Researchers Develop Biofuel Alternative To Ethanol

coondoggie writes "Researchers say they have developed a method of using bacteria to convert decaying grass directly into isobutanol, which can be burned in regular car engines with a heat value higher than ethanol but similar to gasoline. The research could mean great savings in processing costs and time, plus isobutanol is a higher grade of alcohol than ethanol, according to the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) and its Oak Ridge National Laboratory"

Re:I have seen that work

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: that link is goatse

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Running B100 in new, non-PD (Pumpe Duse) VW TDIs is highly inadvisable. They have a whole new high pressure fuel pump and aren't designed to work with it. Warranty voidance is almost guaranteed.

Re:Its not called gas but its called...

[DJ Jones]

Actually corn sucks as a fuel FYI. Most other alternative fuels pack more punch per ounce including waste materials like methane. Unfortunately as Americans, corn is all we really have because that's one of the few the crops the government chose to subsidize starting back in 1929. We have so much corn that the government at times decided to purchase and burn tons of it just to keep prices inflated and protect farmers. But if you care to save our sacred crop that makes us fat, makes our livestock sick, and sucks as a fuel then more power to you.

I support growing more grass even if we use it as fuel.

Another fossil fuel?

[readin]

If I understand correctly, one of the major problem with ethanol from corn is that corn requires fertilizer, and fertilizer these days comes from natural gas. Or to put it another way, ethanol is a fossil fuel! One of the other problems with ethanol is that it takes land that could be used for growing food and converts it to land used for growing fuel.

How is this grass-based fuel any different? To make it in large quantities won't we still need fossil fuel based fertilizers and large tracts of land?

Re:Sorry, but....

[budgenator]

First butanol isn't particularly water soluble, 87 g/L at 20 C and its density is 0.802 g/cm3, so it floats on top of the water

Re:Finally!

[pclminion]

That's a bunch of fucking bullshit. With the TDI's, the only problem you'll encounter running biodiesel is maybe a dead injection pump due to seal cracking, which is caused by the lack of sulfates in the fuel... Since low-sulfur diesel was introduced about five years ago, all new vehicles have pump seals that work perfectly well with biodiesel -- my injection pump from 2002 went pretty quickly, and I had it rebuilt with modern seals that work properly with biodiesel and I've had no problems in over five years. Biodiesel will not hurt your TDI, it's a load of crap.

You can get the research paper here

[Aku Head]

Engineering Corynebacterium glutamicum for isobutanol production [nih.gov]

or pdf download:

doi:10.1007/s00253-010-2522-6 [doi.org]

Re:Finally!

[kevinNCSU]

I thought the new low-sulfur fuel came due to the new particulate emissions level mandates which are part of the problem. They added a particulate filter to the exhaust that has to periodically burn up the matter collected there. Most new diesel engines (post 2007) do this by injecting fuel into the cylinder right after the cylinder fires and exhaust valve opens so that it vaporizes and travels to the exhaust where it can heat up the particulate filter and burn off the collected matter. Since bio-diesel is denser and doesn't vaporize as easily it ends up getting stuck to the piston walls and getting into the engine oil where it dilutes it and then damages the engine.

Not all new diesels have this problem, some companies decided to put an injector in the exhaust itself in order to deal with this, but most went the other route because it's cheaper so you shouldn't just assume post-2007 cars will run on even small mixtures of biodiesel anymore.

Here's a guy who had a 2009 TDI that didn't end up running so well on B100: 09 TDI [biodieselsmarter.com]

Re:Its not called gas but its called...

[geekoid]

"d crop that makes us fat," FALSE. please stop spreading that lie.
Too many calories make people fat, nothing else.

" makes our livestock sick,"
again, false. another lie. Clearly you have no idea how much sick livestock would cost ranchers.

I notice you left out the important part: It keep food availability stable. And yes, I rather like having food year around.