy.

I'll come back to this next week and add another reply. I'm sure that I read something similar in an older publication (like 1940 science year book) about producing celulose and lignin from sawdust waste from mills, but I don't have access to the reference at this time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not agsainst the ideas and opportunities that this presents, but unless we actively curb our ever growing demand for energy resources then no matter what we find, it will all run out eventually.

The reference that I was thinking of is "SCIENCE YEAR BOOK OF 1945" Edited by John Ratcliff and printed at "The country life press, Garden City, N.Y."

Chapter XIX talks of "Sawdust: Chemical raw material" and described a process of addition of "dilute acid" to a half ton of sawdust to extract 250 pounds of sugar (suitable for fermentation) and 125 pounds of lignin.

The source of the "discovery" is attributed to a couple of European scientists (Erwin M. Schaefer and Heinrich Scholler who was the holder of the patents.) and in part describes their challenge to bring this information to the notice of the USA.

The article hints that the cost of the sugar is almost double that of conventional (sugar beet or cane) and so would not replace domestic consumption, but rather provide a source to replace imported materials.

One specific claim is thatthe conversion of the wood shavings into alcohol would provide substantial amounts of fuel for the transport industry.

The final sentence makes an interesting and sobering read.

"It looks as if the world's most wasteful nation may yet learn to look twice at what it throws away."