Cellulosic Ethanol

Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses, or the non-edible parts of plants. It is a type of ethanol fuel produced from cellulose, a naturally occurring complex carbohydrate polymer commonly found in plant cell walls. It is chemically identical to ethanol derived from other sources, such as corn or sugar, and is available from many biomass resources such as corn stover and other agricultural residues, energy grasses such as switchgrass and miscanthus, and woodchips and other forestry residues.

Production of ethanol from cellulose has the advantage of abundant and diverse raw material compared to sources like corn and cane sugars?, but requires a greater amount of processing to make the sugar monomers available to the microorganisms that are typically used to produce ethanol by fermentation. This process of breaking down the cellulose into sugars is called cellulosis.

According to US Department of Energy studies^[1] conducted by Argonne National Laboratory of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process, may not reduce GHG emissions at all depending on how the starch-based feedstock is produced.^[2]

References

1. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/news.html
2. Clean cars, cool fuels. 5. Environment California. 2007. https://www.environmentcalifornia.org:443/newsletter/fall07/clean-cars-cool-fuels. Retrieved 2007-11-28.