Researchers have made a breakthrough in creating biogasoline from renewable cellulose like switchgrass and trees. The final product is almost indistinguishable from gasoline made from crude oil. Most energy research has been focused on converting corn and cellulose to ethanol, but ethanol has several problems:
1. By volume ethanol only has 70% of gasoline's energy, so cars will only go 70% as far on a tank
2. Ethanol cannot be transported by pipelines since it collects water in the pipelines so this makes distribution more expensive
3. Pure ethanol cannot be used in cold climates
4. Cars must be modified to use ethanol
Using biogasoline gets around all these problems.
We don't need to produce all our gasoline this way, but even if we could make 10-15% it would take pressure off the price of gasoline.
This new biogasoline could tide us over until eestor's "batteries" are available in the Chevy Volt and we go all electric.
1 comment:
That's funny, I have very close relative that works for eestor (not allowed to say who :) )
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