[Gasification] Cellulosic Ethanol a dead end

[Zietsman, Rex]

As part of the ethanol debate, I read this on the bioenergy list about
ethanol from coarn and thought it worthwhile repeating. This was written
by Harmon Seaver on Sat, 10 Nov 2007:

"The bottom line is that most corn goes to feed livestock, not people.
Those livestock, however, were never evolved to eat large amounts of
grain and waste a good share of it. Cows, in fact, can get sick and even
die from eating too much corn.

      So in the production of ethanol, the sugars and starches in corn
are fermented into alcohol, which is then extracted. In the fermentation
process, however, a great deal of yeast is grown, which is not only very
high protein, but also very digestible protein. Cattle and pigs but on
more weight and do it faster being fed the spent mash from ethanol
production than they do from eating corn.

       This is an elementary fact that the anti-biofuel crowd is either
totally ignorant of, or, more likely, is paid to ignore."

I never gave it much thought that DDG's actually might be better for
animals than straight corn...

Rex