India Looks to Colonise South America, Myanmar

While China is hard at work colonising Africa, India is looking farther abroad to South America in order to provide the necessities for its growing population.

“We have formed a consortium of 14 vegetable oil companies, which is in talks with the governments of Paraguay, Uruguay, and Myanmar for buying large tracts of land for cultivating soya bean, sunflower and pulses,” Ashok Sethia, president of the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India, said.

....Analysts say factories and property developers are buying up farmland, while farm output is also restricted by the poor development of irrigation facilities across much of the country.

“There is too much pressure on our farmland and the government knows it has a difficult task ahead in maintaining food supplies,” Sethia said. _Source

China and India have both outgrown their available resources, due to the gross inefficiencies under which both systems of government operate. Other nations do well with higher population densities, but the corruption present in the systems of India and China are difficult to expurgate.

China is already sponsoring the wholesale destruction of ancient rainforests in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. for the valuable hardwood and to make way for huge palm oil plantations. Unfortunately, the third world colonisers are likely to destroy the quality of the land that they appropriate, leaving their host countries even poorer than when they began.

Sun + Desert + Seawater = Abundant Food, Energy, Freshwater, Cool Temperatures

Humans are just beginning to learn how to use all the components of the good life that are available on the planet. Rumours of the collapse of Earth's ecosystems have been grossly overstated.

The installations would turn deserts into lush patches of vegetation, according to its designers, and do away with the need to dig wells for fresh water, an activity that has depleted aquifers across the world.

.....Above certain temperatures the amount of water lost through leaves' stomata rises so much plants stop their photosynthesis and do not grow. The solar farm planned by the project runs seawater evaporators, pumping damp, cool air through the greenhouses. This reduces the warmth inside by about 15C, compared with the temperature outside.

At the other end of the greenhouse from the evaporators, water vapour is condensed. Some of this fresh water is used to water the crops, some for cleaning the solar mirrors.

"So we've got conditions in the greenhouse of high humidity and lower temperature," said Paton. "The crops sitting in this slightly steamy, humid condition can grow fantastically well."

The designers said that virtually any vegetables could be grown in the greenhouses. The demonstration plants already produce lettuces, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The nutrients to grow the plants could come from local seaweed or be extracted from the seawater.

Michael Pawlyn, of Exploration Architecture, based in London, worked on the Eden Project for seven years and is now part of the Sahara Forest team. He said that the Seawater Greenhouse and CSP provided substantial synergies for each other. "Both technologies work extremely well in hot, dry, desert locations. CSP produces a lot of waste heat and we'd be able to use that to evaporate more seawater from the greenhouse. And CSP needs a supply of clean, de-mineralised water in order for the [electricity generating] turbines to function and to keep the mirrors at peak output. It just so happens the Seawater Greenhouse produces large quantities of this."

Paton said the greenhouse produced more than five times the fresh water needed to water the plants inside, so some of the water could be released to the outside, creating a microclimate for hardier plants such as jatropha, a crop that can be turned into biofuel.

The cost of the Sahara Forest Project could be relatively low as both CSP and Seawater Greenhouses are proven technologies. The designers estimate that building 20 hectares (nearly 50 acres) of greenhouses combined with a 10MW CSP scheme would cost about 80m euro (GBP 65m)...Paton said groups in countries across the Middle East, including in UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, have expressed interest in possibly funding demonstration projects. _Source

The sun, desert, seawater, and money for financing are all there. What is lacking is the human imagination, initiative, and expertise to put the plans into motion.

The only shortages present on the human planet Earth, is a shortage of human capital. The enemies of human capital development are many: politics as usual, vested interests such as ruling classes, powerful criminal conglomerates and labour unions, political parties, and other established "guilds of power" who like things the way they are.

Market economics hit vested interests like a freight train in the 18th and 19th centuries, unleashing a wave of revolution that has only begun to manifest. The Pelosis and Putins of the world want to turn things back to the old days of one party rule, with a firm clamp of government power choking the dynamism of free markets.

The upcoming US election is an important pivot point in whether history will turn back to the old ways of autocratic rule (Pelosi, Boxer, Obama's socialism etc), or whether the free market will continue to work toward a "singularity" or revolution in disruptive technologies.

If European voters could decide, they would choose to go back to the old ways. But Americans are not Europeans, thank Apollo, and they will decide.

Smart Coal: Coal to Liquids

Coal can be converted to liquids profitably as long as the oil price remains over 80$ a barrel. Brian Westenhaus has an article today on coal-to-liquids (CTL) that looks at some of the details.

The developed world can solve its oil and gas problems with F-T. All the facts and sources are enough to make an oil exporter very nervous, indeed....

...even today with oil coming back to near $100 a barrel the F-T processes can be highly competitive. It’s the carbon and hydrogen available in the feedstocks that make pricing work or not. Coal at $50 a ton, as shown by Sasol can yield 1.25 barrels of oil equivalent, can be worth twice the feedstock price. South Africa found that Sasol profits got so high that excess profit taxes were levied.

In the U.S. several companies have started coal to liquid process experiments that range from pilot plants to commercial installations. The big oil firms like Shell, Exxon and StatoilHydro are already running in South Africa, Malaysia and New Zealand closing in on 60,000 barrels a day of production.

The little guys like American Clean Coal Fuels who is developing a 30,000-barrel per day combined biomass and coal plant in Oakland Illinois uses carbon capture and sequestration to keep the unused CO2 from the atmosphere.

Baard Energy is building a 53,000-barrel per day combined biomass and coal plant in Wellsville Ohio with a market for the excess CO2 headed to oil field enhanced recovery. _NewEnergyandFuel

The CO2 produced can be piped to an algae oil operation conveniently located next to the CTL plant. Biomass can be easily integrated into the gasification and F-T process as well, providing a multi-feedstock, multi-product operation.

Previously published at Al Fin

Ammonia Fuel Cells Get Catalysed

Ammonia is a potentially rich source of hydrogen for fuel cells. All it needed was a good catalyst that would reform NH3 into Hydrogen and Nitrogen.

The HYPERMEC 10010 is a ruthenium-based catalyst which delivers ammonia conversion at 400°C. This catalyst is available in powder or pellet form. The current pre-commercial base metal catalyst HYPERMEC 10510 will offer ammonia conversion at a lower cost at slightly higher temperatures, and is expected to be available to customers by the end of 2008.

_GCC

Pure hydrogen is difficult to handle, for small vehicular uses. But hydrogen reformed from methane, methanol, ammonia, etc. is extremely manageable.

Ethanol Blender Pumps, No Mandates, More

New "blender pumps" being produced for automobiles in Kansas, will allow the blending of ethanol into gasoline at controlled rates of 10%, 20%, 30%, and 85% by volume. They will permit the adjustment of ethanol proportional burn according to availability.

EPA allows either a 10 percent or an 85 percent mixture of ethanol and gasoline. E-10 is viewed as acceptable for all vehicles and E-85 is acceptable for flex-fuel- vehicles that have been specially manufactured with alcohol resistant tanks and fittings plus a means to reset the engine to efficiently burn the high octane alcohol fuel.

... _Source

At the Republican convention in St. Paul, the Republican Party decided to drop ethanol mandates from its platform, and to let the market set the amount of ethanol to be included in fuels. That is certainly one large step away from special-interest politics, and one that Al Fin applauds.

A number of new crops for biofuels are being tried out. One interesting crop is "false flax", or camelina sativa. Camelina seed contains 40% oil, and yields more oil than soybeans per acre. Camelina is frost tolerant, grows on marginal lands, and can be planted as a cover crop after harvesting wheat and other crops. Camelina oil is high in omega-3 fats, which also gives it a market as a human food.

New Mexico researchers plan a commercial demonstration of algae oil within 18 months. That is an ambitious schedule, but then New Mexico is apparently expecting great things out of algal biofuels for its state's economic future.

Bioenergy is acquiring greater prominence among policymakers and newsmakers. South Korea's Knowledge and Economy Minister recently emphasised the importance of bioenergy:

Knowledge and Economy Minister Lee Yoon-ho says that bioenergy or biomass will be considered the most important and useful among new sources of renewable energy for a significant time in the future. _Source

Bioenergy has been important to humans since the time the use of fire was mastered. By learning to produce bioenergy without stripping rainforests, wildlife habitats, and depleting food sources, humans will demonstrate a rite of passage.

More on New Austin, Texas Biomass Plant

The New York Times is not the first place one looks for information on biomass energy plants, but a recent issue presented a fair near-term outlook for biomass electrical plants in the US.

When completed in 2012, the East Texas plant will be able to generate 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 75,000 homes. That is small by the standards of coal-fired power plants, but plants fueled by wood chips, straw and the like — organic materials collectively known as biomass — have rarely achieved such scale.

Austin Energy, a city-owned utility, has struck a $2.3 billion, 20-year deal to be the sole purchaser of electricity from Nacogdoches Power, the company that will build the plant for an undisclosed sum. On Thursday, Austin’s City Council unanimously approved the deal, which would bring the Austin utility closer to its goal of getting 30 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020....

...More than 100 biomass power plants are connected to the electrical grid in the United States, according to Bill Carlson, former chairman of USA Biomass, an industry group. Most are in California or the Northeast, but some of the new ones are under development in the South, a region with a large wood pulp industry.

The last big wave of investment in the biomass industry came during the 1980s and early 1990s. Interest is rising again as states push to include more renewable power in their mix of electricity generation.

Last week, Georgia Power asked state regulators to approve the conversion of a coal plant into a 96-megawatt biomass plant. An additional 50-megawatt plant in East Texas is expected to be under construction by September....

....In California, which has the most biomass plants in the country, momentum is reviving after years of decline. The number of biomass plants has dropped to fewer than 30, from 48 in the early 1990s, because of the closing of many sawmills and the energy crisis early this decade, said Phil Reese of the California Biomass Energy Alliance. Six to eight of the mothballed plants are gearing up to restart, Mr. Reese said, helping California meet its renewable energy goals.

At least three biomass plants have been proposed in Connecticut, and another three in Massachusetts — though last week one of these, a $200 million, 50-megawatt biomass plant proposed for the western part of the state, experienced a regulatory setback because of concerns about truck traffic. _NYT

Al Fin is not particularly pleased to see biomass getting all this attention in the national press. The economics of biomass will continue to suit the local and regional level needs long before it rises to the level of the national and international stage. In the US, it is the state governors and legislators who should be out in front pushing bioenergy wherever the resources exist.

The US Congress under Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and the rest of the inept crew, will not work in a timely manner to assure the US of the energy resources it needs for the next half century. Since that is about how long it will take renewable energies to come into their own on a national and international scale, it should be obvious to any voter in the US that they would have to be a total moron to vote to keep a Democrat Party Senator of Congressman in office--at least until we can get past multiple current quasi-crises in energy, global jihad, Russian neo-imperialism, and Chinese hegemonism.

Of course, it never speaks highly for one's intelligence when he expects strict rationality from the American voter. Or any population of voters, for that matter.

Natural Gas Supply in the US Jumps

"Peak Energy" doomsters have suffered numerous setbacks recently, with the drop in oil prices from near $150 a barrel in July to around $115 a barrel for the past weeks. Recent boosts in estimated US supplies of natural gas are another thorn in the side of would-be energy apocalyptics. Improved energy recovery technologies are making deposits of oil and gas more recoverable, and very economic at today's energy prices.

U.S. gas production is up 9% this year - a rate of increase not seen since 1984 - with most of that gain coming from natural-gas shale, particularly the Barnett Shale, a deposit that now produces 7% of the country’s gas supply. Indeed, there could be as much as 842 trillion cubic feet of retrievable gas in shale deposits throughout the United States alone, according to Navigant Consulting. That would support the current level of U.S. consumption for about 40 years....Shale beds are a major part of the story. The Barnett - with reserves of 2.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and as much as 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas resources - was the first shale field to undergo major development, and has seen output increase tenfold since 2001. It’s just one of at least 24 shale beds in North America. The Haynesville in Louisiana and the Marcellus in Appalachia may be even bigger, but will require further development and won’t come online for another two to five years.

The vast potential of fields like these has only been unlocked recently with advances in the technology of horizontal drilling hydraulic fracturing. Horizontal drilling, or slant drilling, allows producers to drill laterally beneath cities and neighborhoods, and hydraulic fracturing is simply a method by which water is pumped into the rock to break the sediment and release the gas. _SeekingAlpha

Doomsday has become an obsession -- a quasi-religion -- for legions of people with nothing important to do with their time or lives. Flailing about for a cause, these unfortunates have seized upon Y2K, Global Warming Catastrophe, Peak Oil, Overpopulation, and any number of other dubious doomsdays. All in the futile quest for a sense self-importance.

Typical loser political activist mentality. Too bad they never acquired any useful skills, or they may have been able to contribute to a productive cause.

Gasifying the World to Save It

Gasification involves the flash heating of substances to above 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, in limited amounts of oxygen. Most of the yield is a combination of H2 and CO, referred to as syngas or sometimes "coal gas". Any hydrocarbon can be gasified in that manner, including garbage, biomass, coal, shale oil, heavy oils, etc. Nexterra Energy of Canada has developed a process whereby syngas can be conveyed from where it is produced to another location for burning or use in synthesis of fuels. Nexterra has recently obtained new financing to allow it to scale up its process to service Canadian industries, including lime kilns.

Nexterra’s technology uses wood chips or other solid fuels to create relatively clean syngas, which can then be burned in a traditional gas power generation system. The feedstock is put through a tightly controlled series of steps including drying, pyrolysis, gasification and reduction, and in the end, the incombustible and dirty ash is removed and the hydrocarbon-rich syngas is piped away. The company is targeting plant-scale operations in the forest products, institutional, power generation and pulp and paper manufacturing sectors. _Source

Other companies are working on gasification of garbage and biomass, and others are using coal , oil shale, and heavy oils as feedstock.

The US Air Force recently performed an in flight test of synthetic fuel using natural gas as the starting point, but syngas could also serve as feedstock for synthesis of liquid fuels including jet fuel, diesel, gasoline, etc. Chemists are busy at work developing more economical catalysts and synthesis processes for conversion of syngas to both simple hydrocarbons and alcohols, and more complex hydrocarbons -- even plastics.

The opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs will be significant. Some small biomass or gasification companies in your area may come up with the winning formula. Always remember that biomass has very low energy density, so that local and regional processing and pre-processing plants will be needed for some time. These local processors will accept bundled biomass and chip it, cube it, sometimes torrefy it, pelletize it, or will increasingly gasify it either for on site generation of power, or for shipment to another facility for use or processing.

Bioenergy News

Destiny, Florida, is to be the site of a 41,000 acre farm where sweet sorghum, algae, jatropha, and other staple biofuels crops will be grown under varying conditions, to optimise the yield as far as possible. Finding the best varieties which grow under diverse conditions will be invaluable.

At Purdue University, researchers are learning to play the maize genome like a harmonica.

"Maize has the same genes arranged in the same order and on the same chromosomes as the other grasses," said McCann, an associate professor of biological science. "We'll switch genes on and off as we identify them to see what they do. Once we know the genes and their functions, then we can assess which ones might make good targets for modification for enhanced biomass and sugars for processing into biofuel."

A bioenergy company named AXI is attempting something analogous with algal strains. Using non-genetic aqua-farming methods, AXI will assist algal biofuels makers in optimising the best strains of algae for their purposes.

In New Zealand, government scientists predict that growing pine forests on less than 2.8 hectares of poor quality land will be sufficient to fuel New Zealands highway fleets of the future.

Researchers from Texas A&M are developing drought-tolerant strains of maize. Such strains should allow a broader range of growing regions for the crop.

More on the "food vs. fuel" debate.

While the modern remedy for energy shortages in population dense areas of the world is more nuclear power and judicious use of fossil fuels, in less population dense areas bioenergy will make an increasing impact on energy needs. Over the next 10 to 20 years, bioenergy will grow from its rural and regional bases to displace a larger part of the fossil fuel infrastructures. It will probably take from 2 to 3 decades for bioenergy to substantially displace fossil fuels from high density population areas.

During that entire time, nuclear energy will take on an increasingly important role, as will solar energy (both PV and solar thermal). These electricity producing technologies will work side by side to allow conversion of transportation fleets from a combustion to an electrical basis. At the same time, fuel cells driven by methane, methanol, hydrogen, and other simple fuels (including carbonised biomass) will also begin to drive large proportions of motor vehicles and homes.

Methane, Methanol: Simple Fuels Making Sense

Methane is CH4, methanol is CH3OH. The simplest hydrocarbon, the simplest alcohol. Small molecules that promise to explode the petroleum monopoly on liquid fuels, likely leaving Mssrs. Chavez, Putin, Ahmedinejad, Qadafi and company in tears. Why? Because they're cheap and easy to make, and besides working in IC engines and fuel cells as is, they can be chemically converted to more complex hydrocarbons, plastics, and other organic compounds.

MCI has been pursuing the development of a process for the synthesis of methanol (CH3OH)—later used in the production of olefins and aromatics—using the CO2 emitted from factories and hydrogen obtained from water photolysis. The effort is part of the company’s strategy to develop innovative processes to contribute to significant reductions of greenhouse gases.

The pilot plant, located at MCI’s Osaka plant, will have a production capacity of approximately 100 tonnes of methanol per year, using about 150-160 tonnes of CO2 emitted the Osaka plant. Construction of the ¥1.5 billion (US$13.7 million) plant will begin in October, and is due for completion in February 2009. The plant is projected to come online in March 2010. _GCC

While using CO2 from emissions may make sense from a "greenhouse gas" point of view, the biosphere could really use that CO2. Much more reasonable to grow the biosphere and then make methanol from biomass. Brian Westenhaus looks at the prospects for methane in automobiles etc.

I have a certain confidence that.....the compressed methane route for fuel is going to have a few good years. It may be much longer than that should the biomass people come up with a cheap process to convert biomass carbon back to hydrocarbon in methane form. This is a crack in the gasoline monopoly..... Just to throw out another bit for the future - methane is one of the leading contenders for fuel cells too....Methane is way past being a fuel to watch. It’s time to look into how it might work and the costs to change over. _NewEnergyand Fuel

In other energy news, giant conglomerate ADM is collaborating with John Deere and chemical giant Monsanto to develop productive uses for corn stover and other crop residues.

The companies will work together to identify environmentally and economically sustainable methods for the harvest, storage and transport of corn stover—the stalks, leaves and cobs of corn plants. Corn stover can be used in feed for animals, as biomass to generate steam and electricity or as a cellulosic feedstock for biofuel production.

Stover is usually left on the field, where, in proper amounts, it helps reduce soil erosion and build up soil organic matter. A 170-bushel-per-acre corn crop, which was the average last year in Iowa, also produces about four dry tons of stover. The United States Department of Agriculture forecasts that in 2008, farmers will harvest 12.3 billion bushels of corn, resulting in approximately 290 million tons of stover. _GCC

While you were sleeping, hundreds of thousands of people were dreaming up ways to create more energy cleanly and economically. The news media will be the last to know what is going to happen.

Fertilising the Bioenergy Revolution . . . . .

About 75% of all fertilizers and fertilizer technology used around the world today were developed or improved during the 1950s to 1970s by scientists and engineers at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the United States... _Biopact

If the biosphere of Earth is to provide a substantial portion of future biofuels and electrical power, the process will need to be fertilised in a sustainable way. Nothing is gained by depleting soils or destroying land and ocean habitats of plants and animals.

Borlaug thinks the price tag for increasing productivity in Africa might be quite high unless new fertilizers are developed. The fertilizer industry therefor needs to do everything in its power to minimize that cost. Farmers are paying way too much for fertilizer products because we are transporting millions of tons of material that is not nutrient and because much of the nutrients in applied fertilizers are never used by the crop. Nutrient losses to the environment are high with consequences for global warming and water pollution, Borlaug says.

According to Borlaug, work should begin now on the next generation of fertilizer products using advanced techniques such as nanotechnology and molecular biology, especially in conjunction with plant genetics research. 'Smart' fertilizer products that will release nutrients only at the time and in the amount needed should be developed, he thinks.
_Biopact

Meanwhile, scientists are trying to understand how cyanobacteria can be twice as efficient (even up to ten times more efficient) as plants in converting the sun's radiant energy to chemical energy.

In other news, syngas made from the gasification of biomass is finally being understood by more people as a promising approach to bioenergy.

Reducing solid waste was a key consideration in the founding of Ze-gen. Davis said more than 300 million tons of waste end up in US landfills every year, about 15 percent of it wood waste from construction. Ze-gen's idea: Tap the waste's energy potential.

The company's engineers determined that channel induction furnaces used in the steel industry provided an energy-efficient way to turn construction debris into a high-quality, clean syngas. The electricity used for the furnace offsets about 15 percent of the energy produced by the syngas, Davis said.

The construction debris is first ground up, then injected deep into the molten metal with ceramic cylinders, much like dipping forks into a fondue pot. The intense heat converts the debris to gas. Heavy metals, such as lead from paint, settle to the bottom of the bath while other contaminants are trapped in crust of silica, known as slag, that forms on top.
_BioEnergy

There are many other approaches to biomass gasification, but the molten metal approach has the advantage of separating out and trapping contaminants.

Can This Be Right?

This article from India suggests that just 1% of total land area of India devoted to algal farming could provide for all of India's liquid fuel needs. Of course, one algal biodiesel company in the US claims that just 10% of New Mexico's land area could supply the US with liquid fuel. But those yield numbers are wildly exaggerated by a factor of 10, if not 100. The Indian experts claim that 10,000 litres of biodiesel can be produced per acre. That sounds fairly realistic, once processes are scaled up--which may take ten years.

Experts say that algae farming in less than 1 per cent of India’s total land can make the country self-sufficient in liquid fuel. Algae yield from one acre of wasteland can be 10 times more than jatropha and by a conservative estimate over 10,000 litres of oil can be produced from one acre of waste/degraded land, they add.

And not just this, algae farming for biofuels can also provide a solution to the food versus fuel debate. As algae do not need agriculture land, it can be grown using non-potable or sea water.

“Algae farming for oil can be great opportunity for India, its farmers and industry. Algae is fast emerging as the most efficient source of feedstock for biodiesel industry,” says CEO of the Growdiesel Climate Care Council Atul Saxena.....While long-term impact of biodiesel on Indian economy is clear, the question is what feedstock for biodiesel can be sustainable and profitable in the long term.

“As sustainable alternatives are sought in a bid to enhance energy security as well as reduce carbon emissions, the focus of researchers has shifted to next generation biodiesel — those not made from food crops such as soya or palm. It has been conclusively established that, in terms of per hectare oil yield, algae could be the most efficient source of feedstock for biodiesel industry,” explains Saxena. While jatropha takes two-three years for commercial yield, algae starts yielding from two-three days and thereafter the algae oil can be harvested everyday. Algae oil can be suitably converted to biodiesel and left over deoiled cake serves as an excellent source of high value protein to supplement the cattle feed.

.....The summit will focus on producing next generation biofuels using algae as the main feedstock. The main objective is to disseminate information regarding recent research and development activities in the field of Algae, mass production systems, photobioreactor technologies and other important areas of algae biofuel industry. _Source

Sadly, this is all we can expect from academics, think tanks, and governmental/intergovernmental bureaucrats. Form a committee to study an issue and submit a report to another committee, write a paper whose primary recommendation is that a follow-up paper be funded... and so on. Hold a conference when all else fails. That way the various bureaucrats, functionaries, and academics can argue over whose paper-trail gravy trains should receive the lion's share of future financing.

No. If you want something done, you must give the creative people of the planet--the entrepreneurs, inventors, working engineers, etc--incentives to unleash their creativity on the problem. Modern governments tax and regulate enterprise so highly to fund and field massive bureaucracies, that incentives are often slanted toward the career bureaucrat and quasi civil servant, at the expense of the makers and doers.

Society gets the type of people it sets the table for. In other words, if you vote for people who are bound to grow government ever larger--and tax enterprise ever more--then blame yourself for being the fuckup you clearly are. Because if the society you are creating is ever able to solve any important problem, it will be in spite of what you do, not because of it.

Sweet Potato and Cassava Have Higher Yields of Ethanol than Maize

Scientists studying sweet potato starch yields in Maryland and Alabama, and cassava starch yields in Alabama, discovered that these crops yielded significantly more starch for conversion to ethanol than maize.

In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report. The same was true of tropical cassava in Alabama.

The sweet potato carbohydrate yields approached the lower limits of those produced by sugarcane, the highest-yielding ethanol crop. Another advantage for sweet potatoes and cassava is that they require much less fertilizer and pesticide than corn.

...For the sweet potatoes, carbohydrate production was 4.2 tons an acre in Alabama and 5.7 tons an acre in Maryland. Carbohydrate production for cassava in Alabama was 4.4 tons an acre, compared to 1.2 tons an acre in Maryland. For corn, carbohydrate production was 1.5 tons an acre in Alabama and 2.5 tons an acre in Maryland. _USDA_via_GCC

In order to compete with maize ethanol, less labour-intensive methods of planting and harvesting will need to be devised. Automating those processes--preferably using solar powered machinery--should make a significant difference in North American ethanol production.

The same authors claim that kudzu can offer yields comparable to maize and cane. We'll see. H/T Greencarcongress.com

Byogy Synthetic Gasoline, Nuclear "Batteries" etc

Image Source

Brian Westenhaus provides a more in depth look at Byogy's intriguing synthetic gasoline-from-biomass process.

The Byogy process is a stack of processes starting with pre-treating the “energy crop” such as municipal waste in the Byogy plan. Then the crop is fed to a fermentation process or the waste is headed on to gasification. From fermentation the main products go on to the thermo chemical process with the leavings like minerals, water and carbon products recycled back in and hard residuals passed on to the gasification process.

The gasification process outputs hydrogen, syngas and likely CO to forward on to the thermo chemical process. Gasification uses heat and Byogy plans to channel the used available heat back into the fermentation output stream preheating the feedstock....The fermentation process looks to be headed to a methane output for the Ethylene from Concentrated Liquid-phase Acetylene – Integrated, Rapid and Safe or “ECLAIRS.” This process is an innovation in that the methane is reformed up to first acetylene, then adding back in the hydrogen to get to ethylene in the liquid state. From there the ethylene is oligomerized up to gasoline or higher such as diesel or jet fuel. _NewEnergyandFuel

Brian goes on to look at the economics of the process, and at the implications of providing a price floor to oil, and of adding a large new source of methane to a market that is learning how to exploit the smallest hydrocarbon.

Brian also recently looked at the Hyperion "nuclear battery", expanding on a previous post by Brian Wang. If Hyperion can get the efficiencies close to what the two Brians suggest, the $25 million price tag for the 25 megawatt mini-reactor would be an excellent deal indeed. Safe, scalable nuclear fission may be closer than we think!

In other energy news, heavy equipment operators are experimenting with biodiesel blends, as well as electrical substitutes for diesel engines in heavy equipment.

Struggling forestry companies are betting that biomass to fuels/electricity will be their answer to shrinking profit margins.

Kenyans are turning to biodiesel from croton seeds--from the tropical croton tree. The most prolific sources of biodiesel feedstock come from tropical oilseed trees. But clever genetic scientists are learning how to tweak the genomes of crops so that cold weather crops can produce abundant oils.

The intensity of the scientific effort going into creating economic bioenergy sources, as well as the intense competition on the commercial front spurred by high oil costs, suggests that we are on the cusp of a new energy age. If we do not let Luddite politicians such as Pelosi, Boxer, Obama, Reid, Salazar etc. starve us of the energy we need, or let tinpot dictators such as Putin, Ahmedinejad, Chavez, etc. put Europe and the free Far East in thrall to their overpriced oil, society should ride the current wave without too much damage.

150 MW Biomass Generator Planned for Bristol

The greatest disadvantage to the use of biomass power generation on a large scale, is the sheer bulk and mass of the feedstock necessary to produce industrial scale power. There are several ways to solve the problem, but the use of cheap shipping by boat is one viable approach.

At 150MW, the proposed Portbury Dock Renewable Energy Plant would generate enough power for more than 200,000 homes by burning wood that would largely be brought to the plant by boat. Transporing biomass fuels in bulk by boat is highly energy efficient.

...Portbury Dock is the third of E.ON's biomass developments in the UK. The company already operates Scotland's largest dedicated biomass power station at Steven's Croft near Lockerbie and, earlier this year, received permission for a 25MW biomass station in Sheffield _Biopact

As the prices of oil, gas, and coal rise, biomass will become a more attractive alternative for electric power production and combined heat and power (CHP). Using cheap marine freight is one way around the bulkiness of the feedstock. For the majority of locations lacking a seaport, however, local and regional pre-processing and refinement of the feedstock to a more manageable and transportable form will be necessary. Biomass can now be converted to denser "bio-coal" (torrefaction), bio-gas (treated syngas), and liquid fuel (BTL), for local use or for transport. Biomass can also be baled, cubed, pelletised, and otherwise pre-processed for more convenient shipping and use.

The key to a broader use of biomass is diversification of approaches to best suit the available feedstock, installed infrastructure, and manpower expertise.

Master-Stroke by Researchers Yields One-Step Super Yeast for Cellulosic Ethanol

Japanese researchers have succeeded in integrating cellulolytic enzyme genes from koji mould, into a sake yeast. This yeast now has the the cellulolytic enzyme prominently sprinkled over its cell membrane, where it can break down cellulose from biomass, while the sake yeast itself ferments the resulting simple sugars into ethanol.

To create the super yeast that produces the bioethanol, koji mold genes that produce cellulolytic enzymes were integrated into sake yeast using cell surface engineering so that the enzymes are densely displayed on the surfaces of the yeast cells. Because super yeast combines the capabilities of koji mold, which converts the cellulose starch (cellooligosaccharide) into sugar (glucose), with that of yeast, which ferments sugar (glucose), it can produce ethanol by itself from cellulose pretreated with subcritical water

The combination of subcritical water treatment with super yeast enables clean and easy pretreatment, and simple and efficient ethanol production, which means that small-scale plants could be built and operated in many different rural locations where the plant materials are produced.

Gekkeikan Research Institute has already demonstrated at the experimental level that the new process can effectively produce ethanol from paddy straw and chaff, and it is now working to refine the process for commercial production through research aimed at boosting alcohol yield and integration with various other technologies. _Gekkeikan_via_Japanfs_via_autobloggreen

This one step process utilising a hybrid yeast w/mould genes, is just the beginning of the clever use of biotechnology for meeting the basic needs of human society. Consider it a humble, though important, beginning.

Getting to Oil Shales, Oil Sands, Heavy Oils, More

Extracting the energy from deposits of shale oil, oil sands, and heavy oil can be expensive. More than half of the oil in a conventional oil well is never recovered, due to expense. Various ingenious ways have been developed to get at that oil, but here is a new one that might get the biggest chunk of that energy out: seed the "exhausted" wells with micro-organisms that convert oil to natural gas.

The OU researchers found that they can use their organisms to convert hydrocarbons in oil reservoirs to natural gas. "Because two-thirds of U.S. oil is still in place, we can use these organisms to convert residual hydrocarbons into natural gas and create a new source of domestic energy. The concept of anaerobic metabolism is an innovative process and the OU initiative is the only one of its kind in the United States at the present time. We are also experimenting with shales and other unconventional reservoirs." _Bioenergy

Micro-organisms can also convert coal, oil shale, and oil sands to natural gas. That is extremely important for where the deposits are difficult to get to by conventional mining methods.

Natural gas can be converted to liquid fuels, to plastics, or to any other organic materials. Or the gas can be used to produce electricity, to drive transportation vehicles, or to cook your lunch.

Abundant Energy From . . . . . . Rutabagas?

Rutabagas produce a lot of starch, but scientists at Michigan State University have inserted a gene into rutabagas that causes them to produce oil instead of starch. They hope to tweak the rutabaga genome to produce a lot of oil.

Benning and his fellow researchers have inserted a gene called wrinkled1 into the rutabagas that regulates the conversion of carbohydrates into oil.

The hope is that the gene will make the rutabagas produce oil rather than starch inside their bulbous roots, turning these cold-resistant root vegetables into a viable biofuel crop for Michigan....If plants could be made that produce oil throughout, "we could use that vegetative tissue, all that biomass that is going into making a plant."
_Bioenergy

The most prolific oilseed crops grow best in the tropics. Being able to tweak the genomes of plants to create a prolific cold-weather oil producer could make a big difference in the economics of biodiesel and biofuels.

In other energy news, Nexterra Energy Corp. has developed a breakthrough method of producing syngas in one location, for transport and use at another location. This allows for the economy of scale in syngas production, which should gradually lead to regional centralisation of production with distributed use.

University of Nebraska researchers studied the sustainability of using corn stover for biofuels, and discovered that using a significant portion of stover for biofuels--but not all--can be sustainable. As always, further studied is required.

A Texas A&M developed process can convert waste to gasoline. The process is currently in the pilot phase.

2nd Generation Biofuels Summary

Popular Mechanics boils 2nd generation biofuels down to the basic essentials. A lot more will be involved, to ultimately determine the big winners and losers in the biofuels jackpot. But it is more likely that it will be a matter of years, rather than decades, before biofuels will begin to make a difference in the global energy picture.

celluosic ethanol biological method
Process*: Raw biomass is typically ground up and pretreated in an acid steam bath before soaking in a massive hot tub for several days. Enzymes break down rigid cellulose into simple sugars like xylose, similar to the sweetener in toothpaste, which can be fermented by yeast or bacteria; it is then distilled into fuel-grade ethanol.
Bottom Line: Fermenting cellulose currently involves a lot of water and several time-consuming steps, adding to expense. The first commercial facility is expected to open in Iowa by late 2011.
Innovators: Iogen (backed by Shell), POET, SunEthanol, Verenium
Freshwater Usage:** 3 gallons
Energy Yield***: 66%


celluosic ethanol [chemical ] method
Process*: Cornstalks, garbage and even old tires are blasted with several-thousand-degree heat in an anaerobic chamber. With no oxygen, biomass can’t combust. Instead, feedstocks break down into carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. This synthesis gas, or syngas, is cleaned, cooled and either ingested by bacteria or mixed with catalysts to produce ethanol and other alcohols.
Bottom Line: This method uses substantially less water and provides greater yields, but it has yet to be scaled to levels that compete with the ethanol fermentation industry. Plants are set to open in Pennsylvania and Georgia in late 2009.
Innovators: Coskata (backed by GM), Range Fuels
Freshwater Usage:** 1 gallon
Energy Yield***: 66%


algal biodiesel
Process*: Specially selected or genetically modified strains of algae are grown in enclosed bioreactors—tubes or plastic bags filled with water—and fed waste CO2 from heavy emitters like coal-fired power plants, cement kilns or breweries. The algae are then separated from water by centrifuge, and the oil is extracted with a solvent. It is then processed in
Bottom Line: Algae produce thousands of gallons more oil per acre than crops such as soy or palm, but growing and processing them at scale still present challenges. A number of U.S. facilities are slated to come on line by 2012.
Innovators: GreenFuel, HR Biopetroleum (backed by Shell), Solazyme, Solix
Freshwater Usage:** None
Energy Yield***: 103%


green gasoline
Process*: Simple sugars—either derived from breaking down tough, cellulosic feedstocks or from sources such as sugarcane—are reacted over solid catalysts to remove the oxygen locked inside their molecules and form high-energy hydrocarbons. Like crude run through traditional refineries, raw sugar feedstocks are separated to create the range of molecules in the fuels we know as gasoline, diesel and jet.
Bottom Line: Green incarnations of today’s fuels are the holy grail, but until cellulose can be cheaply converted to simple sugars, domestic potential will be limited. Virent hopes to have its gas in car tanks by 2012.
Innovators: Virent (backed by Shell and Honda)
Freshwater Usage:** None
Energy Yield***: 100%


biobutanol
Process*: Like ethanol, biobutanol is fermented by microorganisms from sugars, which are broken down from raw feedstocks and mixed with water. But for this process, the microbes have been genetically modified to produce an alcohol with a longer chain of hydrocarbons. Since butanol doesn’t mix with water at high concentrations, the finished fuel can be stored easily and transported within existing gasoline pipelines.
Bottom Line: Butanol is the rocket fuel of alcohols, but it has traditionally been derived from petroleum. Plants to produce it cheaply from renewable sources by 2012 are in the works in the U.S. and U.K.
Innovators: Cobalt Biofuels, Dupont (backed by BP), Gevo, Tetravitae Bioscience
Freshwater Usage:** N/A
Energy Yield***: 90%


designer hydrocarbons
Process*: By swapping out natural genes for synthetic ones, scientists trick microorganisms such as E. coli and yeast into converting simple sugars to diesel, gasoline and jet fuel instead of into fats or alcohols. As in traditional ethanol production, microbes ferment the sugars (in this case, from sugar cane) in a slurry, but since finished fuels don’t mix with water, the hydrocarbons are easily separated by centrifuge without expensive distillation.
Bottom Line: Designer fuels are ready to drop into engines, but unless they’re made in a closed-loop system, they’re water-intensive. The first commercial plant will be located in Brazil and is expected to start producing diesel in 2010.
Innovators: LS9, Amyris
Freshwater Usage:** 3 gallons
Energy Yield***: 106%


fourth gen fuels
Process*: Scientists have genetically engineered algae not just to turn CO2 into oil, but to continuously excrete that oil directly into the surrounding water. Since oil floats, harvesting it becomes simple work compared with the energy-intensive drying and extraction traditionally used for typical algae, which store oil within their cell walls. As with second-generation methods, the oil can then be processed into biodiesel.
Bottom Line: If they can perform at scale, these mutant algae may well be game changers. Synthetic Genomics hopes to have commercial amounts of biodiesel on the market within five years, though no plants have been built yet.
Innovators: Synthetic Genomics
Freshwater Usage:** None
Energy Yield***: 103% _PopMech

These are not the only approaches to next generation biofuels out there. Finland's Neste Oil has a hydrogenation process it applies to plant oils that creates a better diesel than anything that comes from an oil well. Germany's Choren creates hydrocarbons from biomass using gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. And there is constant jockeying for the best ethanol feedstock between maize, wheat, cane, sorghum, cassava, beets, and other plants including cattail! Likewise the competition between oilseed crops for biodiesel is a strong race between soy, rape, palm, and latecomers jatropha, moringa, and pongamia.

Longshot biofuel sources include the "diesel tree" from Brazil, and a scattering of natural hydrocarbon excretors including euphorbias and other latex producers.

Genetic engineers all over the world are working on ways to create more feedstock for the scores of biofuels processes being developed. The huge brouhaha earlier in the year over "fuels vs. foods" was fueled by uninformed hysteria similar to the climate hysteria that Al Gore leads. It is to be expected at any time when a centuries old infrastructure is to be replaced by something new. It was no surprise, though, that it was Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and several Saudis from OPEC who were loudest in condemning biofuels.

Bioenergy is ready for local and regional production at this time. Within ten years, bioenergy will grow to the national and international scale. If you want to get in on the ground floor, this is the time to make your move.

Previously published at Al Fin

Airlines Push for Reliable Source for Fuel

Airlines are heavily dependent upon a reliable supply of high quality fuel for daily operations. The price and supply instability of crude oil-based fuels is becoming a problem for airline operators.

Boeing and Air New Zealand later this year will test a biofuel made from the oil-rich seeds of the jatropha tree, a Mexican plant that grows in warm climates. Other synthetic fuel tests will follow on Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines flights. In February, Boeing partnered with Virgin Atlantic to test a flight that included a biofuel mixture of babassu oil, which comes from a palm tree in northern Brazil, and coconut oil.

"We're looking for something that is so correct in its performance that it can be interchanged with petroleum-based kerosene," Glover said. "From a distribution standpoint, from a technical standpoint, it needs to fit without modifications or special handling."...

More fuel sources could temper the effect oil speculation has on gas prices, and they could give carriers fuel at a cost they can count on, she said. But "you aren't going to find a fuel that's pennies on the dollar than what we find today," she said.

For travelers, that means that fewer flight options and charges for checked bags, drinks and other items are here to stay.

"Even if we were to double the volume we were to make in biofuels every year for the next 10 years, we're still looking at maybe this will impact 15 percent of the overall fuel supply," said Brian Fan, Cleantech's senior director of research.

"Realistically, for anything to be happening at scale, enough to actually impact an airline's bottom line, we're years away," Fan said. _AP_via_Biofuelsdigest

Realistically, it will be ten years before biofuels are supplying at least 10% of transportation fuels for airlines and ground fleets. Still, 10% reduction in petro-fuel demands will have a substantial impact on the national revenues of Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and all the other bloody tyrants who happen to be sitting on a load of underground oil.

Many people will not forget that Nancy Pelosi and Borbara Boxer are largely responsible for the squeeze that US and western businesses find themselves in. It is unlikely that they and their cronies will get off scot-free when all is said and done.