It's my understanding that FFVs can run on M85 Methanol as well as E85 Ethanol. Why all the effort to make Ethanol from cellulose vs. making Methanol as cheap as possible? Government incentives for Ethanol? I understand that Ethanol has a higher energy content per gallon than Methanol, but as a consumer my goal is lowest cost per mile. I don't care if the feed stock is grass, garbage, wood chips, natural gas, or coal as long as the resulting fuel costs less per mile than gasoline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_fuel

George,
I have something to add to that: based on what I learned from GM folks today, they aren't really interested in methanol, but I couldn't get a concrete answer (except it just isn't as efficient - which may be true since methanol is 50% the energy of gasoline, correct?)

The Coskata process, though, makes cheap ethanol without the use of subsidies. That being said, it does seem like they could take their syngas and make methanol out of it, instead of ethanol.

Do the GM guys have an answer to this?

Mr. Kosla, Mr. Gates, and now General Motors.

It's official the smartest people and those in the know support ethanol.

ExxonMobil made $40 billion profit from energy in 2007, Toyota the most efficient auto manufacturer made less than 25% of that.

If you can take a company with unlimited upside and invest in it with minimal resources, then go for it.

GM brought the ethanol argument from an unknown mid-western anomaly to the most talked about energy alternative in history. You can do the same with cellulose and this company. You have already made Brazil energy independent and if you believe it you can do the same for the US.

Yes you can.

Yes you can.

You just got to believe it.

Bottom line?

Sometimes you forget just how powerful you are, I am here to remind you.

Not only do you have the power to persuade millions to love something and shell out their entire annual income to a product they have never heard of before but you also have a lot of power to teach people.

And once you teach them as you taught me about ethanol, just be ready to take their money when they come to you in droves.

Sounds almost too good to be true. I'll be keeping a close eye on this, but if it works out as this article indicates, I'll quickly line up to get a compatible vehicle.

Can you explain what "Create nearly eight times as much energy created as used" means? The way I'm understanding it, they're breaking the laws of physics!

The Coskata Story is great news along with the Malibu getting the North American Car of the year Award! One Problem however: After all of this Great News GM Stock is up only 25 cents a share.
We need to Market this more agressively than we ever have anything. We have winners.
Build a Coskata fuel distribution outlet on every piece of Property GM owns. If GM employees are filling there tanks for a buck fifty a gallon maybe it will catch on to our neibors and the media some how. Market the Malibu in every corner of the United States with carivans of the malibu's and Flags flying stating "Malibu Car of The YEAR". Dont let this opertunity get away. YOU need to put some emotion behind this.....

I was working on that Topic 2 years ago at University and we were searching on the production of Bioethanol using Waste Newspaper as cellulosic source in a Fermenter.
I would know the Scientist Team of Coskata Inc working on this project and maybe share Papers and the results we got that time.
It´s really interesting that the Corporation has invested on this project.

Being able to make ethanol from garbage is great news and should be pursued. However, the use of food sources such as sugar cane and corn does not make sense. The efficiency of photosynthesis is so poor compared to direct conversion of sunlight into electricity via solar panels. Several studies on the web have pointed out that an acre of solar panels can yield 50 to 75 times more energy than the same acre used to grow sugar cane converted to ethanol.

Even with the improved efficiency in this method, the solar panels still come out at least an order of magnitude better.

Also, what happens to our food supply when food sources are diverted to ethanol? What happens to soil quality when more organic matter is converted into ethanol instead of enriching the soil the crops are planted on? Many great civilizations have collapsed due to either loss of food sources or soil that is so poor, that the food and/or ethanol source will no longer grow.

The whole picture needs to be studied, not just parts.

Make ethanol from renewable sources like agricultural waste and anything that has carbon in it.
The Coskata Story is great news!

Mary Beth Stanek asked: "Let us know what you think."

• Produce a gallon of ethanol for less than a dollar, half the production cost of making gasoline
• Use less than a third of the water it takes to make ethanol today – and 79 times less than it takes to prepare a single chicken
• Reduce by as much as 84 percent the CO2 emissions compared with gasoline
• Create nearly eight times as much energy created as used

Ms Stanek,

This is wonderful news -- if true. I do hope it's not like in 1989 when Pons and Fleischmann made their intitial announcement about their "discovery" of cold fusion. Cold Fusion

I remember the surge of excitement thinking, "At last the answer to our energy problems." Of course, cold fusion never panned out.

There does seem to be a lot more hype then substance in their press release. I'd take anything with a grain of salt that uses the phrase: "...proprietary microorganisms and patented bioreactor designs. That sounds too much like public relations boilerplate. The proof will certainly be in the pudding.

If Coskata is true, goodbye corn ethanol

If this proves true, the corn ethanol lobby should be very afraid. The Coskata process would at last get us away from the wrong-headed boom in corn ethanol that is only viable because of mandates, subsidies, and protective tariffs. (Unfortunately, the corn ethanol crowd have all forgotten that one person's subsidy is another person's tax.)

I've never had a problem with ethanol as a fuel, only with the misguided emphasis on corn ethanol, and it would be great if the Coskata process can leverage corn farmers back into growing corn for corn flakes, high-fructose corn syrup, feeding pigs and cows, and exporting corn to hungry people overseas.

Mary Beth Stanek said: "GM is not in the fuel business, and we’re not likely to be building any ethanol plants...

If the Coskata process does what they claim, GM would be foolish not to get into the fuel business. In fact, if the Coskata process does what is claimed, the board of directors would fire the CEO of any company who doesn't immediately jump into the fuel business. Any process with an actual return on investment of 8 to 1 would be a license to print money. With a return on investment like that, GM would stand to make much more money in the motor fuel business than making cars.

(I assume that you were not allowed to invest in Coskata because of the inside information you would have had.)

The Coskata process

After looking at the rather sketchy details of the process on their website, I do have one queston: After their "patented microorgansims" make syngas from the organic feedstock, they seem to use energy converting the syngas to ethanol in what seems to be a distillation or separation stage. My fist reaction is that it would make more sense to just convert the syngas to methanol or liquid diesel than to go through a distillation stage. That could be done chemically without the thermal inputs of the distillation process, and methanol and liquid diesel are just as good a motor fuel as ethanol -- if not better.

Mary Beth Stanek said: "Create nearly eight times as much energy created as used."

I hope that what you meant to say was that the Coskata process will have an energy return on energy invested (EROEI) ratio of 8 to 1. If indeed they have figured out how to create energy, the story is even greater than you think.

Best regards,

Gary Dikkers

The problems surrounding alternative fuels is the amount of "punch" they deliver versus the effort and expense that it takes to produce said fuel. A very interesting article on comparisons from Popular Mechanics is at
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2690341.html

This article compares many fuels including gasoline and lists the advantages and disadvantages of each fuel.
It really is an interesting read. I would be very happy to see viable alternative fuels in my lifetime. The expense to drive 20 miles round trip every day to work and back seems silly,but with no dependable public transportation in my area it is a must. When a reliable electric or hybrid is available at a reasonable price I will gladly drive an electric car to work and back.

Since E-85 gets less MPG than gasoline how does this help with the new CAFE of 35 MPG ???

"Since E-85 gets less MPG than gasoline how does this help with the new CAFE of 35 MPG ???"

Motorman,

It's because of the E-85 loophole that Congress conveniently put into law for U.S. automakers. (Google "E85 loophole" for an explanation.) As you so aptly point out, it has nothing to do with the actual fuel economy flexfuel cars get when burning E85.

Here's one explanation of the "loophole" from the Internet:

Under the cover of promoting "renewable" energy, the federal government has put into place a loophole in its Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements -- which require the automakers to achieve a "fleet average" of 27.5 mpg for cars and 21.5 mpg for trucks or face so-called "gas-guzzler" taxes that are passed on to the consumer. This loophole distorts the truth about a vehicle's actual mileage capability -- but only if it's a vehicle made to run on either gasoline or a gasoline-ethanol blend known as E85. Such "flex fuel" vehicles are credited with much higher miles-per-gallon capability than they actually get -- on the theory that when they burn E85 (which contains 85 percent corn alcohol and 15 percent gasoline) they are using less gas. Thus, a full-size, V-8 powered SUV like the GMC Yukon is rated at 33 mpg for CAFE purposes -- higher than the current passenger car CAFE minimum of 27.5 mpg -- when in fact it only gets 15 mpg in city driving and 20 mpg on the highway, according to the EPA (which is just below the 21.5 mpg minimum mileage for trucks and SUVS under current CAFE rules). The E85 Yukon and vehicles like it get even lower mileage when running on fuels containing large concentrations of ethanol -- since alcohol-based fuels contain less energy per gallon equivalent than straight gasoline. As a result of this loophole, GM, Ford and other automakers have been given a strong incentive to build large numbers of E85-burning "flex-fuel" vehicles -- vehicles which might not make the CAFE cut otherwise and thus be less economic to produce because of "gas guzzler" taxes that jack up the price of a given vehicle by as much as $1,000 or more. But the idea is to create market demand for the heavily-subsidized ethanol industry -- not produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. According to a NY Times piece by Thomas Friedman, the E85/CAFE loophole "increased U.S. oil consumption by 80,000 barrels per day in 2005 alone." GM has built some 2 million flex-fuel vehicles -- many of them large trucks and SUVs that would otherwise be subject to gas-guzzler fines, absent the clever accounting tricks.

The truth is that it takes four gallons of E85 to go the same distance as with three gallons of gasoline. That's something GM would rather you not know.

Motorman asked: "Since E-85 gets less MPG than gasoline how does this help with the new CAFE of 35 MPG ???"

Here is a somewhat shorter explanation of the E85 loophole than Hawkshaw found on the internet:

Although E85 in fact gets poorer fuel economy than gasoline, for CAFE purposes, the government allows automakers to count only the 15-percent gasoline content of E85. That means the CAFE rating of an E85 flex-fuel Tahoe magically jumps from 20.1 mpg to 33.3 mpg, even though the Tahoe actually gets far worse mileage (about 15 mpg) when burning E85.

The advantage of the CAFE loophole is that it allows GM to avoid millions of dollars in penalties they would otherwise have to pay for not achieving the CAFE standard, even though there is an actual increase in energy consumption when burning E85.

It doesn't have to make sense since it's a result of that magic combination of politics, high-paid lobbyists, and probably campaign contributions.

Best,

Gary Dikkers

thanks hawkshaw, that makes sense to me we use less imported oil because only 15% will be gasoline. GM can also make the engines smaller displacement and get the same power since E-85 is 105 octane just by raising the compression ratio. i wonder how E-85 starts in cold weather because when we use methanol in our race car engines we had to start them on gasoline when the temp was below 55 degrees.

The new cafe laws apply to gasoline not bio fuel E-85 thats friendly to the eviroment and is a renewable fuel produced here in the U.S. creating jobs for Americans while cleaning up the air. This is a no brainer ''except for big oil companies''....GO GM!...