The New York Times recently reported on work at the University of Wisconsin in which a new method was developed to break down lignocellulose into sugars. A recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Ronald T. Raines and Joseph B. Binder outlines a process which uses an ionic liquid combined with water and acid to decompose cellulose to sugars.
For a long time, cellulosic ethanol has been the holy grail of renewable fuel technology (recall former President Bush’s call for fuel from switchgrass in his 2006 State of the Union Address). Humans do not have the proper digestive equipment to consume cellulose (cows, on the other hand, have four stomachs and various other features that allow them to eat grass and other cellulosic foods). Thus, producing cellulosic ethanol could potentially bypass the food vs. fuel conflict that other biofuels (think corn ethanol and biodiesel from palm oil) have run into.
Current methods of breaking cellulose down to sugars requires the action of costly enzymes and as yet hasn’t been economically viable at large scales. Raines and Binder hope that their process, which produces sugar yields approaching those of enzymatic methods (nearly a 90% yield of glucose from cellulose), can be scaled up to convert non-food crops into ethanol. I haven’t yet had an opportunity to read Raines and Binder’s full article, but the one detail that caught my attention in the NYTimes article is the importance of water in the sugar producing process. Apparently, without water the ionic liquid can continue to react with sugars produced and further degrade them. I am curious how water intensive this process is and whether this will pose constraints when scaling the process up. I guess I’ll have to read the full article to find out!
Bottom Line: Cellulosic ethanol has promise as a sustainable energy source if only we can find an economic way to produce it. It looks like researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found a good contender.

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Bottled Water? No thanks!
The Story of Bottled Water is one worth hearing
The ‘Story of Stuff’ folks just released a new animated video on ‘The Story of Bottled Water’. This is a fun eight minute video on the development of the bottled water industry through ‘manufactured demand’ and the many negative effects buying bottled water has on the environment and your wallet. The video emphasizes the question, if clean water is a basic human right, why do you have to buy it at 2000 times the price of tap water? Instead, the video urges watchers to stop buying bottled water and instead invest in a reusable water bottle to tote around. You can also lobby public officials to clean up water sources, invest in public water infrastructure, and bring back drinking fountains.
Bottom line: Besides being entertaining, I like this video because it not only lays out the problem logically, it also offers a viable solution that you, as a consumer and citizen, can bring about.