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I heard of an idea a few years back that I liked; unfortunately I don't have a link anymore and am too lazy to put a big search into it. I will just summarize what I remember.
The beauty of the idea is that the fuel source is "practically anything containing carbon compounds". This covers pretty much all bio-waste from slaughterhouses and farms. You take this fuel and mix it with a lot of water, then subject it to "moderate" amounts of heat and pressure. You cook it like this for a few hours, and then boil it off to separate out what you made.
Ignoring the small amounts of other stuff, you end up with almost all of the input material (depending on carbon concentration, the more carbon the better) turning into a light fuel oil. This can go toward generating power, and the plant can skim a little off to run the next batch through the process.
It seems to me that the best power source is the sun, and the best gathering method is photosynthesis. The most efficient power generation methods should focus on harvesting that stored energy, perhaps by using modified bacteria (which have had billions of years to become efficient). Ideally we can just put some wide covered trays out in the desert and have a slow flow of water from one end to the other. Just seed the start with your algae and collect the mats at the end, then direct them into the vat with the appropriate bugs to make what you want.
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