[extropy-chat] cheap alcohol

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Thu Sep 22 07:00:19 UTC 2005


On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 03:46:06PM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:

> This why there needs to be a bioreactor that can turn
> almost 100% of the biomass into ethanol. I already

Not really a bioreactor. You'd waste a lot of joules
for bug metabolism, and you'd still need to destill the
alcohol.

If you want to go hi-tech, there's an new process which
catalytically hydrogenates starch/sugar at about 200C
and relatively low pressure, and produces hexane.

A low-tech version would just pellet the straw,
and use a modern pellet burner. 

Or try
http://www.google.com/search?q=synfuel+from+biomass&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

> 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). 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. 

Do you have a working process prototype, or are you
just thinking of starting to develop one?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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