Earth-moving machinery has finished clearing 40 acres (16 hectares) of land outside Fulton, Mississippi, for the site of the first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant in the US, where California's BlueFire Renewables will put its proprietary concentrated-acid hydrolysis (CAH) waste-to-biofuel process into full-scale production.
Using acid as a catalyst to convert the cellulose and hemicellulose — the main components in the rigid cell walls of plants — into simple sugars hexose (C6) and pentose (C5) for ethanol production is not new.
