General Motors has announced a partnership with ethanol start-up Coskata. The biofuel company has a process to convert any biomass into ethanol fuel. It claims the technology is developed, and intends to have a 36 billion gallon a year plant operational by 2011. That would be a significant breakthrough but understates the full potential. The ethanol is produced by converting the biomass into syngas which is passed into a bio-reactor for ethanol conversion. Just about any organic material can be converted to syngas, including hydrocarbons, syngas is a step in the production of methanol. If the Coskata technology succeeds it will not open up biomass as an ethanol feedstock but also the world's , including Australia's , huge supply of coal and gas.
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