All of those problems are pretty easy to solve. There is just no reason to do so, since ethanol doesn’t solve the real problems of quantity, price, and sustainability. Solve the production problems and the country would gladly build new pipelines, install new ignition and fuel systems, and increase the size of car gas tanks by 50%.

Biogas from biomas suffers from the same quantity, cost, and sustainability problems as ethanol. I’m glad to see more research effort in this area because some will eventually (hopefully) figure out production.

–chuck

Bah! You are speaking for yourself only. Give me back my $2 gas and let the market determine what’s next, not some liberal shit-stick (coughalgorecough)who doesn’t like those bad old petrol burners.

Current solid waste production in the USA is something like 250 million tons per year.

Current oil consumption is about 1000 million tons per year.

Right off the top, assuming perfect conversions and no energy cost, conservation of mass says “ultimately unsustainable”: 250 hydrocarbon conversion, and the mass efficiency (the referenced article mentions facts that suggest this is about 0.2), and that a lot of solid waste would not be usable as as feedstock.

This would indicate that even the large “reservoirs” we have accumulated over the past century may not be the coming new Saudi Arabia, in that we would chew them up very rapidly (1-2 decades, given the processing apparatus suddenly appeared tomorrow).

Not that this sort of thing shouldn’t be done. But other approaches

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_gasification

might end up being a bit more useful. As for portable energy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_economy

With minimal modifications the stuff works in cars just fine.

In a sense, I almost fear that if gas magically went down to $2 a gallon, we’d suddenly forget about all of this and the studies would lose their funding. So I’ll gladly pay $4 if it means more incentive for long-term stability and independence.

That’s the promise of all the research on these alt fuels. Take stuff we don’t want and turn it into stuff we do. Kind of like 21st Century alchemy.

Only much better.

We are a few years out, but whoever owns the technology will be worth a lot of money. And our nations landfills will be the Saudi Arabias of the next century.