The unlikely, eccentric inventor turning inedible plant life into fuel

Transportation fuels that are clean-green, plastic that disintegrates, sugar that doesn't rot your teeth. It's hard to believe, but it all flowed from the mind of the most unlikely of amateur scientists, who was inspired not by any academic laboratory, but by his owns musings at walden pond.

The unlikely, eccentric inventor turning inedible plant life into fuel

This 81 year old man has been working 12 hours a day for over 15 years. He worked in isolation at a remote storage facility garage. Without any formal science education, he seems to have figured out a way to cost efficiently break open cellulose to get to the sugar all around us in plants.

Investors put up hundreds of millions of dollars to enable him to scale up his operation. Hope this is real and the oil company's don't shut him down.

He's right about that. He outsmarted MIT and now he's lured some pretty powerful men to his board of directors, including former Shell Oil executive Sir John Jennings, and three former cabinet secretaries – Steve Chu of the Department of Energy, George Shultz, former secretary of state and former defense secretary, William Perry.

Some serious players there

Lesley Stahl: Is there enough biomass to supply enough of this ethanol and gasoline in the world? Dr. Steven Chu: It can make a significant dent. A possible 30 percent dent in the petroleum market, according to a report by the Department of Energy. But the question is: can Marshall Medoff scale up his operation enough to compete with the oil industry? Bill Perry: What is in doubt in my mind is how long it's gonna take breaking into these huge industrial markets, established markets, with established companies. That's gonna be a big undertaking. John Jennings: It won't turn off oil and gas overnight, obviously. It won't turn off coal. It won't turn off nuclear. It won't turn off all the other sources of energy. But it will find its place. And I think it will find it relatively quickly because of all the boxes that it ticks. One of those boxes is that Xyleco's fuels could be easily dropped into the pumps at existing gas stations. Marshall Medoff: You wouldn't have to change anything.

Sounds revolutionary! I like how they see it as being part of the mix instead of trying to take over competing industries. If successful this tech should naturally draw other industries into utilizing it over time, logically I suppose, as long as everyone can still profit from it. Funny, me thinks the sugar industry will give him more hell than oil industry,ha.

Wonder what a gallon of bio/gasoline will cost compared to regular gasoline? I do question if current engines could process this "biogasoline" without damaging them to some degree,like dominant ethanol mixture could. For diesels however, a biofule from this process might work just fine.
My cynicism for these "new technologies" remains stubbornly strong,, but this seems hopeful,practical and downright inevitable.

I really like the programmable disintegrating plastic too. If it is programmable, then it can still have shelf life while serving as container for products, but when used, they(us?) signal the 11 week process. Wonder how that/what kind of signal would be applied? Chemical of some sort I'd imagine, cuz they haven't mentioned nano-tech yet.

Kudos to this gentleman and his devoted sacrifice.

ETA: Additional links on his company Xyleco and his Patents

Fascinating! Waiting with baited breath lol

a reply to: waftist

Wondering how all these elites on the board are going to usurp this to make a profit. Yes I am cynical and trust none of them.

This is clearly fake news because I have been assured by the new illiberal, authoritarian left that global warming, despite being a scientific problem, does not have a scientific solution. And the only real way forward is by extreme government intervention and crippling, oppressive taxes.

I remember George W. Bush's "Switch Grass Speech" from his 2006 State of the Union Address. At that time, he wanted scientists to figure out a way to cheaply extract the cellulose ethanol from switch grass (which is easy to grow and yields a high sugar-to-acre-grown ratio). Bush wanted to fund private and university research to make fuel from switchgrass and other bio sources that is cheaper than petroleum gasoline.

From Bush's 2006 speech:

We're working on research -- strong research to figure out cellulosic ethanol that can be made from wood chips or stalks or switchgrass. These materials are sometimes waste products that are just simply thrown away. And doesn't it make sense for us -- I think it does -- to use taxpayers' money to determine whether or not we can use these raw materials to make something out of nothing so that we continue the advance of ethanol and so the market for ethanol expands throughout the United States?

Here's a follow-up story NPR did on the George Bush's 2006 State of the Union mention of switch grass, which at the time was became a buzzword in the alternative energy conversation:

NPR Story - Switch Grass: Alternative Energy Source?

I wonder if this guy in the 60 Minutes piece partly seized upon that State of the Union speech.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

I remember that speech too. I also remember video of him at his ranch with gloves on and switch grass in his hands. He was cleaning up brush on the ranch and talking making fuel out of it.