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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1814)	5/17/2005 11:15:46 AM
From: Rock_nj	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16955

UPHILL BATTLE FOR BIOFUEL PROJECT By Albert Raboteau Steven Paul asks: Why import oil when you can make fuel from food scraps? Paul, a nuclear scientist from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory who moonlights by making fuel from vegetable material, plans to set up shop in an unused Trenton sludge plant. While Paul strives to bring his renewable P-Series fuel to the marketplace, local officials who support his efforts say they hope to make "lemonade" from the star-crossed sludge-drying facility on Duck Island, which cost taxpayers more than $80 million, only to be mothballed before ever starting up. Paul plans to make fuel for so-called FFV's (flexible fuel vehicles). He claims his patented P-Series fuel can work far better than ethanol, a grain alcohol substitute for petroleum. For the moment, however, automobile manufacturers have not approved the use of P-Series fuel in their vehicles -- an essential step in the fuel being marketable. Paul said his fuel worked well during trials in both ethanol- and methanol-powered cars. With a plant located in New Jersey's capital, there should be enough government demand for fleet cars made to run on P-Series fuel to get the auto industry to make the cars, Paul said. "My hope is somewhere around the 2008 model year we'll be seeing P-Series FFVs," Paul said. Local officials have given Paul until Oct. 18 to raise $2.2 million to buy the sludge plant. But that is just a first step in Paul's uphill fight to change what goes in the nation's gas tanks. It will take about $50 million to configure the plant to suit Paul's needs. He declined to say how much he has raised so far but did concede that getting venture capital for his company -- Trenton Fuel Works -- is difficult. Paul patented his fuel back in 1996 and, viewing himself as a scientist as opposed to a pitchman, he originally planned to license his patents to a company that would bring them to market. "That didn't succeed," Paul said, so he struck out on his own. With all the environmental, economic and geopolitical problems caused by America's oil dependence, "Somebody had to do it," Paul said.