[extropy-chat] cheap alcohol

[Mike Lorrey]

--- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > > Why is ethanol such a bad idea?
> > 
> > Because bioethanol utilizes only a tiny fraction of
> > energy captured
> > in plant biomass on a given land area. You need
> > fermentation of sugar
> > (direct, or from hydrolyzed cellulose), and
> > destillation. Lousy
> > yield, and takes energy as input. Negative impact on
> > soil and biodiversity.
> > Details e.g. here:
> 
> This why there needs to be a bioreactor that can turn
> almost 100% of the biomass into ethanol. I already
> have one in mind, as I have mentioned before on the
> list. Question is when would be a good time to start
> building a prototype and filing a patent? If I try
> this too early, the tech might be quashed by the oil
> companies (provided it works of course, of which there
> is no guarantee). 

Stories of patents being quashed by industry abound and tend to be
groundless. They typically fail in and of themselves for several
reasons:

a) inefficient
b) do not meet price windows
c) not robust
d) the inventor is an insufferable prick who couldn't entrepreneur his
way out of a paper bag.
e) inventor chooses a bad management team for his enterprise, it fails,
and he lets the technology die rather than sell it off to a competitor.

95% of all business ventures fail within 5 years.

Build your prototype, document and date everything, test it, improve
it, and don't expose it to anyone who isn't bound by an NDA. Then do a
market analysis on it: find out what the market is willing to pay, then
figure out if you can produce it for that price (overhead and all
included) or if someone can do so based on similarity to other products
or parts. If the numbers don't work now, figure out at what point in
the future they will work. Then schedule your patent so it gets granted
about the time the product goes on the market. GATT gives backwards
protection to the date a patent is filed, 20 yrs forward from that
point.

> In theory it should be able to turn
> almost all of the biomass into ethanol for sale and
> methane that can be used to power the bioreactor
> itself. 

Cool. What else does it require. Sounds like a winner. Figure out if it
can produce that ethanol at a competitive price, including the
operations costs and amortization of the equipment, etc.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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