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General Motors to Make Ethanol From Garbage

Bags of garbage and bald tires that go to landfills today could wind up in your gas tank in a few years, along with wood chips, crop residue and plastic pop bottles.

That's what Coskata Inc., a biofuels start-up in west suburban Warrenville and auto industry giant General Motors Corp. said Sunday at the Detroit Auto Show in announcing a partnership to produce ethanol from just about any carbon-containing material by 2011.

This would produce pump prices that are 50 cents to $1 less per gallon than gasoline -- even before federal ethanol subsidies -- and would reduce greenhouse gases. An Argonne National Laboratory study has concluded that cellulosic ethanol produces 85 percent to 90 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline, compared to 20 percent to 30 percent less from corn-based ethanol.

Coskata's secret weapons are patented bacteria and bioreactors that it says can produce larger amounts of cellulosic ethanol at lower cost than other methods from materials including farm waste, household trash and prairie grass. Oklahoma State and Oklahoma Universities developed the micro-organisms and granted exclusive license to Coskata, which developed the bioreactors and process to recover the ethanol.

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