Wednesday, December 19, 2012

No. 671: The substantiative experiment of biofuel made from stalks and leaves starts in 2013 (December 19, 2012)

Technology:
Research Instituteof Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), Honda Research and Development that is a subsidiary of Honda Motor, and U.S. Department of Energy will jointly start the substantiative experiment of the bioethanol they developed together. The technology can produce bioethanol from stalks and leaves that cannot be offered as food at the same cost to produce gasoline. It is a combination of the pretreatment technology to recover sugar developed by U.S. Department of Energy and the gene recombination fungus that RITE’s Dr. Hideaki Yukawa developed. Resistant to fermentation inhibitors, and Yukawa’s fungus can use sugar produced in the pretreatment at a low cost.

The new technology will supposedly make it possible to produce bioethanol at 2.5 dollars per gallon, almost half of the present cost. The substantiative experiment of factor technologies will start in Japan in 2013, and experimental production of 1 ton per day will start in the U.S. in 2014. Subsequently, mass production experiment will start in alliance with an American company. Production of bioethanol was about 22,300 million gallons in 2011. However, most of the production was made of fruits of sugarcanes and corns, and inevitably food prices go higher.


Producing biofuel from stalks and leaves at the same cost to produce gasoline  

Equipment to produce bioethanol available on the market 

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