Biomass -- the future of agriculture?

Claremore Progress - Local News:
by Dick Hagen, CNHI News Service -- Sept 30, 2005
"'We're looking at a production system for ethanol completely different from current technologies, which ferment the corn, then through a fermentation process produce alcohol, distills dried grains and carbon dioxide in a ratio of about one-third of each product from a bushel of corn.
'With our system, we bring in the biomass, run it through a reformer, a gasification process that produces synthesis gas, which then gets filtered to remove the ash, which is about 100 pounds per ton of corn stover. The filtered gas next goes through a reactor which rearranges the synthesis gas molecules into alcohol.'
An obvious bonus of this system: only the stover portion of the corn plant is used. The grain is still available for livestock feed use, food use, export or for traditional ethanol production plants."