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Good news for struggling ethanol plants. Microbiology professor Joy Peterson and fellow researchers at University of Georgia have whipped up a new technology that helps increase ethanol yields from biomass sources like sugar cane harvest waste, switchgrass and other grasses. Their technology is a breakthrough in the pretreatment portion of the process, and overcomes the difficulty of breaking down plant cell walls, a process that often utilizes unpleasant chemicals or expensive equipment. The new technology reportedly gets ten times more simple sugars out of the biomass while using environmentally friendly technology.

The tragedy of this post is that we can’t tell you exactly what the new technology consists of because the creators are hush-hush about it for now while they file their patent. We do know that the new process uses a “fast, mild, acid-free pretreatment process” and that using this mild process helps eliminate expensive chemical use and disposal on top of being supposedly wildly more effective. If the process pans out, this could be a significant breakthrough in our ability to use non-crop-based plant biomass for ethanol production, and an opportunity to eliminate hunts for new sources. We’ll keep our ears peeled for updates and information releases.

Via GoodCleanTech, UofGeorgia; Photo via Wili