A while back, Discover magazine ran a story about a thermal process that promised to turn essentially any organic or plastic (i.e., hydrocarbon-based) waste in to oil. This was apparently Discover's most popular article in years, as they later ran a follow-up piece covering the progress of the pilot plant. Of course, there's a drawback if the plant is fueled with nothing but plastics and other oil-derived solids: it means even more CO2 sent in to the atmosphere, and we've already got enough of that.
So it's good news that a firm has found a way to generate ethanol while simultaneously producing an electricity surplus. Normally, these operations need large inputs of energy (see the US's history with ethanol) and that doesn't seem to be the case here. (Obviously, there's some input, but there's a net surplus.)
Like the process mentioned in Discover, this biological process can feed on our plastics etc. However, I never read anything from Discover about the oil-based process being able to cogenerate electricity as well. In a fair evaluation, it seems that the ethanol process would win out over oil.
More interestingly is yet another source for ethanol - I hadn't thought car tires, but the article cites it. It's beginning to seem to me that the only problem with ethanol is going to be figuring out how to use all of it!
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