Cottondale PelletsBack in February, business leaders announced plans for a new wood pellet manufacturing plant in Cottondale.
A company called Green Circle Bio-Energy will make the pellets, ship them by rail to Port Panama City, them ship with overseas to Europe.
Power plants there will burn the pellets as a cleaner alternative to coal.
The 100-million dollar operation should be up and running by the end of this year.
But Thursday, some scientists from the University of Florida stopped by the Cottondale plant site to suggest some possible alternative uses for the pellets.
They say their researchers are working on a way to create Ethanol fuel from wood. Dr. Jimmy G. Cheek, PhD. of the University of Florida says the pellet plant could figure into their future plans.
"Everbody who's looked at ethanol production agrees that corn and sugar are probably not the things we should be producing ethanol from. That it needs to be cellulose and we're been working on technology for 30 years at the University of Florida, that's been patented and we are trying to commercialize that patented intellectual property."
Ethanol burns cleaner than regular gasoline, and could reduce out dependency on foreign oil.
But cellulose-based ethanol may still be a few years away. Dr. Cheek says the scientists have it down to a 9-step manufacturing process, when it really needs to be a 2-to-3 step process.
