Algae biofuel is one of the most promising alternative fuels on the market – so far we’ve seen cars and even planes adapted to run on it. The main drawback thus far has been high production costs and energy usage – until now. Using a new “cost-effective harvesting method” featuring microbubbles, a team from the University of Sheffield believe they have found a way to make algae a more commercially viable fuel source.
Shipping giant Maersk has been making a number on interesting efficient improvements in its containers ships as of late, and now is testing algae-biofuels as well: Right now the Maersk Kalmar is en route from Northern Europe to India running a blend of algae-biofuel and petroleum-based fuel.
During the 30-day trip, over 6500 nautical miles, a variety of blend percentages will be tested, including testing how well the ship performs on 100% biofuel. Emissions of greenhouse gases as well as particulate pollution are being monitored along the route as part of the test as well.
The U.S. Navy’s Self Defense Test Ship has successfully arrived at its port, powered by an alternative fuel blend. Docking at Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme, it completed a 17 hour test voyage which ended at 10:37 a.m. this morning. The decommissioned Spruance-class Paul F. Foster destroyer was converted to run on 50% algae-derived fuel.
The Alaska Air Group is joining the commercial aviation biofuel movement.
The airline launched two flights yesterday running on a blend consisting of 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent petroleum-based fuel. The sustainable biofuel used for the blend was made from cooking oil.
One flight was via a Boeing 737-800 plane from Seattle to Washington, D.C., and the other a Bombardier Q400 plane headed from Seattle to Portland, Ore. Both planes were flown as part of a program to fly more than 75 flights on a cooking oil-based biofuel blend within the coming weeks on Alaska Air’s Alaskan Airlines and Horizon Air carriers.
It has been heard from last twenty to thirty years that we are losing our strength in the field of energy resources. In coming four to six decades, there will not be any core mineral left for fractional distillation. Hence, replacements are required to be made for hunt of new sources of energy, be it renewable or non-renewable. A lot of conferences have been set up across the world in this regard, which has in turn led to abundance of debates, but all worthless.
Earlier this year Dutch airline KLM began experimenting with fuel alternatives for its planes, and now it’s looking to do something similar for vehicles on the ground.
KLM has teamed up with Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to invest in a more sustainable way to operate vehicles at airports. Currently 40 percent of all of the ground vehicles at the airport utilize biodiesel, which, just like the alternative plane fuel, is made from reused cooking oil.
The alligator, an animal that’s been around since the time of the dinosaurs, can help reduce our use of fossil fuels, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Louisiana yesterday published a paper that concluded alligator fat has good potential for biodiesel. Fifteen million pounds of alligator fat is disposed of in landfills annually from U.S. industry, which slaughters alligators for their skin and meat.
If we go by the stats, every year 11 billion pounds of poultry industry waste accumulates annually, because we have gigantic appetite for poultry products. They can’t be stuffed into pillows. Mostly they are utilized as low-grade animal feed. Scientists in Nevada have created a new and environmentally friendly process for developing biodiesel fuel from ‘chicken feather meal’. Professor Manoranjan ‘Mano’ Misra and his team members at the University of Nevada discovered that chicken feather meal consists of processed chicken feathers, blood, and innards. Prof. Misra has been honored as the 2010 Regents’ Researcher by the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.
Chicken feather meal is processed at high temperatures with steam. This feather meal is used as animal feed and also as fertilizer. Chicken feather meal has high percentage of protein and nitrogen. The researchers have paid attention to the 12% fat content of the chicken feather meal. They have arrived at the conclusion that feather meal has potential as an alternative, non-food feedstock for the production of biofuel. They have extracted fat from chicken feather meal using boiling water and processing it into biodiesel. Another advantage of extracting fat from feather meal is it provides both a higher-grade animal feed and a better nitrogen source for fertilizer applications.
Stats tell us that if we take into account the amount of feather meal generated by the poultry industry each year, researchers could produce 153 million gallons of biodiesel annually in the U.S. and 593 million gallons worldwide.
Prof. Misra is the director of the University of Nevada, Reno’s Renewable Energy Centre. He has published 183 technical papers in the areas of materials, nanotechnology and environmental and mineral process engineering until now. He also has 10 patents published and another 12 are pending. He has secured over $25 million dollars in grant funding.
Other research is going on regarding chicken feather meal. It contains stronger and more absorbent keratin fiber than wood. Professor Richard P. Wool of the chemical engineering department of the University of Delaware, is trying to carbonized chicken feathers. This type of chicken feather bears a resemblance to highly versatile (and tiny) carbon nanotubes. This chicken feather can be utilized to store hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles. If we visualize carefully we can see that very tiny natural sponges of chicken feathers have a big weight advantage over metal hydride storage.
Wool’s graduate student Erman Senöz in the project explained that they applied the pyrolysis process. During this process a very high heat without combustion in the absence of oxygen is applied. This yields fibers “that are micro-porous, very thin and hollow inside like carbon nanotubes. They start forming at 350 degrees Centigrade, and above 500 C they collapse. We’re trying to find the perfect temperature.”
Another advantage of this process is there won’t be lack of chicken-feed, because the fiber is taken from the central quill part. It leaves the fluffy feathers available to force-feed livestock. Feather fiber is quite cheap, and the “gas tank” equivalent would cost around $200.
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