Early Benchmarking Studies of Corn and Lignocellulosic Ethanol in the United States

During the 1970s, the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) commissioned four detailed technical and economic reports from consultants on possible production routes for ethanol as a fuel supplement:12 [46]

• Wheat straw conversion via enzymic hydrolysis at a 25-million-gallon/year scale of production

• Another intermediate scale process for molasses fermentation to produce 14 million gallons/year

• A farm-based model (25 gallons/hr)