Turning beetle-kill wood into motor fuel

May 3, 2010 · Posted by in Environment 

 

Lodgepole pines

Lodgepole pines | flickr user gregor_y

Weird. The Post reports that some clever folks have found yet another use for beetle-kill wood — motor fuel.

Its not exactly turning a sows ear into a silk purse, but Cobalt Technologies Inc. is aiming to transform pine-bark-beetle-killed lodgepole pines into motor fuel.

A Colorado State University lab is preparing to test the brew from the California startup company in a four-stroke, overhead-valve Honda engine.

Plus, if you read the story, you’ll learn a little about the differences between ethanol and butanol.

So here’s a dumb question — what’s the demand for beetle-kill wood looking like? Or what would it look like if a few people started using beetle-kill butanol?

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One Response to “Turning beetle-kill wood into motor fuel”

  1. [...] Ritter said Colorado could cash in on the natural disaster if the federal government would change the rules and allow the dead wood to be harvested to make biofuels that could produce electricity. [...]