Oct. 20, 2008 Tomorrow's household garbage might be blended with
after-harvest leftovers from fields, orchards, and vineyards to
make ethanol and other kinds of bioenergy. Agricultural Research
Service (ARS) scientists are investigating this straightforward,
eco-friendly strategy in their laboratories at the agency's
Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif. In most
instances, agricultural wastes like rice straw, almond hulls,
and the oversize outer leaves of iceberg lettuce will have to be
pretreated before being used as a bioenergy resource. That's
according to Kevin Holtman, an ARS research chemist who's
working out the details of the garbage-to-gas approach. The
garbage, known as "municipal solid waste," or "MSW," would also
be pretreated, Holtman noted. The garbage would be processed in
a jumbo-size autoclave, a device which acts something like a
giant pressure cooker to convert the MSW into grey, lightweight
clumps. The pretreated agricultural wastes and autoclaved MSW
would then be transferred