Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Monday, May 10, 2010
(UNDATED) - Three Indiana alternative-fuel companies are bullish on the prospects for oil independence.
But they disagree on how to accomplish it.
South Dakota-based Poet Energy, which operates three Indiana ethanol plants, and IUPUI startup Xylogenics both told an IUPUI conference they've cracked the code to make Biofuel production more cost-efficient.
William Kassebaum with Indianapolis-based stellar wind bio-energy insists they can't boost capacity enough.
He says 29-million acres of farmland are devoted to corn for ethanol or soybeans for bio diesel, and produce the equivalent just 3% of America's oil imports.
Stellar Wind uses algae to make oil.
On 20-million acres, Kassebaum contends, the US could match all the oil it now imports.
But poet claims new efficiencies in how it makes cellulosic ethanol can eventually produce the equivalent of all US oil imports.
And Xylogenics claims a breakthrough on the process of fermentation which could boost yields 15 to 50 percent.
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