{"id":1003,"date":"2007-11-02T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2007-11-02T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1003"},"modified":"2011-08-21T08:59:57","modified_gmt":"2011-08-21T08:59:57","slug":"blinded-with-science-cellulosic-ethanol-tomorrows-fuel-for-drinking-and-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1003","title":{"rendered":"Blinded with Science – Cellulosic Ethanol: Tomorrows Fuel for Drinking and Driving"},"content":{"rendered":"

originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – November, 2007<\/a> – (pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Everybody loves alcohol. It has helped us start and win wars, it\u2019s why we changed the\u00a0constitution twice, and it just makes sense. It is the social lubricant that keeps the cynically\u00a0self-righteous, moral fabric of our society from chafing against the swollen genitals of our\u00a0collective guilt and denial. Alcohol is natural, legal, and moral, and you can drink it off of\u00a0parts of sorority chicks.<\/p>\n

The alcohol we know and love is composed mainly of ethanol, which, despite sharing a\u00a0number of chemical similarities with deathanol, is widely accepted as pretty good stuff.\u00a0Ethanol is a proverbial fuel for the service industry, violence, teen pregnancy, regular\u00a0pregnancy, and gay pregnancy. It is also a real fuel for burning in things that run on real fuel.\u00a0Ethanol is becoming well known as a potential clean, renewable source of energy.<\/p>\n

Ethanol is created in a process known as fermentation, which you should know all about if\u00a0you paid attention in any life science class you took since 5th\u00a0grade. The raw materials needed\u00a0to create ethanol are sugars, yeast, water, heat, and an inflatable pool filled with baby oil and\u00a0aggressive women. The sugars used can be anything from those found in corn to those found\u00a0in that box of sugar packets you stole from Starbucks, even though you buy coffee at Perks.\u00a0The sugars needed to create ethanol are found in the same crops we use for eating. For\u00a0hundreds of years, human beings have used a variety of crops to produce enough alcohol to\u00a0get hammered and still have enough left over to put food on the table\u2026unless there wasn’t\u00a0enough to put food on the table, in which case, we just fermented what we had and got\u00a0hammered anyway.<\/p>\n

With the prevailing winds of government mismanagement and corruption, we simply cannot\u00a0grow enough crops to satisfy the demands of eating, drinking, and driving. To make ethanol a\u00a0viable fuel source, we will need to find new raw materials from which to brew it.<\/p>\n

The solution that has lingered on the horizon for decades has always been the prospect of\u00a0cellulosic ethanol. Cellulose is basically what gets plants hard; it is chemically equivalent to\u00a0plant Viagra.\u00a0Cellulose is a long chain of tightly bound molecules that contains a great deal\u00a0of energy. When this energy is released in reactions such as fire, the effect is what we have\u00a0come to know as \u201cfire.\u201d Fire is the initial discovery that allowed humankind to dominate\u00a0predators, nature, disagreeable people, and weaker fires.<\/p>\n

Cellulose can be broken down into digestible sugars, which can then be fermented into\u00a0ethanol. With current technology, breaking down cellulose is a difficult process, requiring\u00a0expensive Oompa Loompa labor negotiations. Scientists are busy engineering new enzymes\u00a0that will bypass the need for fictional labor entirely. If cellulose could be broken down\u00a0cheaply and efficiently, we could create fuel from nearly any source of plant biomass,\u00a0including the troublesome Oompa Loompas.<\/p>\n

What? You didn’t know the Oompa genus is in the Embryophyte Subkingdom? Check your\u00a05th-grade life science textbook.<\/p>\n

Funding for research into cellulosic ethanol production has grown exponentially in the last\u00a0few years. Funding has increased because we recently found our gonads wedged snugly\u00a0between Iraq and the hard place we call the President\u2019s head. Our elected legislators have\u00a0heard the cry for cheap, clean, domestically renewable energy, and they have responded by\u00a0spending our tax dollars on incentives to make companies spend a little money on stuff that\u00a0makes us feel a little better about our insatiable addiction to foreign oil.<\/p>\n

Cellulose-related research has been conducted in some form since the oil crisis of the 1970s.\u00a0For a brief period, cellulosic ethanol was seen as a long-term solution to foreign oil\u00a0dependence, lingering just beyond the horizon.<\/p>\n

We learned from that critical time in history. Our leaders are adjusting the way they stay the\u00a0course in order to address the emerging energy crisis. We learned that having a long-term\u00a0solution lingering just beyond the horizon allows us to feel good enough to wait for oil prices\u00a0to drop and things to get back to normal.<\/p>\n

Cellulose research is, in itself, a solution, because it gives us a good excuse to discuss what\u00a0we could do if we really cared about finding a solution. If we talk long enough, the problem\u00a0will have gone away, and we will again have cheap, anonymous sources of blood-soaked oil\u00a0to refine into cheap, taxable gasoline. That’s what happened in the 70s; that’s what is\u00a0happening now.<\/p>\n

Cellulosic ethanol research may or may not continue after we win the war on terror and\u00a0secure enough oil to shut up and get back to some serious NASCAR. Without a need for\u00a0renewable, clean fuels, we may find it’s better to leave cellulosic ethanol simmering on the\u00a0back burner, in case we need a distraction next time we face a cataclysmic hiccup in the\u00a0energy market. If research continues, it will be primarily relegated to pot smoking,\u00a0environmentalist kooks.<\/p>\n

Should cellulose ever become a viable source of ethanol, its primary application will most\u00a0likely be to convert wood shavings into a tasteless, 190-proof liquor, which can then be sold\u00a0to university Greeks for use in body shots and hazing by ritual self-immolation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – November, 2007 – (pdf) Everybody loves alcohol. It has helped us start and win wars, it\u2019s why we changed the\u00a0constitution twice, and it just makes sense. It is the social lubricant that keeps the cynically\u00a0self-righteous, moral fabric of our society from chafing against the swollen genitals of our\u00a0collective […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}