UW-Madison invention basis for top honor in clean-energy competition

University of Wisconsin-Madison
March 15, 2012
by David Tenenbaum

A new company built to commercialize a green-energy discovery at University of Wisconsin-Madison earned the top honor — and a check for $100,000 — at this month's Chicago Clean Energy Challenge.

The firm, named Hyrax Energy, is developing a process to make sugar from cellulose, the tough carbohydrate that gives structure to plants.

That sugar could be a raw material for the biofuels, chemical and plastics industries. Ethanol, a biofuel added to gasoline, consumes about 40 percent of the total American corn crop. Using cellulose would reduce pressure on the price of corn and greatly expand the range of raw materials.

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