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34 • Green Project Management

Wisconsin, and initially at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,
in James Dumesic’s laboratory, is currently being scaled up for com-
mercial applications. With buy-in from a number of major indus-
try partners, Virent is hoping to bring this green gasoline process to
market within the next 5 to 10 years.
• The sugar source for aqueous phase processing can come from
such plants as sugar beets and sugarcane, and many researchers
are devising ingenious ways to create sugars from all the parts
of a plant. Some researchers are also working on growing new
plants that are easier to convert into sugars.
• Source plants, such as switchgrass, can be grown on marginal
lands, so neither food sources nor pristine forests need to be
impacted. 16

Food waste, from a variety of sources, is also being considered and in
some cases is already being used as an alternative energy source. One
source is from fast-food and other restaurants that generate grease from the
food preparation process, like cooking burgers. The UK seems to be leading
this effort, using food wastes from the supermarket. According PDM, a UK
recycling and processing company, “The collected products go through an
innovative process which separates the food material from any packaging.
The food products are either then re-processed to recover valuable materi-
als that are used in the manufacture of bio-fuels, or are used as a ‘neat’ bio-
fuel for direct biomass combustion.” Another source is household garbage.
There is a project in the Virgin Islands called Wāstaway. The goal of the
project is take household garbage and create a product that can be used as an
alternative fuel source. They have developed a “process that takes unsorted
household garbage and converts it into a product called Fluff®, which can
then be easily used in a variety of other ways. Fluff is similar in consis-
tency to wood pulp, and can be processed for use as a growing medium
for plants and turf, can be gasified to generate steam, can be converted to
synthetic fuels such as ethanol, diesel, and gasoline, or can be compressed
and extruded to make products such as construction materials.” 17
The final alternative biomass fuel source is that derived from indus-
trial waste and nonproduct output of manufacturing and other industrial
processes. One of the sources of this alternative fuel is municipal wastes.
However, all of the literature so far points out that while burning munici-
pal waste at high temperature to produce some energy recovery is prefer-
able to burning it and not recovering any energy, according to the EPA,