Ethanol fuel from scrap tyres

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Fri 7 Mar 2008 12:14
Ethanol fuel from scrap tyres - tunacat
Hearing on here about Morrison's fuel prices and filling a Forester in future at £8 a gallon,

An article in the latest edition of Car magazine caught my eye, about using bacteria to create Ethanol from household waste and/or scrapped tyres.
Coskata, a company that GM has just bought a stake in, claims it can make the stuff much more efficiently (4 units of energy out for 1 unit in, as against 1 for 1) and friendly-ly than the processes used to make petrol, and to sell at $1 a gallon.
Since the process starts with rubbish, the processing plants can be numerous, small and local - a handful in each county (or perhaps one at each Morrison's...)

Sounds like a wondrous thing to me, but what do I know...
...I await to hear why it's a non-starter from those more knowledgable...
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Fri 7 Mar 2008 12:26
Ethanol fuel from scrap tyres - Gromit {P}
I won't say its not feasible, but the easiest way to recover energy from scrap tyres is to shred them, then feed them into a cement kiln or combined heat-and-power generating plant.

CHP plants (aka incinerators with a steam turbine attached) can also handle household waste, so waste producers are likely to prefer them to shipping off waste for conversion to ethanol. No feedstock - no ethanol plant.

I suspect you're more likely to see ethanol produced from the biodegradable part of household rubbish (waste food etc) that has low energy content and is best kept out of incinerators for maximum efficiency. In time you'll have a recyclable bin, a biodegradable bin, an incinerator bin and a separate collection point for more hazardous waste.
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Fri 7 Mar 2008 12:48
Ethanol fuel from scrap tyres - Saltrampen
From my knowledge of Chemistry, the bugs would have their work cut out (long route and lots of energy) to break all those double bonds in Rubber/Neoprene to get Ethanol. They would also have to grab some oxygen from somewhere, as there is not much in tyre compounds. Any such bug would have to been genetically enhanced or engineered.
Household waste is a much easier prospect for bugs.
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Fri 7 Mar 2008 13:33
Ethanol fuel from scrap tyres - tunacat
The bugs are indeed 'enhanced or engineered'.

Perhaps my subject title over-stresses the 'tyres' bit - it was household waste and _even_ scrap tyres.

The article says something about getting 7 gallons of ethanol out for 1 gallon of water in, where other processes only get 1 to 4 out? -I'm afraid I don't have the magazine to hand, and curiously I can't find it on Car magazines's website.

You can however read a bit more about it by googling Coskata.

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Sat 8 Mar 2008 10:22
Ethanol fuel from scrap tyres - davmal
Be interesting if these bugs ever escaped from the processing plant!
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