You think ethanol from corn kernels is environmentally friendly? How about gasoline made from cornstalks? Bioforming, a new catalytic technique for converting biomass materials into fuels and chemicals, resembles the alchemy used to turn garbage into energy in Back to the Future. But it actually seems to work.
Co-inventor Randy Cortright was a scientist at the University of Wisconsin when he developed the process in 2001; he left the following year to found Virent and commercialize his findings. Virent can already produce small amounts of fuel from stalks, and Cortright says the process would also work with anything from wheat straw to sugarcane stalks to switchgrass. Grass in; gas out.