Dan

Chicago Tribune:
A surge in international corn prices, spurred partly by the growing ethanol industry, has caused huge spikes in the price of corn tortillas, a core ingredient in Mexico’s diet and, some would say, the nation’s very soul.

Of course if and when celulosic ethanol comes on line in quantity is should help with the corn prices. A little.

By coincidence, an excellent article on ethanol fuel status in the Jan 2007 Scientific American. Very fair, covers all the bases. In short, says conventional corn ethanol not economic, cellulose ethanol has promise if current generation of enzymes and yeasts can be shown to be controllable in industrial-scale reactors. Also points out the positive energy balance of the new process due to production of excess electricity. Interestingly, doesn’t make a big deal out of the carbon-neutral aspect.

I still feel that if Iogen’s pilot plant runs successfully, even some of the time, then it is very likely it can be optimized to run all the time at commercial scale – but that’s just my prejudice as an old R&D guy who was lucky enough not to be involved in any dud scale-ups.

I wish someone would write as perceptive a review on biodiesel, so that the economics could be compared. Anyone have any references?

Steam is impractical for cars/trucks/busses because of the huge volume of water required.

Now if we could only get those pesky little bugs in termites to make ethanol instead of termite food, we’d have a winner. Well not quite, they are still too slow to turn celluose into energy at an economically efficient rate in terms of human production requirements. I’m sure they will keep trying and keep hyping their stocks and new processes and some people will lose the money they invested.

Ahh! But couldn’t we burn the methane (our now new natural gas) produced by the termites and use it for space heating (heating our homes and offices). We could have combined heat and power (CHP) termite farms and of course these would be closed loop CHPs of course to maximise energy efficiency.

KevinUK

I’ve followed the Ethanol scam for many years. There is no technology to make Ethanol out of cellulose and no technology to ship it by pipeline. Mother nature has been experimenting with billions of organisms over hundreds of millions of years trying to find an efficient way to break down cellulose and she hasn’t come up with one yet that doesn’t take years. Wood takes forever to break down.

What? You would be standing on billions of feet of biomass, if your statement were true. For one of the best organisms, think about those in a termite’s gut. BTW, termites are a HUGE source of methane.

I think you both need to read some more of ‘Follow the Money’s posts (which I greatly enjoy).

The fact is that the whole energy supply industry (oil, gas, nuclear, renewable etc) is about control of supply and vested interest. There are many people who make a great deal of money out of the status quo and have begun to see that they can make even more money by jumping on the AGW bandwagon and so have our taxes diverted into subsidising renewables and funding R&D which they should be paying for themselves out of the massive profits that they are already making.

KevinUK