A Different Route to Corn-Based Fuel

The New York Times Energy & Environment
March 11, 2010, 8:41 am
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Jack Huttner, the executive vice president of Gevo, a five-year old company in Englewood, Colo., would like to take over an ethanol plant and, using the same base ingredients that go into corn-based ethanol – corn and natural gas for fuel – manufacture a different molecule: isobutanol.

The company is arguing that current ethanol plants are like old cellphones or laptops, in that they may still work, but newer equipment can do a better job. Ethanol works, by that logic, but most cars can only take gasoline/ethanol blends up to 10 percent, and some places in the corn belt are producing so much ethanol that the motor fuel market is glutted.

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