Ethanol research

[chennai102]

Msu Ethanol Study Could Create Thousands of Jobs

Author: Lauren Woods

Michigan will get at least 100 new jobs with the possibility for thousands more - thanks to the $50 million ethanol research money enclosed in the ethanol research grant awarded last Tuesday to the Michigan State University. The money will be used by MSU to research ways on how factories can convert plants other than corn into fuel.

The money puts MSU in the midst of a main federal effort to turn common plants into ethanol that could replace gasoline in the nation's vehicles, an effort whose "Holy Grail," one MSU official said, is a Michigan economy fed by fuel from plants.

"At the ultimate level, what it would look like if Michigan has a thriving bio-economy, would clearly be in the thousands and thousands of jobs," said Steve Pueppke, the director of MSU's Office of Biobased Technologies. If scientists are successful, millions of acres of Michigan land could be used to grow plants for processing in Michigan factories into ethanol or more exotic fuels.

Scientists are eager to use ethanol produced from cellulose which is a material found in all plant matter. The cellulosic ethanol would cut greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 80 percent over gasoline, a four-fold improvement over corn-based ethanol. But current technology is not efficient enough to make cellulosic ethanol cost-effective.

MSU will get the money over five years in a partnership with the University of Wisconsin and several other institutions - one of three groups picked by the Department of Energy to start bioenergy research centers countrywide. The Wisconsin-MSU effort is the only center awarded to U.S. universities - two national laboratories that are part of the Department of Energy will host the other centers.

Read more at http://www.dukestudy.org/2008/08/msu-et ... reate.html

[cacofonix]

Wonder what's the latest on cellulosic ethanol...to me, that looks like the future of ethanol, for very large scale productions...

Narasimhan Santhanam - EAI - India Renewable Energy Expert