Local Self-Reliance
(Page 2 of 2)
January/February 1981
By the Mother Earth News editors
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Currently, there are almost no commercial nonfarm alcohol fuel plants of any kind . . . but a lot of research and experimentation is being done. In Grand Forks, North Dakota—for instance—the Minnkota Power Cooperative converts wastes from a local potato processing plant into ethanol . . . using the company's conventional pot column still, which they assembled from scrounged parts for around $15,000. Minnkota's operation (which returns its spent feedstock to the potato company for disposal or for use as a cattle feed) can produce a steady 200 gallons of fuel per week, and—according to spokesman Gary Kapity—has the potential of generating 400 gallons a week.
Cheese whey is the focus of experiments at Milbrew, Inc. in Juneau, Wisconsin. Researchers there hope to expand the market for spent whey, which is one of the nongrain raw materials regarded as having the most potential for conversion to alcohol fuel.
Other than those two operations, however, urban applications of alcohol fuel are still in the laboratory stage. The U.S. Army Research and Development Command (in Natick, Massachusetts) is currently testing a special enzyme which will break cellulose down into fermentable sugars. If that idea could be adapted to a larger scale, a wide variety of materials could be used to produce ethanol.
(Leo Spano, spokesman for the Natick research group, estimates that urban waste cellulose alone could provide two to three billion gallons of fuel annually! Furthermore, if just 20-30 percent of all agricultural, urban, industrial, and forestry cellulose wastes were converted, our national alcohol fuel production could reach ten billion gallons a year.)
One of the most reliable sources for information on alcohol fuels is the National Alcohol Fuels Information Center (call toll free, at 800/525-5555, or 800/332-8339 in Colorado). The agency is quite new, however, so it may not be able to provide absolutely up-to-date news on nonfarm or urban developments. For such information, you might want to contact Scott Sklar, at The National Center for Appropriate Technology, Dept. TMEN, Suite 624, 815 15th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
You can have a free catalog of ILSR's selection of books and pamphlets by sending the Institute a self-addressed, stamped envelope. To get on the mailing list for the organization's bi-monthly magazine, SelfReliance, send $8.00 ($15.00 for institutions) to ILSR, Dept. TMEN, 1717 18th Street N. W., Washington, D.C. 20009. Or, send $25 ($17 of which is tax-deductible) to become an associate member of the Institute . . . and—in addition to receiving the magazine—you'll obtain a 20% discount on all other Local Self-Reliance pub lications.—MOTHER.
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