【易伯华出品】雅思阅读机经真题解析-The Success of Cellulose

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You should spend about 20 minutes on Question 1-13 which are based on Reading

Passage below.

A

Not too long ago many investors made the bet that renewable fuels from bio-

mass would be the next big thing in energy. Converting corn, sugarcane and

soybeans into ethanol or diesel-type fuels lessens our nation's dependence on

oil imports while cutting carbon dioxide emissions. But already the nascent

industry faces challenges. Escalating demand is hiking food prices while farmers

clear rain-forest habitats to grow fuel crops. And several recent studies say

that certain biofuel-production processes either fail to yield net energy gains

or release more carbon dioxide than they use.

B

A successor tier of start-up ventures aims to avoid those problems. Rather

than focusing on the starches, sugars and fats of food crops, many of the

prototype bioethanol processes work with lignocellulose, the "woody" tissue that

strengthens the cell walls of plants, says University of Massachusetts Amherst

chemical engineer George W. Huber. Although the cellulose breaks down less

easily than sugars and starches and thus requires a complex series of

enzyme-driven chemical reactions, its use opens the industry to nonfood plant

feed- stocks such as agricultural wastes, wood chips and switchgrass. But no

company has yet demonstrated a cost-competitive industrial process for making

cellulosic biofuels.

C

So scientists and engineers are working on dozens of possible

biofuel-processing routes, reports Charles Wyman, a chemical engineer at the

University of California, Riverside, who is a founder of Mascoma Corporation in

Cambridge, Mass., a leading developer of cellulosic ethanol processing." There's

no miracle process out there," he remarks. And fine-tuning a process involves

considerable money and time. "The oil companies say that it takes 10 years to

fully commercialize an industrial processing route," warns Huber, who has

contributed some thermochemical techniques to another biomass start-up, Virent

Energy Systems in Madison, Wis.

D

One promising biofuel procedure that avoids the complex enzymatic chemistry

to break down cellulose is now being explored by Coskata in Warrenville, III, a

firm launched in 2006 by high-profile investors and entrepreneurs (General

Motors recently took a minority stake in it as well). In the Coskata operation,

a conventional gasification system will use heat to turn various feedstocks into

a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas, says Richard Tobey,

vice president of Engineering and R;D The ability to handle multiple plant

feedstocks would boost the flexibility of the overall process because each

region in the country has access to certain feedstocks but not others.

E

Instead of using thermochemical methods to convert the syngas to fuel—a

process that can be significantly more costly because of the added expense of

pressurizing gases, according to Tobey—the Coskata group chose a biochemical

route. The group focused on five promising strains of ethanol-excreting bacteria

that Ralph Tanner, a microbiologist at the University of Oklahoma, had

discovered years before in the oxygen-free sediments of a swamp. These anaerobic

bugs make ethanol by voraciously consuming syngas.

F

The "heart and soul of the Coskata process," as Tobey puts it, is the

bioreactor in which the bacteria live. "Rather than searching for food in the

fermentation mash in a large tank, our bacteria wait for the gas to be delivered

to them," he explains. The firm relics on plastic tubes, the filter-fabric

straws as thin as human hair. The syngas flows through the straws, and water is

pumped across their exteriors. The gases diffuse across the selective membrane

to the bacteria embedded in the outer surface of the tubes, which permits no

water inside. "We get efficient mass transfer with the tubes, which is not

easy," Tobey says. "Our data suggest that in an optimal setting we could get 90

percent of the energy value of the gases into our fuel." After the bugs eat the

gases, they release ethanol into the surrounding water. Standard distillation or

filtration techniques could extract the alcohol from the water.

G

Coskata researchers estimate that their commercialized process could deliver

ethanol at under $1 per gallon-less than half of today's $2-per-gaIlon wholesale

price, Tobey claims. Outside evaluators a Argonne National Laboratory measured

the input-output "energy balance" of the Coskata process and found that,

optimally, it can produce 7.7 times as much energy in the end product as it

takes to make it.

H

The company plans to construct a 40,000-gallon-a-year pilot plant near the GM

test track in Milford, Mich., by the end of this year and hopes to build a full-

scale, 100-million-gallon-a-year plant by 2011. Coskata may have some company by

then; Bioengineering Resources in Fayetteville, Ark., is already developing what

seems to be a similar three-step pathway in which syngas is consumed by bacteria

isolated by James Gaddy, a retired chemical engineer at the University of

Arkansas. Considering the advances in these and other methods, plant cellulose

could provide the greener ethanol everyone wants.

Questions 1-6

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with

opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 1-6 on your

answer sheet.

NB you may use any letter more than once

A. George W. Huber

B. James Gaddy

C. Richard Tobey

D. Charles Wyman

1. A key component to gain the success lies in the place where the organisms

survive.

2. Engaged in separating fixed procedures to produce ethanol in a homologous

biochemical way.

3. Assists to develop certain skills.

4. It needs arduous efforts to achieve highly efficient transfer.

5. There is no shortcut to expedite the production process.

6. A combination of chemistry and biology can considerably lower the cost

needed for the production company.

Questions 7-10

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading

Passage 1?

In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is true

FALSE if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

7. A shift from conventionally targeted areas of the vegetation to get

ethanol takes place.

8. It takes a considerably long way before a completely mature process is

reached.

9. The Coskata group sees no bright future for the cost advantage available

in the production of greener ethanol.

10. Some enterprises are trying to buy the shares of Coskata group.

Questions 11-13

Summary

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using No

More than Three words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your

answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

Tobey has noticed that the Coskata process can achieve a huge success because

it utilises 11 as the bioreactor on whose exterior surface the bactcria take the

syngas going through the coated 12 to produce the ethanol into the water outside

which researchers will later 13 by certain techniques. The figures show a pretty

high percentage of energy can be transferred into the fuel which is actually

very difficult to be achieved.

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