Ethanol production from corn has tripled the price, but much of it is market anticipation in the Chicago Board of Trade pits and not the demand over supply price determining reality. Commodity traders are very good at boosting markets on fear.  $6.00 a bushel corn has $3.00 worth of fear in it.  $100 a barrel oil has at least $50 worth of fear in it.  $150 a barrel of oil has $100 of fear in it, but that burns out quickly and the price falls.

         Ethanol brings problems to the fuel market.  While it will mix with gasoline it is not transportable in existing pipelines.  It contains water that corrodes the pipelines and pumps causing large leaks.  It is also hygroscopic; acquires water from air, diluting the product and rendering the gasoline-ethanol mix unusable as fuel.  Chemically removing water from ethanol is expensive and time consuming.

      Ethanol a consumable intoxicant and heavily taxed in that form.  If we produce large amounts of pure ethanol it must be expected some of it will go into bootlegging operations where ersatz whisky, gin and vodka can easily be made by mixing pure alcohol with syrups and flavors to avoid taxes.  This would balloon the ATF bureau while the price of world corn skyrockets to create international problems inflating the price of beef and the tortillas of central America, a diet staple and politically sensitive commodity.

      Butanol, the four carbon alcohol solves all these problems, and many more.  It is 100 octane, ping free and produces as much power as octane, the prototype gasoline molecule where ethanol produces about 70% of the power of octane.

      Butanol is less volatile than gasoline.  This means it does not evaporate as quickly and produces much less flammable vapors making it a safer fuel in storage and accidents.  Butanol can be used in today's cars without modification.  It can be transported in pipelines as it is not corrosive to the seals used in pipelines and pumps.

      Butanol can be made from waste corn and wheat stalks, grass clippings, wood chips, sawdust and any other cellulosic material or "stover."  The bacteria responsible for this chemical miracle is Clostridia acetobutylicum.  It has been in wide use since 1916 and it can be bred to work in a wide range of temperatures and with virtually any cellulosic raw material including cheese whey, now an industrial waste.

      Butanol fermentation systems working entirely on sun powered heaters won’t need expensive carbon based fuels.  They require one time building and assembly being little more than plumbing and computer controlled pumps. They should run for decades with minimal maintenance.  Where yeast fermentations need a lot of heat and only produce 15% product the bacterial kind work over a wider range of temperatures and produce up to 35% product before the product poisons the process.

       A new bacterial technology called TEnbox™ in which the bacteria grow faster, some report 50 times faster, has been developed and is under further study, but one of the exciting aspects of butanol production is that it does not require distillation that uses huge amounts of energy.  It is only necessary to chill water down to 0 degrees Celsius, but not freeze, and 93% of the butanol separates to float on the water where it can be decanted off.  This process can be done in any location and some climates offer special advantages.

      Bacteria are easy to modify as their generations are short lived.  Were we to set up ten samples of a strain of Clostridia acetobutylicum using a particular kind of raw material we would find that one of the fermentation vessels worked a little better than the others.  We could use the contents of that vessel to seed the next round of fermentations and another would be the winner in our set of conditions.  In eight or ten rounds of this work we would soon have a new variety of Clostridia acetobutylicum ideal for the location.

        We can fine tune the bacteria to work well from Canada to Texas where enough Mesquite grows every year to supply butanol to one-sixth of our nation's motor vehicles annually.   With existing computer technology we can build robot harvesters that could wander our wastelands 24/7 gathering and chopping Mesquite, Sagebrush and weeds into a celluosic mash perfect for the Clostridia acetobutylicum bacteria.

        Recently (Feb. 2008) Dr. B. Gregg Mitchell of Scripps Institute of Oceanography gave a talk about future energy sources wherein he stated that while we could get 48 gallons of Diesal fuel from an acre of soybeans annually, 113 gallons from an acre of peanuts or 124 from an acre of Rape (Canola) seed we could get 15,000 gallons from an acre devoted to algae culture which now exists experimentally in Calapatria, California and could be marketed for $2 per gallon.  The really exciting idea is that of setting up such farms in calm bays like much of Baja, California which could easily make all the fuel needed in north America.

          Politics hold this technology back while the elected class titillates the farm lobby and runs the price of corn up.  The nation is more important than any special interest group.  Butanol technology is here now.  It is the fuel of the future.   

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