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4 Votes
5 Comments
Trash-to-ethanol firms get digging
News Type: Event — Seeded on Wed May 14, 2008 9:57 AM EDT
Article Source: CNET News.comadvertisement
Via CNET Green Tech Blog
Posted by Martin LaMonica
May 14, 2008 4:00 AM PDT
The trash-powered car may someday see the light of day.
CleanTech Biofuels is developing a multistep process designed to take municipal solid waste from a transfer station and turn out ethanol on the other side.
The company recently purchased the equipment and found a site in Golden, Colo., to test it using trash, as well other agricultural and forest wastes, to make ethanol.
Fuel for your car? Companies are developing technologies to convert municipal solid waste to ethanol.
Within two years, the company expects to move from that proof-of-concept plant to a commercial plant, said Michael Kime, the company's chief operating officer.
"We can literally take a truck with curbside garbage and put it almost exactly as-is into our vessels--we just have to take out the large things like refrigerators," Kime said.
A number of projects have been proposed in the United States and Canada to convert solid waste into ethanol, using different techniques.
BlueFire Ethanol is a cellulosic-ethanol company that uses a proprietary acid hydrolysis process to break down organic wastes. It intends to start construction of a commercial-scale, 3.1 million gallon-per-year facility in Lancaster, Calif., which will be located next to a landfill.
Using gasification and enzymes, start-up Coskata said it can convert municipal solid trash into ethanol as well. In its first demonstration plant in Pennsylvania, Coskata intends to demonstrate its ethanol system using trash--and separately, wood chips--as a feedstock in less than a year, said Wes Bolsen, the vice president of business development and marketing at Coskata.
"Anything that has carbon in it, we're excited by," he said. "I've been talking to all the waste producers in the U.S." The company's target is to get 100 million gallons of ethanol from one dry ton of starting material.
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4.7
{"commentId":1799350,"authorDomain":"Infohack"}
I've always thought that someday in the future, landfills will be mined to recover raw materials as resources become scarcer/more expensive. Perhaps they can help meet our energy needs as well, sooner rather than later. This would be the ideal solution for biofuels technology, if it can be developed successfully.
{"commentId":1799350,"threadId":"264345","contentId":"1487794","authorDomain":"Infohack"}
- 3 votes
#1 - Wed May 14, 2008 12:12 PM EDT{"commentId":1799878,"authorDomain":"SVForbes"}
Good point.
{"commentId":1799878,"threadId":"264345","contentId":"1487794","authorDomain":"SVForbes"}
- 3 votes
{"commentId":1800603,"authorDomain":"inghar2004"}
Great seed, IH, very encouraging. What a boon that will be to the city of Toronto's garbage problem.
{"commentId":1800603,"threadId":"264345","contentId":"1487794","authorDomain":"inghar2004"}
- 1 vote
#2 - Wed May 14, 2008 4:59 PM EDT{"commentId":1801006,"authorDomain":"Infohack"}
Heh, at least you won't be sending it our way (Michigan) ;)
{"commentId":1801006,"threadId":"264345","contentId":"1487794","authorDomain":"Infohack"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":1801373,"authorDomain":"inghar2004"}
No, you'll be buying and trucking it from Toronto to make ethanol:0
{"commentId":1801373,"threadId":"264345","contentId":"1487794","authorDomain":"inghar2004"}
- 1 vote
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