The Oil Drum

When I was in graduate school at Texas A&M in the early 90's, I selected chemical engineering Professor Mark Holtzapple as my research advisor. His work was exactly in my area of interest: Biofuels from cellulose. Even then, I was very concerned about the unsustainable lifestyle we were living, and I was hoping to save the world. For a very good overview on what we were doing, see this PowerPoint presentation (note the Hubbert slide) or this article. In brief, what we were doing was searching for naturally occurring biological systems that convert cellulose to organic chemicals.

The primary system we studied was the bovine digestive system. Cattle are very efficient digesters of cellulose. They eat grass, and break it down via microorganisms that live in their digestive systems. So what we did was extract those microorganisms and attempt to convert cellulose in reactors that emulated the chemistry of the cow's stomach. And while we did have success, the conversion was never as efficient as it was inside the cow.

Some people think I am anti-ethanol. That is an oversimplification, and a misrepresentation of my position. I have nothing against ethanol as a fuel. It isn't as good a fuel as butanol, but then again we can't make butanol as efficiently as we make ethanol.

My objection is that I think the way we make ethanol in the U.S. is a big mistake, and we will recognize this eventually. It may happen following a drought in the Midwest that causes corn crops to fail. That may be what it takes before we recognize that recycling natural gas into ethanol via food was a terribly bad and short-sighted idea.

Introduction

There is a lot of government funding available for cellulosic ethanol processes. So, I have developed a new cellulose conversion process. I plan to get some of that government funding and apply for a patent. The invention is a personal cellulosic biomass reactor. In the first reaction step, the cellulose is gasified to CO and H2 (syngas). In the second step, there are several options for the syngas: produce methanol, ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, or combust it for heat or electricity. I chose to combust for heat, which occurs very rapidly following the 1st step. The combustion products are CO2 and water, but the CO2 that is released is equivalent to the CO2 that was taken up by the biomass while it was growing. It is therefore carbon neutral with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. I am hoping to get some government subsidies, or possibly Silicon Valley startup money for my invention. You can see a picture of it below.