Baby industry

La industria de los biocombustibles empieza a dar interesantes señales de maduración. Esperemos que las inversiones que se están desarrollando en Argentina contemplen toda esta incipiente cadena de valor.

Beyond biofuels, scientists seek uses for byproducts

If Holser, a research chemist, and his colleague Steven Vaughn, a plant physiologist, are successful, they will not only have found ecologically friendly ways to fight weeds and grow grass. They will have found innovative uses for a byproduct of biodiesel production, glycerol. This, in turn, could help transform the biodiesel industry into something that more closely resembles the petroleum industry, in which fuel is just one of many profitable products.

"Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will have to be true for biofuels," said Kenneth Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. "Biorefining is what the vision has to look like in the end."