Thermochemical Conversion Conference, Chicago, 28-30 September

NREL
Thermochemical conversion of biomass to fuels, chemicals, power, and process heat, is on the fast track for creating advanced biofuels. The international conference on thermochemical conversions of biomass, TCBiomass2011, will be held in Chicago 28-30 September 2011 (via Renewable Energy World) .

Top 5 reasons to attend tcbiomass 2011:

1. Gain insights from leading experts during 25 peer-selected scientific presentations and 50 posters
2. Hear dynamic keynotes on the current vision of biomass energy development and applications
3. Gain benefits by attending special receptions, lunches, and a dinner event
4. Network with colleagues from around the world
5. Participate in a special technical tour

Who attends:

• In 2009, tcbiomass brought together leading researchers from 22 countries and 130 organizations.
• 
  Senior experts
• 
  Technology developers
• 
  Investors in emerging technology
• 
  Engineering companies
• 
  Feedstock suppliers
• 
  Government policymakers
• 
  Professors and students in academia

_TCBiomass2011

Three new Pyrolysis plants to convert waste wood to pyrolysis oil and bio-char in Oregon.

Pyrolysis (no oxygen) and gasification (limited oxygen) allow the conversion of biomass and any type of carbonaceous mass (including waste tyres, municipal waste, waste plastics, etc) to either pyrolysis gas, pyrolysis oil, and syngas -- which can be converted to high value chemicals, fuels, lubricants, plastics, etc. The bio-char by-product from pyrolysis can be used as a soil additive. These thermochemical conversion technologies will allow for massive coal to liquids (CTL), gas to liquids (GTL), biomass to liquids (BTL), and the conversion of materials previously considered waste, to high value products.

The basic technologies have existed for centuries, but with the somewhat contrived boost in crude oil prices, a much greater impetus for their development currently exists.

Charlotte in Late October: Nuclear Construction Summit

The Nuclear Construction Summit will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, on October 25 and 26, 2010.

Ah yes, I once knew a girl named Charlotte. She was quite fine in late October, as I recall. If Charlotte, NC, is anywhere near so fine that time of year, it would be worth the trip. Rod Adams has more:

The second annual Nuclear Construction Summit will be held in Charlotte, NC on October 25-26, 2010. The meeting will include talks from leading figures associated with designing, licensing and building new nuclear power plants. The tentative speaker line up includes Ellen Ruff of Duke Energy, David Matthews of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Jeff Merrifield of Shaw Power Group, Jim Moody of General Dynamics Electric Boat, Michael McGough of Unistar, Mark Campagna of Hyperion Power Generation, Cheri Diane Collins of Southern Company, Tom Sanders of the American Nuclear Society, Ashok Bhatnagar of Tennessee Valley Authority and many more.

Click here for the provisional meeting agenda.

The organizers at Nuclear Energy Insider are predicting that there will be more than 300 executives and senior managers associated with building new nuclear plants at the meeting. If you register by Friday, August 27, 2010, you will be eligible for a $400 Super Early Bird discount.

Atomic Insights is planning to cover the meeting and to participate as a media partner. I hope to see you there. I am looking forward to a trip to Charlotte, a place that is shaping up to be a hub of activity for nuclear power plant engineering, design and businessheadquarters.

Update: (Posted on August 23, 2010 at 1106) Thanks to a prompt suggestion from a commenter, Nuclear Energy Insider has agreed to extend a special conference discount to people who sign up based on reading about the meeting here at Atomic Insights. When you register, please use the code ATOMIC200. _AtomicInsights

There is a great deal of optimism on the topic of nuclear construction, in some circles. But is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the US Department of Energy, and other agencies of the US government doing enough to justify that optimism?

The Obama Pelosi regime is a rat's nest of regressive dieoff.orgy green lefty-Luddites, who would like nothing more than to bring on energy starvation and an appreciable reduction of the planet's human population. No, I am not saying that dieoff is official O-P policy -- only that a large number of insiders within O-P would like to see dieoff happen, and would be willing to promote a policy of "energy starvation" to help bring it about.

The energy surrounding a Nuclear Construction Summit is exactly opposite to the darker, more ominous and destructive energies circulating through the US executive, legislative, and to a large degree, judicial branches.

The private sector of the US has always been the more positive, creative, and productive sector of society, and in healthy times the private sector always outgrew the public sector. Currently, the US is suffering through an extreme reversal of that balance, and there is some question of whether the US will be able to survive this imbalance over the long term without extreme re-structuring.

Will the mid-term US elections of November 2010 help to turn things around -- to justify the optimism of the Nuclear Construction Summit? Probably not nearly enough.

But you need optimists and resourceful planners who are prepared to grasp whatever opportunities may present themselves.

World Biofuels Markets Amsterdam Looks at Microbe Energy

The world's big biofuels conference is meeting in Amsterdam this week.  It is focusing on microbial fuels, and micro-energy crops.

The microbes divide into three main camps _ those that are used to capture sugars and oils for extraction and fuel conversion (a.g. microalgae, lemon), catalysts such as the enzymes produced by Genencor and Novozymes, and microbes that consume a feedstock and secrete a fuel (not completely unlike the cow, who consumes hay and emits methane, but in a far more elemental and fungible way than simple rumination). LS9, Amyris, Qteros and Joule Biotechnologies are among those who have such a “magic bug,” – by far, Joule’s is the most mysterious to date – but it is the only one who can make a fuel from carbon oxide and water, rather than a simple sugar.

Let’s review the key microbes, proteins and microcrops and the latest news as World Biofuels Market convenes.

Enzymes

Genencor has released its Accellerase group of enzymes, while Novozymes released its Cellic line of enzymes with a focus on driving celluloisic ethanol production costs to $2 per gallon. Verenium meanwhile, released Xylathin to improve the economics of producing enzymes from cereal grains. DSM estimates that the global market for enzymes, yeast and other micro-organisms for ethanol will be $500 million in 2010, with “rapid growth thereafter” as cellulosic ethanol production takes hold.

Yeast

Most recently, Amyris Biotechnologies announced that its subsidiary Amyris Brasil signed partnership LOIs with Bunge, Cosan, and Açúcar Guarani to develop renewable specialty chemicals and fuels from sugarcane. The products will be distributed by Amyris. Amyris intends to bring its renewable fuels and chemicals to market starting in 2011 through production at Boa Vista mil, where it recently purchased a 40 percent stake. Starting between the 2012 and 2013 crushing season, Amyris intends to build production through “capital-light” agreements in which Amyris provides technology and plant design and mill owners contribute capital to convert their mills to produce Amyris renewable products.

The letter of intent agreements with Bunge, Cosan and Guarani should cover Amyris’s planned production through 2013-2014. Combined with the Boa Vista mill, this results in a combined crushing capacity of over 12 million tons, and a potential capacity of up to 26 Mgy of renewable diesel fuel. Amyris said that it will invest up to $200 million in the project.

Amyris produces its renewable fuel by synthetically altering the metabolic pathways of microorganisms, such as yeast, to engineer “living factories” that transform sugar into products such as diesel fuel and jet fuel. Among the company’s investors are Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, The Texas Pacific Group, Votorantim, and Grupo Cornelio Brennand.

E.coli

Last month, a research team including members of the Keasling lab at the DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute and LS9 announced a major breakthrough in their ability to make renewable diesel and other advanced biofuels directly from cellulosic biomass in a one-step process. Consolidated bio-processing — converting pretreated biomass in one step to a renewable fuel, eliminating the two-step procedure of using acids or enzymes to extract sugars, and then fermenting sugars into fuel — is considered a critical path element in driving down the costs of cellulosic biofuel towards cost parity with gasoline, and has been widely described as “the holy grail of biofuels”. The particular breakthrough here is that – to this point, the small number of companies that have developed an organism capable of CBP — most notably, Mascoma and Qteros — have been working with ethanol as a target fuel.

Last week, GlycosBio provided an update to the Digest on the latest in its commercialization efforts, confirming negotiations undergoing with “multiple” partners for its glycerine-based chemicals, including lactic and acetic acid, and ethanol. CEO Rick Cilento emphasized the company’s non-sugar based approach to producing higher value products in an environment where sugar prices have doubled globally in the past 18 months. The company draws its glycerine feedstocks from the oleochemicals industry or free fatty acids, and is currently capable of producing target chemicals at parity with the cost of petroleum-based chemicals, and maintaining a 45-55 percent gross margin on production. The company uses a series of microbes, primarily off the e.coli platform, but now expanded to include non e.coli-based organisms at this stage.

The Q microbe

In January, we reviewed the latest with Qteros, a pioneer in one-step, consolidate bioprocessing of biomass into cellulosic ethanol. The company’s signature IP is the “Q Microbe”, a species of clostridium, which is a naturally-discovered (but subsequently enhanced) consolidated bioprocessor that consumes (pre-treated) biomass, converts to simple sugars and then converts into ethanol. “What we’re really making is cheap sugars. Once you have that you have compounds that are identical to precursors for many useful products,” CTO Kevin Gray said in describing the company’s mission. The Q Microbe’s major promise: it saves 30 percent on the cost of cellulosic conversion, can realize 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of corn stalks and, according to EVP Jef Sharpe, “Qteros will not need fossil fuel inputs for fertilizer or distillation of the ethanol because the lignin portion of the plant material will be burned to generate the heat necessary to refine the ethanol. There will also be leftover green electricity created.”

Euglena

Last week in Japan, Nippon Oil and Hitachi Plant Technologies announced a radical new technology to grow and harvest renewable oils from Euglena, pond-dwelling single-celled organisms, of the kingdown Excavata, that have both heterotrophic abilities to consume foods as well as photosynthesize energy using chloroplasts. The joint venture has developed a culturing system to produce Euglana at higher productivity rates than corn or sugarcane, and the project leaders say that their current goal is to reduce production costs below $3.00 per gallon ($0.80 per liter), and aims to convert the oils to renewable jet fuel. The venture partners say that they expect to produce Euglena biofuel by 2015.

Lemna

In Indonesia, the national government has approved PetroAlgae protein for importation, and use as a raw material in animal feed in Indonesia, after the Ministry of Agriculture completed testing. According to a statement by PetroAlgae, “Licensees of the PetroAlgae production system will be expected to follow the Guidance and Procedures for the Registration of Animal Feed in Indonesia.” The protein is a co-product of PetroAlgae’s core bio-crude (renewable fuel feedstock) production system, using a variety of microcrops but currently commercializing a production system based on lemna. The announcement clears the way not only for PetroAlgae operations in Indonesia, but in neighboring countries which would utilize Indonesia as a secondary market for the protein co-product.

Wolffia

In Thailand, Digest subscriber Andrew K. Salzer writes, “we are currently producing and consuming 14 tons of Wolffia Globossa — also known as Asian watermeal — per day for duck feed. We utilize the duck manure to grow the W. Globosa as well as three kinds of carp and two kinds of tilapia, with no purchased feed for the fish and no urea for the aquatic plants. We have also seeded the ponds with a local freshwater clam to remove algea, bacteria, viruses, ammonium and phosphate. We project that 100 tons per day of W. Globosa could be harvested from our 100 hecatares of ponds.” (Editor’s note: this equates to 100 grams per square meter per day, or up to 2.5 times that achieved sustainably in previous microcrop projects, including algae.) Wolffia is a microscopic flowering plant — so small that 12 plants could “tastefully fit on the head of a pin” according to davesgarden.com — which at one point was rumored to be among the platforms for Joule Biotechnolgies’ process. Wolffia is a member of the lemnacea family. PetroAlgae is currently licensing a process based on lemna.”

Microalgae

In addition to the focus on microbes, algae will continue to be very much in focus. _BiofuelsDigest

PDFs and PPTs from October 2009 IEC Conference Online

The October 2009 conference on IEC (Bussard) Fusion has put its presentations online in either PDF or PPT form for public access. The even took place on 12-13 Oct 2009 in Madison, Wisconsin. Researchers from Japan, Australia, and the US were among the presenters.

H/T to M. Simon (other interesting items at this link)

Brian Wang has a fascinating post linking IEC fusion with an intriguing plasma space drive. Certainly if fusion reactors that small and light could be made to work -- and linked to advanced plasma drive engines -- most of the solar system would suddenly come within reach from Earth orbit.

Next Generations Biofuels Feedstocks Conference

The Next Generations Biofuels Feedstocks Conference will be held in San Francisco at La Meridien Hotel Nov 16-17 2009.

The event will cover developments in Algae, Jatropha, Cellulosic and Wood Based Ethanol, Camelina, Biobutanol, Miscanthus, Sweet Sorghum, Drop in Fuels, Bio-Oils and Synthetic Fuels. For more information or to attend the event, visit www.greenpowerconferences.com....Riggs Eckelberry, will speak in the Keynote Session of the Next Generation Biofuels Feedstocks conference in San Francisco on November 16, 2009.

Eckelberry [CEO of Origin Oil algal fuels company] will join representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Algal Biomass Organization (ABO), Green Flight Foundation, Solazyme, Energy Biosciences Institute and Monsanto as a keynote speaker. He will join the keynote session "Plantation & Sustainable Feedstock Supplies," which will explore the potential role of next generation biofuels and their impacts on land use and sustainability _Moneycentral

Biofuels represent a threat to green fanatics who wish to starve western industrial countries of their energy supplies. Fundamentalist greens likewise view nuclear energy as a threat to their ability to shut the western economies down.

Fortunately, these eco-zealots and quasi-terrorists do not have total control over all western nations -- although they control large sections of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, and the US executive and congress in Washington. It will be fascinating to watch the greens trying to shut down all viable forms of energy -- while supporting solar and wind, which are non-viable for baseload power at this time.

Biomass Conference Announcements

Next Generations Biofuels conference will be held 28 - 30 September, 2009, in Amsterdam

Algae Biomass Summit will be held 7 - 9 October, 2009, in San Diego. Craig Venter will be a speaker.

Big money interests are swarming all over biomass and biofuels at this time. Part of the interest is due to current international emphasis on carbon neutral energy technologies, and part of the emphasis is a recognition that sooner or later fossil fuel resources will grow more expensive than alternative sources of energy.

Meanwhile, California company Tolero Energy has licensed a fast pyrolysis process from the University of Georgia.

The biomass is heated at carefully controlled high temperatures in the absence of oxygen, and are rapidly condensed into a bio-oil that can be added to biodiesel or petroleum diesel. Other pyrolysis by-products are gas and bio-char, which can be used as a soil amendment. _BiofuelsDigest

Tolero plans to utilise dead biomass from forests, including the massive pine beetle kill across millions of acres of western pine forest.

7th Annual Int. Energy Conversion Conference

From 2-5 August, 2009, in Denver Colorado, the 7th Annual International Energy Conversion Conference will explore a wide range of topics of interest to Al Fin Energy readers:

The 7th IECEC will explore the future of clean energy systems through a series of panel discussions and technical paper presentations. This year's hot topics include:

* Alternative power systems – such as fuel cell technology and solar system technology
* Biofuels, including biodiesel fuels and fuels created from food-waste
* Electric power systems which would replace traditional fossil fuel based propulsion systems
* Nanotechnlology applications for solar power systems, among many others. There will also be a discussion of future energy policy needs to answer the demand for “green” energy systems. _IECEC

In a special joint conference with the "Jet Propulsion Conference" the IECEC will also be taking a look at biofuels as the source of rocket propulsion fuel for space launch.

The 7th IECEC is sponsored by Battelle Memorial Institute and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The 45th JPC is sponsored by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, and Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

For more information, visit http://www.aiaa.org/events/IECEC or http://www.aiaa.org/events/JPC, or contact Duane Hyland, at 703.264.7558 or duaneh@aiaa.org. Registration for both conferences is complimentary for credentialed members of the press.

AIAA is the world's largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession. With more than 35,000 individual members worldwide, and 90 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit www.aiaa.org. Bioenergy