Company Promises $1-Per-Gallon Ethanol at US Pumps

If all goes to plan, ethanol may be appearing at US pumps at $1 per gallon, according to an article at Energy-Daily.com.

The Alternative Energy Technology Center has recently announced that it has new technology that can refine common cellulosic biomass into fuel that can be sold for $1 per gallon, without government subsidies or incentives. Currently, ethanol sells for about $2.60 per gallon, and costs about $2 to produce in today's plants.

"We expect to produce over 100 gallons of fuel per ton of cellulosic biomass which costs about $65 in today's market," said Brown Marks, CEO of the Alternative Energy Technology Center. "We have designed our technology to use low-cost feed stocks that are widely available at low cost. We use a low-energy input design to increase efficiency, and we can place our plants wherever there is abundant biomass available."

As the company explains on its Web site , biomass types like wood chips, switchgrass and agricultural waste are less expensive than the food-type feed-stocks that were used in the first generation of ethanol and biodiesel plants. Hopefully, non-food biomass will offer a more efficient fuel for tomorrow's cars.

Most new automobiles built in the U.S. by General Motors and other manufacturers are equipped to run on 85% ethanol.

There's no word yet on when you might see "dollar ethanol" at the pumps.

via: Energy-Daily.com