without a firehose of VC money, or a mountain of govt loan guarantees, other endeavors operating under the biofuel radar are proving waste cellulosic biomass can in fact be meaningfully transformed into useful power and products. they are doing this via small scale gasification and pyrolysis, taking the machines to where the fuel already is, and the users already are (as opposed to attempting a replication of fossil fuel economy of scales, which the distributed nature of biomass resists at every step).

imagine instead a personal scale waste-to-energy machine, a mr fusion that actually works, premised on old technology and mature industrial components, upgraded for the digital age and contemporary personal appliance use expectations. imagine a washing machine of individual scale energy- bad things in the top, good things out the bottom.

shhhh . . . don’t tell anyone, but it already exists today in an early form. you can buy it now (not next year or next decade) for a little over $1/watt capital cost. see here for the details: http://www.gekgasifier.com.

the only thing depressing about the cellulosic biofuels today is our insistence on repeating well known failures routes. thermodynamics and chemistry are brutal taskmasters, and not easily fooled.

maybe a black swan is flying in from another direction . . .

jim mason
ceo, all power labs
http://www.allpowerlabs.org