Spread over a 3-square-mile industrial campus, along roads with names like Ammonia St. and Butanol St.
The aim is to turn out an annual 2 billion litres of butanol by 2014.
ECONOMIST: Biofuels are back. This time they might even work
Genetically modified versions of the organism can produce butanol and propanol, two high-energy building blocks for transportation fuels.
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Cobalt is aiming to produce biobutanol for as much as two dollars per gallon less than petroleum-based butanol.
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The new butanol is a four-carbon alcohol, whereas ethanol is a two-carbon alcohol.
Butanol, however, has four carbon atoms in its molecules, whereas ethanol has two.
ECONOMIST: Biofuels are back. This time they might even work
From there, it's a relatively easy and well-known process to turn Acetyl Co-A into a fuel like butanol or ethanol.
Butanol as a fuel has been around a long time, but the cost to produce it was never competitive with gasoline.
Gevo, of Englewood, Colorado, which filed for flotation on NASDAQ in August, is planning to make another type of post-ethanol fuel: butanol.
ECONOMIST: Biofuels are back. This time they might even work
Fermenting starch into butanol is a 100-year old process, but Shevick says the scientists at Cobalt have dramatically improved it with better biocatalysts.
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FFVs can be engineered to run on methanol and butanol, as well - alcohol-based fuels that, like ethanol, can be manufactured in quantity from abundant domestic sources.
BP, a British petroleum company, is building a butanol pilot plant to do this near Hull in the north of England and also has big ambitions for the fuel.
ECONOMIST: Biofuels are back. This time they might even work
We have the option right now to require that new automobiles sold in this country be capable of using alcohol-based fuels like ethanol, methanol or butanol instead of or together with gasoline.
Like ethanol, butanol is an alcohol.
ECONOMIST: Biofuels are back. This time they might even work
Now researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia will try to create their own version of an extremophile, one unlike any found even in the most extreme places--a bug that will create fuels like butanol or ethanol.
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