Fuel from Fibers - Put a Tree in Your Car's Tank

The search for viable biofuels is well on its way, and more and more car manufacturers are presenting concepts and prototypes of "green cars," that use alternative fuel sources.

Making cellulosic ethanol seems to be a good a idea. Making cars run on this fuel instead of the polluting fossilized fuel is an even better one.

Cellulose is a naturally occurring complex carbohydrate polymer commonly found in plant cell walls. Cellulosic ethanol is chemically identical to ethanol from other sources, such as corn or sugar, and is available in a great diversity of biomass including waste from urban, agricultural, and forestry sources. However, it differs in that it requires an extra processing step called cellulolysis - breaking cellulose down into sugars.

This breakdown of the cellulose is the most difficult part of making ethanol from plant biomass, and until now, there were no simple and efficient methods of doing that.

The results of a new research performed in part by Bruce Dale, Michigan State University professor of chemical engineering and materials science, are showing that making fuels from poplar trees and corn stalks is becoming more efficient and results in more cost-effective applications.

He has a 30-year-long experience in making ethanol from biomass, like the leaves, stalks, trunks and stems of trees, that are usually leftovers after the harvest. He has now developed a patented pretreatment process for biomass, ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX), which both simplifies and makes more efficient the breakdown.

"In time, we can expect to completely replace gasoline and diesel with cellulose-derived biofuels that are cheaper, better for the environment and much better for national security than petroleum-derived fuels," Dale said.

It's always nice to see that ingenious people come up with ideas not only in how to produce less waste, but also on how to use the waste to our advantage, because the Earth isn't a huge rug that lets humanity shove all its garbage under it and pretend it isn't there.