Biofuel

Rugged microbes equipped with a unique set of survival skills find high-temperature and acidic conditions a welcome home. And scientists have a peculiar fondness for these "extremeophiles," freaks of nature that live outside the boundaries of normal existence. These are bugs that can grow in the harshest of conditions, from sulphuric acid to high-salt environments. Part of the reason scientists are interested is extremeophiles potential to be put to work to produce next-generation cellulosic-based biofuels. Sandia's Rajat Sapra examines assays for the screening of engineered enzymes. (Photo: Sandia National Labs) How? These microbes can perform feats that bioengineers till now only...

Mid-level ethanol blends such as E12, E15, E20 and even as high as E40 have garnered a lot of attention lately. Mainly because ethanol producers want a quick and easy way to soak up a surplus of ethanol that will soon reach the saturation point for the current supply in the marketplace. Under current federal law, conventional fuel cannot contain more than 10 percent ethanol, known as E10, but proponents for higher mid-level blends would like to replace the current gasoline mixture with higher levels of ethanol, which would change the fuel used in vehicles and small engines. GM's concerns with higher ethanol blends include the capability of our engines and fuel systems to handle them...

Today the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), along with the Ethanol Promotion & Information Council (EPIC) presented a webinar that dealt with several of the key challenges facing ethanol retailers as they begin to offer increasing quantities of E85 (85% ethanol). Although the presentation was targeted at gasoline retailers, the information was of interest to anyone watching the emergence of ethanol in the U.S. as a significant transportation fuel. The presenter was Ron Lamberty, VP of Market Development for ACE, and himself an owner of gasoline retail establishments. Currently there are just over 1,500 retail refueling stations offering E85 ethanol (85% ethanol), not quite 1% of the 160,000 total stations throughout the U.S. About 70% of the retail...

Concentrated acid hydrolysis will transform virtually any cellulosic feed into fermentable sugars. BlueFire Ethanol, located in Irvine, California, has developed an advanced, proprietary version of this process which they believe could make them the first company to deploy a commercial scale cellulose to ethanol refinery that generates a return to its investors. The process relies on reusing more than 96% of the sulphuric acid that is used to initially break down the cellulose from the lignin, as well as using the lignin to provide up to 70% of the total plant's energy requirements. Although from the diagram (below) it doesn't appear BlueFire's process is simple, in reality it is one of...

Most of us have heard about the "Hydrogen Highway," that mythical roadway which, along with bullet trains and bridges to nowhere, may actually get built someday at a staggering expense to the taxpayer (to be fair - we're as hopeful as anyone the formidable technological barriers to using hydrogen as a transportation fuel are eventually overcome).  But meanwhile, as of last week, the first ethanol highway in the United States is open for business - I65, stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.  Corn ethanol is a viable transportation fuel today, not someday, and implementation of this ethanol highway, the first of many, is an exercise in practicality, not pipe dreams. For...

When analysing the potential of biofuel, one of the prevailing questions is whether or not there is sufficient land on earth to deliver adequate food if substantial percentages of land are allocated to biofuel crops. In our report earlier this year "Cellulosic Ethanol" it is clear, in the U.S. at least, that while substantial quantities of ethanol per year may eventually be refined from municipal waste streams, crop residue, winter cover crops, and forest thinning, in order to completely replace petroleum-based transportation fuels, dedicated energy crops will also be necessary. So is there enough land? One of the key variables often overlooked when asking this question regards yield per acre - not only...

Coal, a globally used fuel source, is also the reason behind most of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. GreatPoint Energy has developed an alternative method to getting the energy from coal with reduced manufacturing cost, almost no emissions, and less complicated production steps. Traditional methane production facilities house numerous components: First, coal is burned into syngas (a carbon monoxide and hydrogen mix) inside a gasifier at 2,500F. Other machines feed oxygen into the gasifies to facilitate the process. The resulting syngas is then placed into a reactor where it is transformed into methane. GreatPoint facilities do not require the extra step in the reactor since the whole production to...

Up to 300 million people die from malaria every year. A female mosquito, riddled with malaria parasites, is responsible for transmitting the disease. The malaria parasites are carried in the mosquito's saliva, which mingles with a human's blood once they are bitten. Now in the blood stream, malaria parasites travel to the liver and multiply until they burst out of the liver cells and migrate into red blood cells. The infected individual is overrun with symptoms, ranging from, vomiting, convulsions, anemia, renal failure, tingling skin to coma and ultimately death. The waves of fever typical of malaria correlate with the parasites exploding out of the bulging infected red-blood-cells within...

All organisms have the amazing ability to process all kinds of substances that enter their bodies-separating food into smaller components to be absorbed in the blood stream as energy, while the useless particles are eventually excreted. Our bodies try and make the most out of everything that passes through, turning any possible nutrient into a useful component. Food and minerals entering the body are transformed into proteins, energy or the ever popular; fat. Bedminster Industries named an integral part of their patented carbon-reducing technology the 'digester' that separates garbage into non-renewable waste and carbon-rich compost, thus mirroring the effect of any digestive system. According to their homepage, Bedminster Bio-Conversion (1970 to 1999) and Bedminster AB (1999 to 2003) developed the Bedminster Technology as a waste to compost solution for municipalities in the USA, Australia and...

Industrial chemical manufacturers will be happy to know that a major venture is underway to produce cheap natural gas alternatives. In September, 2007 Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.(SES), a company that builds and operates gasification plants, teamed up with the largest producer of bituminous coal in the U.S; CONSOL Energy. As stated in their first news release, the companies joined forces to "investigate the development of coal-based gasification facilities to produce feedstock for various industrial chemical manufacturers whose plants have been shut down due to high costs of natural gas." How clean will coal get? (Photo: Synthesis Energy Systems) "Under the agreement, SES and CONSOL Energy will perform engineering, environmental and...

When economic interests have precedence over common sense: Since April 2006 our lawyer, Dr. Jose Pablo Duran Gomez, sued the Colombian government, demanding for more research be carried out on the production and combustion of biofuels to better understand, anticipate and mitigate as far as possible, the mechanical, environmental, social, economic and public health effects that these biofuels have and will have. The phenomena associated with biofuels are not well understood and even worse, ignored or underestimated, which have lead to recent and strong pronouncements from organizations such as FAO, World Bank, UN, EU and a significant number of environmental and human rights organizations throughout the world. Despite a large number of international studies demonstrating risks and dangers associated to the use of biofuels, added to those that appear every day worldwide, Judge Matilde...

A few days ago we got an email from a proponent of Algae farming to produce biodiesel.  He referenced a study from 1998 sponsored by NREL entitled "Biodiesel from Algae."  Referencing the study, the writer stated, "Spanning almost two decades of research, this article covers the prospect of large scale production of biodiesel using relatively simple techniques. Although already a decade out of date, the information contained within is extremely timely..."  He then quoted from the study directly: Didymosphenia geminata, microscopic algae once scarce, but now in many streams and rivers of North America (Photo: US EPA) "The ASP regularly revisited the question of available resources for...