Tag Archives: bioethanol
Seaweed would seem to an ideal source of biomass for making renewable fuels. Kelp has a high sugar content; it doesn’t need farmland or fresh water and large quantities can be sustainably harvested. Harvesting the kelp which is already growing along 3% of the world’s coastlines could potentially produce 60 billion gallons of ethanol. The problem with kelp is that its primary sugar, alginate, could not be broken down efficiently enough to produce biofuel on an industrial scale. Now, scientists from the Bio Architecture Laboratory in Berkeley, California, have genetically engineered a strain of E. coli bacteria capable of digesting … Continue Reading
American garbage-disposal giant, Waste Management, has partnered with InEnTec, an Oregon-based company, to begin commercializing a plasma-gasi fication 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 … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar CellsAustralia's Dyesol Limited has acquired an equity stake in Printed Power Pte Ltd, a spinoff company of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Printed Power is focussing on integrating dye solar cell technology with printed storage and power management systems to … Continue Reading → […]
- CSIRO Printer Makes 10m of Solar Cells a MinuteCSIRO researchers have built a gigantic printer that spits out solar cells at a rate of about ten metres a minute. The printer system uses existing technology to embed polymer solar cells (also known as organic solar cells) in thin … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Dysol Aiming to Print Storage with Solar Cells
