Rather than putting your garbage at the curb, you may soon be putting it in your gas tank.
General Motors has purchased an equity stake in Coskata Inc. of Warrenville, Ill., which has come up with a process that uses bacteria to produce E85 ethanol fuel out of garbage, scrap tires, wood chips, and even recycled foam, rubber and plastic in today's junked cars.
While E85 is currently made from food-based sources, GM says non-food-based ethanol can be produced for about $1 a gallon, or about half of what it costs using corn today meaning E85 could be priced under $2 a gallon at the pump.
E85 contains less energy than gas and gets 25-30% lower mileage than regular lead-free gasoline. But at $2 a gallon, the price wipes out the mileage disadvantage while also providing a use for garbage and scrap tires? they could produce fuel to get us to work and back rather then get buried in unsightly landfills.
In fact, GM says, a facility could be set up at the landfill that would both produce the fuel and eliminate the typical garbage-depot eyesore. Or the fuel could be produced from tree scraps at lumber mills in the forest, or using lumber taken from homes destroyed by tornados, hurricanes or floods.
Unlike corn-based ethanol, which requires between three and seven gallons of water to produce one gallon of fuel, Coskata says it only takes one gallon of water to produce one gallon of non-food-based ethanol and the water can be recycled to produce more.
The first pilot plant will begin producing the fuel in the fourth quarter of this year for use in testing vehicles at GM's Proving Grounds in Michigan, and a plant producing up to 100 million gallons of the fuel for retail sale will be operational in 2011.
GM, which announced the deal with Coskata at today's Detroit auto show media days, is holding talks with oil companies to determine which ones will offer the fuel.
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 12:20 am Post subject: Re: E85 Made From Garbage Could Cost Less Than $2 a Gallon
Dan998 wrote:
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2008/01/2-e85-garbage.html
E85 Made From Garbage Could Cost Less Than $2 a Gallon
Rather than putting your garbage at the curb, you may soon be putting it in your gas tank.
General Motors has purchased an equity stake in Coskata Inc. of Warrenville, Ill., which has come up with a process that uses bacteria to produce E85 ethanol fuel out of garbage, scrap tires, wood chips, and even recycled foam, rubber and plastic in today's junked cars.
While E85 is currently made from food-based sources, GM says non-food-based ethanol can be produced for about $1 a gallon, or about half of what it costs using corn today meaning E85 could be priced under $2 a gallon at the pump.
E85 contains less energy than gas and gets 25-30% lower mileage than regular lead-free gasoline. But at $2 a gallon, the price wipes out the mileage disadvantage while also providing a use for garbage and scrap tires? they could produce fuel to get us to work and back rather then get buried in unsightly landfills.
In fact, GM says, a facility could be set up at the landfill that would both produce the fuel and eliminate the typical garbage-depot eyesore. Or the fuel could be produced from tree scraps at lumber mills in the forest, or using lumber taken from homes destroyed by tornados, hurricanes or floods.
Unlike corn-based ethanol, which requires between three and seven gallons of water to produce one gallon of fuel, Coskata says it only takes one gallon of water to produce one gallon of non-food-based ethanol and the water can be recycled to produce more.
The first pilot plant will begin producing the fuel in the fourth quarter of this year for use in testing vehicles at GM's Proving Grounds in Michigan, and a plant producing up to 100 million gallons of the fuel for retail sale will be operational in 2011.
GM, which announced the deal with Coskata at today's Detroit auto show media days, is holding talks with oil companies to determine which ones will offer the fuel.
At least your article admits the issue, ethanol is 30% less energy rich than gasoline. So then at $2 we are still paying the same amount per joule.
Also what are the byproducts of the process? How scalable is it? Based on what you have said it sounds likes what is left over would be more nasty than garbage, where do we landfill that?
Finally if all of those hurdles are overcome, how quickly can it come online. Could it replace 10% of our domestic gasoline demand in three years? That would be break even. _________________ I return to you now at the turning of the tide.
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 9:43 am Post subject: Re: E85 Made From Garbage Could Cost Less Than $2 a Gallon
One must always remember that when dealing with micro-organisms that they have very constrained metabolisms and specific niches in the environment. Only the complex multicellular organisms that can inhabit diverse niches.
Each feedstock (used mentioned garbage, scrap tires, wood chips, and even recycled foam, rubber and plastic in today's junked cars) has a completely different physical composition, chemical makeup, solubility, density, and may contain diverse substances toxic to a bacteria.
Even if individual bacteria were bred to convert single substances (which is doubtful, as this would be a new earthly life form?) it would be impossible for one organism to deal with all of these diverse feedstocks. The metabolic waste product from one hydrolytic process would be poisonous to another.
So the pre-sorting, pre-processing, process control and management would need to be completely different for each substance. Resulting in a very complex sorting and control system.
Do you really think a bacteria that can digest or convert plastic or rubber would be a safe product to create in this world?
Where is the EROEI analysis? How do we know this hypothetical industrial fermentation process does not use more energy than is contained in the final liquid fuel. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:15 am Post subject: Re: E85 Made From Garbage Could Cost Less Than $2 a Gallon
The Coskata process starts with a syngas process, thus the feedstock, whatever it is, is partially combusted to carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Then the Coskata process uses the bugs to react the syngas to ethanol. Thus the bugs only need to concern themselves with reacting two feedsocks, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, to ethanol. The beauty of the process is that it can take any feedstock and react it to ethanol. It is still complicated because each feedstock has a different mix of hydrogen and carbon, so the reactions must be altered to maximize the fuel production.
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ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
