February 5, 2007—Carnegie Mellon University chemical engineers have devised a new process that can improve the efficiency of ethanol production, a major component in making biofuels a significant part of the US energy supply, says the university.
The techniques are said to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants by more than 60 percent.
The key to the Carnegie Mellon strategy involves redesigning the distillation process by using a multi-column system together with a network for energy recovery that ultimately reduces the consumption of steam, a major energy component in the production of corn-based ethanol.
For a long time, corn-based ethanol was considered a questionable energy resource. Today, 46 percent of the nation’s gasoline contains some percentage of ethanol. And demand is driven by a federal mandate that 5 percent of the nation’s gasoline supply roughly 7.5 billion gallons contain some ethanol by 2012.
For more information, visit the Carnegie Mellon Web site.
