GM backs rubbish-ethanol plan

Rubbish will move into the fuel frontline in 2014 when the Flex Ethanol Australia plant comes online in Victoria in a deal that links the Coskata company in a consortium including GM Holden and the Victorian government.

Coskata already has a pilot ethanol program in the USA but is using wood chips, not rubbish, for a switch to full-scale production in less than two years. So Victoria will take up the rubbish collection in a deal that could eventually end the world's reliance on potential food sources - mostly corn in the USA - for automotive fuel.

"The technology is right today. We're hoping that is as soon as the Australian consortium moves forward," James Frawley, a vice-president of Coskata, tells Carsguide. "There is going to be a huge market. Our technology is cost competitive with gasoline as a transport fuel."

His company rocked the fuel business when it first announced the rubbish-to-ethanol plan and its backing from General Motors, but it has been very quiet since then. Now Frawley is happy to confirm the success of a pilot production plant in the USA and the plans to go international, not just in Australia but to other countries including China and Brazil.

"This technology can go anywhere in the world. There are governments looking at Coskata technology as well."

The Victorian plant could eventually turn up to one million tonnes of household, industrial and building waste into 200 million litres of ethanol each year, for use in the E85 fuel being rolled out across the country with backing from Holden.

The Commodore is already E85 compatible and Holden is committed to the fuel for all future models. "We're in a position to now move to the next stage of the process, which is scaling up to a commercial design and full-scale processes," Frawley says. He forecasts that ethanol-from-rubbish plants have the eventual potential to supply half of the world's transport fuel needs without any impact on food or land use.

What's considered 'rubbish'?

Almost any sort of rubbish is suitable to ethanol production, says Coskata. That includes dirty nappies, used car tyres and even - potentially at least - cane toads.

"Rubbish is rubbish, anywhere you look," says James Frawley. "It's things that are going into landfill anywhere. Most of the things you recycle we wouldn't want in this process anyway."

Rubbish becomes what is called a 'feed stock', which has mostly been corn until now in the USA. It is converted to a 'syngas' - composed mostly of carbon dioxide and nitrogen - at extremely high temperature before being fed to mico-organisms that produce ethanol as waste after 'eating' the gas.

"The organism does not care whether that carbon dioxide and nitrogen came from a tyre, a piece of biomass or whatever - it all works the same," says Frawley.