The Oil Drum

THE ROAD NOT TRAVELED, YET. THE BETTER BIO FUEL OPTION BEGINS

Per your link about the ethanol scandel,
http://www.axcessnews.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=12975

Xethanol Corp. (AMEX: XNL)

it is very possible we will be seeing many more of these scandels soon. The price of corn, the raw material used most frequently to make ethanol
continues to rise, and natural gas prices keep driving up the price of fertilizer, just as oil, the prime fuel ethanol must compete against, has dropped off on price. Interestingly, it is the Persian Gulf that has a ready supply of natural gas, and is currently expanding it’s petrochemical industry to produce more fertilizer for export. This only makes sense, as it is easier to move natural gas as a finished product, such as plastic, propane and or fertilizer, than to try to move it as LNG (Liquified Natural Gas)
In one of the great historical ironies, we could end up using fertilizer made in OPEC countries from OPEC natural gas to make the so called “freedom fuel” ethanol to free us from.....OPEC oil!

If we are going to to bio fuels, there is a more promising path:
Butanol, the 4 carbon alcohol that can be made from sugar beets, or any plant with sugar/starch content including cheap, easy to grow crops and other plant waste that can be raised easily in northern climes. Butanol uses a bacterium instead of yeast, the well known and long isolated Clostridium_acetobutylicum, used since WWI. It is processed by Anaerobic digestion using this bacterium in much the same that brewers use yeast.

It is bio-butanol’s advantage as a finished fuel that is most impressive.
Butanol can be mixed with gasoline without modification or run straight in the place of gasoline with no modification to infrastructure, and will mix with ethanol in the same way that gasoline can. DuPont Chemical Corp and BP have joined in a major partnership to develop and sell bio-butanol in the British market, hopefully to be followed by other markets.

http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Butanol

http://www.greencarcongress.com/biobutanol/index.html

http://www.butanol.com/

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/bio-butanol.html

The bug that makes it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_acetobutylicum

http://www.epa.gov/biotech_rule/pubs/fra/fra003.htm

I am asking all readers to check out the links above, go on Google and search “bio-butanol”, and see what you think.
I was steered to the bio-butanol option by a post on TOD US, by Robert Rapier, (R-squared, linked above).
If only one person who reads this follows the links and learns about it, it will be worth it to have written it. We are going to spread the word, one person at a time, and hopefully we will soon have a cheap and much more efficient alcohol fuel than ethanol in the North American market. This is an opportunity for Canadian and American farmers, universities, states and cities to develop a new and more efficient bio-fuel industry. Tell your friends. Thank you.

Roger Conner (self appointed SOBB (Supporter of Bio Butanol) :-)
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom