An energy solution that's not corny

I am not a fan of corn-based ethanol. I think the "ethanol cure" to dependence on foreign oil is a sham of a hoax being perpetrated on the public by the farm lobby. As you can see from the two sides presented in this NCPA article, agribusiness folks are sold on the value of ethanol, while a cui bono-asking policy-analyst's distillation of the issue leaves them unconvinced.

The bottom line is that ethanol requires petroleum fuels to produce and transport. And by some measures, it requires more energy to make than it produces when burned in an internal combustion engine. And if you were to take away the farm subsidies, the cost of it would be greater than that of some of other alternative sources of energy.

So I am very happy to hear about a solution to the energy problem that still uses plant fuel but does so in a smarter way. This brief Scientific American article describes the process:

A recipe for fuel: take the carbohydrates like starch and cellulose that make up the majority of plants. Use enzymes to break them down into fructose, the sugar found in fruits and honey. Mix this fructose with salt water and hydrochloric acid. Add a solvent—in this case butanol also derived from plant matter—to protect the resulting hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from reacting with the water, then extract it. This versatile molecule can be used to create plastic polymers or other chemicals. And by the way, adding a copper-coated ruthenium catalyst can also convert the HMF to DMF (2,5-dimethylfuran), a fuel that provides more energy than ethanol.

So, here's a potential fuel that's more stable than ethanol (which means lower transport costs as it could be shipped via pipeline, unlike ethanol), made from crops and providing more power per unit of measure than ethanol. That's a win.

Another plus to this research is the careful approach that the developers of this technology are using. Cognizant of the MTBE fiasco, they are moving cautiously and want to evaluate the environmental impact of their product before producing it in quantity. Nice move.

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