I hope this is a place to welcome "hybrid" fuels.

Corn is down.... way down.... Sept. Delivery is now $4.97, down from an all time high of $7.00+ in June...

In Brazil, Fiat Powertrain Technologies said it will launch a new ethanol-powered engine for trucks and agriculture machinery engine in 2010. The engine will reduce costs for ethanol producers by allowing them to run on their own ethanol fuel at cost, instead of purchasing retail diesel. The engine will be an adaptation of existing technology, and will use a nominal amount of diesel fuel for initial ignition, and subsequently run the engine on ethanol fuel. Fiat said that the two fuels would not be mixed except in the combustion chamber, because of safety concerns.

Lotus Engineering and Jaguar have partnered to develop an advanced biofuel engine which they call Omnivore. The single-cylinder Omnivore engine will utilize multiple biofuels, including a new alcohol fuel to be announced by the team. A two-stroke process with injection of sustainable alcohols will enable to engine to obtain maximum efficiency. Alcohol fuels such as ethanol have superior combustion properties compared to gasoline, and can be used to boost efficiency. Lotus Engineering previously released its Exige 270E TriFuel that obtains a higher mpg than the standard Exige S engine, using ethanol, methanol or gasoline. An Omnivore prototype is scheduled to be available by January 2009.

PTT and Bang Chak Petroleum began selling E20 at 10 PTT stations and five Bang Chak Petroleum stations in Bangkok. Bang Chak plans to increasing the number of outlets to 20 in February. The retail price of E20 is at an 18 percent discount to gasoline. E10 now accounts for 25% of total Thai gasoline consumption. Biodiesel blend consumption has risen 8% in the past month. The Thai energy ministry also said the new reserve mandate would absorb excess ethanol production capacity.

In Japan, E3 ethanol will debut at two pumps in Osaka as Japan finally begins to rollout its biofuels mandate. The Japanese government has set a goal of replacing 0.6 percent of gasoline fuel with biofuels by 2010. In August, Mitsubishi announced plans for 500 million gallons in ethanol production capacity by 2017 as Japan ramps up on its biofuels conversion. ( Would that be from rice? -Editor )

In Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced a goal of producing ethanol from silver grass at a cost of 40 yen per liter. Current Japanese technologies produce ethanol from celluosic biomass at a cost of 2,000 yen per liter.
The silver grass initiative comes as the latest in a series of Japanese initiaves in biofuels.

In Chicago, Coskata announced a strategic poartnership with ICM Inc. of Colwich, KS to construct a commercial scale plant for cellulosic ethanol. Coskata executives said that this first plant would open in 2010, but did not disclose the plant’s capacity. They said that full-scale cellulosic plants would cost up to $400 million and would produce 100 Mgy. ( Corn ethanol plants of similar size cost $200 million to build. -Editor )

Coskata aims to produce 100 Mgy of cellulosic ethanol based on five bacteria strains developed at research labs in Oklahoma. The company will produce 40,000 gallons of fuel on a pilot basis, using woodchips from a co-located chemical plant as feedstock. The company aims to produce fuel for $1 per gallon.

Last month, General Motors announced that it will invest in Coskata, which is backed by Vinod Khosla. GM is reported to have made the move in part to convince its customers that the company aims to be the leader among car makers in developing environmentally friendly vehicles.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have detailed some of the most fundamental processes involved in extracting sugars from biomass, the first step in producing ethanol by fermentation. Their findings should help engineers to improve their process designs in order to extract the maximum amount of fuel from a given measure of biomass.

Most of the ethanol produced in the United States is created by fermenting the sugars and starch found in corn. The capability to convert inedible plants and agricultural waste into usable sources for ethanol production will help to supplement alternatives to fossil fuels while reducing the diversion of food crops to energy uses.

Glucose can be extracted from two substances found in most plants: cellulose, the long molecule chains that comprise the cell walls of green plants, and its flimsier cell-wall counterpart, hemicellulose. The extracted glucose is then easily converted by fermentation to ethanol. NIST researchers, in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., have defined the theoretical limits of reactions important to cleaving, or breaking apart, cellulose and hemicellulose to produce glucose. They also determined that the energy needed to rupture these key bonds is a constant value for each molecular bond that is broken during the cleavage reactions.

According to Yadu Tewari, Brian Lang and Robert Goldberg, chemists at NIST and co-authors of the paper, cellulose and hemicellulose both present problems to would-be ethanol producers.

"Cellulose and hemicellulose are recalcitrant," Goldberg says. "They don't want to break down. It takes a long time for wood to rot. It even takes termites a long time to break wood down, and they're pretty good at it. Ethanol producers face the same problem. Because of the way these molecules are arranged, it's difficult to get access to the reactive centers in wood and other biomass. What we have done is to study some of the most basic reactions associated with the breakdown of these materials."

With enzymes to speed the reactions, the team used calorimetry and chromatography to measure the thermodynamic property values of several reactions associated with the breakdown of cellulosic and hemicellulosic substances. Because process design and bioengineering benefit from the availability of these values, the data obtained in this investigation represent a "small but significant step toward maximizing the efficiency of biomass utilization," Tewari says. ( In today's plants, corn gets broken down into fermentable sugars in 2.5 hours with harmless, eco-friendly enzymes... The same enzymes in human saliva. Celery has zero calories, since your body can't break the cellulose into sugars. But if you can burn it in a fireplace, you can burn it in your car... eventually. In the best of cases, cellulose takes about 7 days to break down into sugars, and with that retention time [ in a tank ] it can lead to contamination and/or microbial growth. - Editor )

 

well... I can see why the government wanted to go with corn instead of wood pulp, given that the reaction time is 2.5 hours versus 7 days. But having the price of groceries inflate at a triple-digit rate is just not sustainable

 

Coskta: The company will produce 40,000 gallons of fuel on a pilot basis, using woodchips from a co-located chemical plant as feedstock. The company aims to produce fuel for $1 per gallon.

This would be in Madison, Pa. about 70 miles from where I live. Ground was broken for this project several months ago and is expected to up and running early in 2009. This company claims you can make ethanol out of sewage! and other municipal waste products.

 

You going to have a hard time documenting ethanol only is responsible for the "claimed triple-digit" rate increase. Ethanol uses field corn. If there is 10 cents worth of corn in a box of Corn Flakes, then......a triple digit increase on 10 cents worth of corn does not reflect the price increase in the box of Corn Flakes.

 

In tulsa I can pay 5 cents for for pure gas over E10. In my BMW and my highlander hybrid I have carefully seen 1.5-2 mpg loss with E10. This means to me that 10% ethanol destroys economy by about 5 %. While it is about $2.20 wholesale, it should be as it really lessons economy.

 

A new poll by the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund found that 83% of Americans support investment in wind, solar, and next generation biofuel technology to achieve energy independence, compared to 63 percent support for increased offshore drilling. Only 48 percent of those surveyed said that they favored the "gas tax holiday", 81 percent supported an increase in the availability of hybrids, and 79 percent supported higher efficiency appliances.


An engineering team at General Motors reported that they have been able to extend the "electric-only" range of the new Chevrolet Volt to 46 miles, up from 40, through improvement of the car's aerodynamics. The Volt is expected to have an E100 engine available for some markets such as Brazil. The company said that it will initially manufacture 10,000 units per year but increase production to 60,000 "within a few years".

 

even field corn would otherwise being going into our food supply so to divert it for other uses still is not good for food prices. the majority of our corn is "field corn", its a horrible product that the US has become addicted to.

 

"Horrible product"??? Then why is it planted year after year?

 

horrible product as in it is overgrown to provide cheap foods that ends up being unhealthier than alternatives. Examples - high fructose corn syrup, corn feed for beef.

 

distillers grain health benefits for livestock: http://nationalhogfarmer.com/mag/far...grains_offers/

Please produce evidence that field corn is overgrown???