Six hot innovations (CNN/Money) (Ethanol from sugar, ag waste) BIG NEWS

[eppur_se_muova]

Since 2003, Xethanol has operated two Iowa plants that can cheaply distill a gasoline additive called ethanol from bizarre sources such as stale butterscotch candy. When technicians mix the sweets with a special form of yeast, fermentation results, producing ethanol. (Typically producers of ethanol derive the clean-burning, high-octane
fuel from corn.) Big oil companies then combine it with unleaded gasoline to reduce the cost of gas and the air pollution it causes.

Xethanol isn't just relying on candy for its fuel supply. This year it plans to introduce a process that will make it possible to turn all kinds of things--including cornstalks, grass clippings, and old newspapers--into ethanol. If all goes as planned, 59-year-old CEO and founder Christopher d'Arnaud-Taylor projects revenues of $15 million this year, up from $2.5 million in 2005--and the first-ever profit for Xethanol (www.xethanol.com), which he started in 2000 and took public last February. "Where there's muck, there's money," he quips.

Xethanol will use a recently discovered form of yeast to ferment various types of garbage into ethanol. It has obtained rights to the process from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where a scientist discovered that a yeast in the intestines of a type of beetle can convert plant-based waste product into ethanol.

This year d'Arnaud-Taylor intends to begin opening plants on the East Coast that will use yeast from the beetles to brew ethanol from sludge left over from paper milling. The plants will be able to make in total more than 100 million gallons of ethanol a year. That's a trickle, considering that Americans burn nearly 21 million barrels of oil every day. But it's a start. Thanks to federal subsidies and $60-a-barrel oil, it's a seller's market for ethanol.

more at: http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/08/magazines/fsb/nextlittle_xethanol/index.htm?cnn=yes

This sounds like it could be a BIG breakthrough, based on what looks like good old-fashioned scientific sleuthing. Many people have speculated that the symbiotic bacteria in the gut of termites could be harnessed to break down cellulose (possibly in the guts of cows, pigs etc. to produce more meat from forage, or even in the guts of people, who could live off of leaves and grass, or even paper, rather than starving). But termites aren't the only critters that gnaw wood, and these guys found gold in the digestive tract of a beetle. Very, very sharp.