Challenging ethanol’s dirty reputation

Science News
By Patrick Barry
May 2nd, 2008
Web edition

Wood chips could yield a clean, inexpensive biofuel
CHICAGO — A propriety process for making ethanol from leftover sawmill woodchips significantly reduces the fuel’s lifetime greenhouse gas emissions relative to gasoline, a new analysis concludes.

The 60 to 80 percent relative reduction in emissions "is comparable with other wood-based bioethanol processes," says May Wu of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., who led the independent analysis. If the wood chips contained little moisture, the reduction could be as much as 96 percent.

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