Exciting time for ethanol

Iowa Farmer Today
Posted: Thursday, November 17, 2011 7:50 am Updated: 9:44 am, Thu Nov 17, 2011.
By Gene Lucht, Iowa Farmer Today Iowa Farmer Today

AMES --- Forgive Robert Brown if he sounds a bit more upbeat about ethanol and other biofuels and bio-renewable products than most of the politicians and business leaders who offer their opinions on the subject.

It’s not that he’s a Pollyanna. It’s more that he’s a researcher and he sees plenty in the laboratory to make him smile.

“It’s a very exciting time,” says Brown, director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State University and director of the Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies (CSET).

One of the keys to several potential new products or technologies is a method called fast pyrolysis. Instead of using enzymes and microorganisms to make biofuels, researchers are simply using heat. Fast pyrolysis quickly heats biomass such as corn stalks or wood chips and in the absence oxygen to produce liquid, solid and gas products. These end products, are known as biochar, bio-oil and syngas.

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