Driving down the street you decide to stop to fill your gas tank. Being an eco-conscious driver, you have a flex-fuel vehicle that can burn E-85控制工程网版权所有, a mix that is 85% ethanol and only 15% gasoline. While you fill your tank, you realize that the building next to the pumps isn't a normal gas station. It's actually an automated bioethanol plant, and the fuel you're pumping is made from local waste feedstock.
　　This kind of scenario is already happening in Finland, thanks to St1 Biofuels Oy. The comp

any now has four such plants around the country in Lappeenranta, N?rpi?, Hamina, and Vantaa, and plans to have 15 locations by 2014.
　　While fuel ethanol manufacture in the U.S. centers on large regional production sitesCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, St1 has built its business model around the idea of building small, highly-automated plants that can be controlled from a central location. The company looks for sites where suitable feedstocks are available, avoiding the need for extensive transportation costs of raw or finished product. If a plant can also capture waste heat from a neighbor, that is an additional benefit.
　　The range of products that qualify as feedstocks is more extensive than you might think控制工程网版权所有, and most would probably be regarded as garbage. Lappeenranta consumes 5,000 tons of bakery and candy factory waste to manufacture 1.5 million liters (396,000 gallons) of ethanol annually. The N?rpi? facility is co-located with a potato processor and makes 1.5 million liters from that plant's waste stream. None of the plants consume usable food products.

　　The Narpio facility is located on the site of a potato processor.  St1 seeks partnerships with companies that produce suitable wdaste streams, such as bakeries and other food processors.

　　The process of fermentation and distillation is straightforwardwww.cechina.cn, and St1 contends that large scale does not always bring production economies. Its experience is that smaller plants are easier to build close to customerswww.cechina.cn, requiring less equipment and less e