First Bioethanol Shipped | Green Energy News

April 18, 2004 – Vol.9 No.4

FIRST BIOETHANOL SHIPPED.

Could ethanol finally become a true replacement for gasoline? Ethanol has for some time held promise as a fuel for the future and, of course, is already an additive to gasoline to reduce emissions.

But ethanol has been wrought with problems and questions. The making of ethanol from corn is highly energy intensive. Energy intensive in production generally means high greenhouse gas emissions. Further, ethanol from grain or sugar means diverting food - grain is food - from the table to the fuel tank. A bad idea when so much of the world goes hungry every day.

But bioethanol - ethanol from cellulose - opens up new possibilities for this renewable fuel. Any cellulose feedstock could be used. Wood manufacturing residues, municipal solid waste and garden waste alone in the U.S. could provide up to 500 million dry tons of cellulose biomass that could be converted to 50 billion gallons of ethanol each year, about a quarter of U.S. consumption of gasoline. Another 10 -15 billion gallons could be produced from corn stalks and husks and wheat straw. Other possible cellulose sources are sugar cane bagasse and switch grass, ordinarily considered a weed. The stuff growing in the median strip of the nation’s highways could end up fueling the vehicles that travel on them.

A new life, a new future, for ethanol may have started the day before Earth Day when Iogen of Canada announced that it had produced its first commercial shipment of bioethanol after 25 years of research and development.

The Iogen process uses proprietary bio-engineered enzymes to break down cellulose into sugars that can be distilled to ethanol. The company claims its greenhouse gas reductions are three times greater than those from grain based ethanol on a life-cycle basis.

Iogen has received funding from the government of Canada, Shell and Petro Canada.

All vehicles now built can operate on up to 10 percent ethanol blended with gasoline. Flexible-fuel vehicles, that can run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, are already widely available.

Visit Iogen at http://www.iogen.ca/ and the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) for more information on bioethanol at http://www.bio.org/ .