The Push Is On For Cellulosic Ethanol
The Wichita Eagle:
Long before cellulosic ethanol became a hot biofuel topic, Doug Rivers was deep into researching the product. From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Rivers worked for Gulf Oil for three years and the University of Arkansas for five years researching ways to make it economically feasible to produce cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale.
“We were reasonably close when the bottom fell out of the oil market in the early 1980s,” Rivers said. “Funding for the research fell off the table.”
That’s been the story of cellulosic ethanol — dating back to the first attempt at the product in 1898 by Germany.
It’s tough work to get it out of the lab and into the gas tanks, and even tougher to maintain a steady flow of funding for research support.
It’s not hard to see that one feeds off the other.
Today, federal funding is good. Rising gasoline and oil prices in recent years caught everyone’s attention.
“If we hadn’t seen oil go up over the last four or five years, we wouldn’t have seen this push toward biofuels,” said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.
In March 2007, the federal government awarded $385 million in grants to jump-start six demonstration cellulosic ethanol plants around the country, including one in the far southwest Kansas town of Hugoton.
Another 17 plants — from New York to California — are in various stages of planning and development, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Full article.
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