American garbage-disposal giant, Waste Management, has partnered with InEnTec, an Oregon-based company, to begin commercializing
a plasma-gasification process which converts garbage into energy.

Plasma gasification technology has been in development and pilot testing for decades. Major pilot plants, capable of processing 1,000 tonnes or more of garbage daily, are under development in Florida, Louisiana and California.

In theory, the process is simple. Torches pass an electric current through a gas (often ordinary air) in a chamber to create a superheated plasma with a temperature above 7,000 degrees Celsius. The plasma’s tremendous heat dissociates the molecular bonds of any garbage placed inside the chamber, converting organic compounds into syngas (a combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) and trapping everything else in an inert vitreous solid, called slag. The syngas can be used as fuel in a turbine to generate electricity. It can also be used to create ethanol, methanol and biodiesel. The slag can be processed into materials suitable for use in construction.

In practice, gasification has been unable to compete economically with traditional municipal waste processing. But the cost has been coming down, while energy prices have been going up.

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University of Georgia researchers have developed a new technology that promises to dramatically increase the yield of ethanol from readily available non-food crops, including the waste from corn and sugarcane harvests, weeds such as bermudagrass, switchgrass and napiergrass and even garden waste.

The new technology features a fast, mild, acid-free pretreatment process that increases the amount of simple sugars released from inexpensive biomass for conversion to ethanol by at least 10 times.

Currently, woody biomass requires soaking under high pressure and temperatures in expensive, environmentally aggressive alkalis or acids before it is subjected to enzymes that digest it, producing simple sugars. The harsh pretreatment solutions must then be removed and disposed of.

The University of Georgia technology eliminates the expense of harsh pretreatment chemicals and their disposal. The technology is available for licensing from the University of Georgia Research Foundation.

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A Baltimore, Maryland company, Algenol, has signed an $850 million deal with Biofields, a Mexican company, to grow algae for fuel production.

Algenol plans to make 100 million gallons of ethanol by the end of 2009 and to increase this to a billion gallons - more than 10% of the United States’ current ethanol capacity - by 2012. BioFields has signed an agreement to sell the fuel to the Mexican government, probably through the state oil monopoly Pemex.

Algenol has plans to expand the technique to locations beyond Mexico and is already targeting to build algae-to-ethanol farms on coasts in the United States.

Algenol will use a process he invented in the 1980s to coax individual algal cells to secrete ethanol. Paul Woods, Algenol’s chief executive, said he’s known about the technology for decades but that today’s record oil prices and rising alarm about global warming make it time to produce the fuel.

One advantage of ethanol from algae is its sheer productivity compared to agricultural crops. Algenol estimates it can make 6,000 gallons of ethanol from an acre of land. At that rate, if all U.S. ethanol was made from algae, it would only use 3 percent of the land that corn needs to make the fuel. Another advantage is  algae’s carbon-absorbing potential. Each 100 million gallons of ethanol from algae will absorb about 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

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As the world recognises the inevitability of peak oil and the necessity to reduce carbon emissions, the possibilty of  replacing fossil fuels with fuels produced from biomass - and the downside of doing so - is becoming an increasingly important issue.

Already ethanol is starting to play a part as a transport fuel in the Americas - with Brazil and the United States accounting for about 80% of world fuel ethanol consumption. Similarly, biodiesel is becoming a significant fuel in Europe.

But there are major questions about the value of using these "first generation" biofuels which are derived from feed stocks and crops like sugar cane and palm oil. Many argue that the real bioenergy revolution  will come with "second generation" biofuels produced from cellulosic feedstock like fast growing trees and grasses and agricultural waste. But how close are we to being able to achieve this? And what will be the costs?

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has produced an "Issue Brief" on bioenergy and biofuels.which discusses these issues in detail.

Click here to download the full report.

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Grain prices have soared in the past few years. Measured in US dollars, the price of corn, wheat and rice trebled and the price of soybeans doubled in the past three years. many press articles have blamed these price increases on the use of grains to make biofuels. But many other factors are much more important.

Rice Terraces Bali (by Atelier Teee ex Flickr)

• Plant-based fuel production accounts for just 3% of world demand from grain and has increased by about 50% in the three years That is, the increase in biofuel production accounts for only 1% of the demand for grains.
• The prices of barley and rice, which are not used to make fuel, went up just as much as corn which is - while the price of sugar, which is the major source of bioethanol, fell.
• These price increases have happened following a very long period of falling food prices. In the previous 30 years, food prices have fallen by 75%. Even at present levels, food prices are still only half what they were a generation ago.
• Prices are quoted in $US. The value of the $US dollar has dropped dramatically over the last five years. In Euro terms, prices of corn, wheat and rice have little more than doubled, rather than trebled.
• The price of grains has tracked the price of oil. At the time of the 1973 oil crisis, grain prices trebled even though there was no significant biofuel production.
• 36% of the world’s grain is used to feed livestock for meat production. The demand for meat increased enormously with the Chinese and Indian economies. In China, average meat consumption has increased from an average of 20 kilograms per capita in 1980 to over 50 kilograms per capita now. Another indication of the importance of the use of grain for livestock feed is the increase in the price of diary products which in some places have doubled.
• Severe droughts struck several important grain-growing regions, including Australia, the western and south-eastern United States and Southern Africa, reducing gain production.

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