Nearly all the ethanol in US is made from corn.This process has a number of disadvantages namely use of agricultural land for corn cultivation , a high energy input for the entire process.While there have been a number of attempts to address the first challenge by use of later generation of biofuel production processes, there hasn’t been much effort to reduce the energy input for corn cultivation and processing.
Researcher are presently investigating anaerobic digestion on waste from ethanol processing plants to cut down use of energy.Preliminary results indicate a 50% reduction in natural gas use for ethanol processing.Additionally ethanol production also produces organic waste that is then consolidated into two parts: a dry,cake-like substance and a syrupy solution(thin stillage).The stillage is typically used as animal feed , but is low on nutritional value.Largus Angenent, professor, Washington University and head of research says that anaerobic digestion can extract energy from this stillage too.
The use of this process might actually buy some time for continued use of biofuels till commercialization of later generations of biofuels.Adds Angenent “ Rather than have hope for new technology that comes to fruition in 10 or 20 years, we need technology we can implement now.This is an interim process, and it’s off the shelf “
