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.
An interesting event is going on in the United Arab Emirates. The McDonald stores out there are actually running their trucks using waste vegetable oil produced in their own vats. Neutral Fuels which is Dubai based had made an announcement Sunday that the company has entered a new deal which includes the conversion of vegetable oil which is found in the UAE McDonald’s outlets into 100 percent of biodiesel. This is going to help power the delivery trucks of the fast food chain all over the Gulf country.
Last year the tests for biodiesel had started and at the end of this May, they had started to produce this for the fast food giant. Karl W. Feilder who is the chairman of the Neutral Group had said that this project was exciting for them because this was a really innovative idea, which no one had ever tried out in the UAE. He also said that his excitement was because they were using a fuel which was around 50 per cent more clean that what the usual diesel is. Also it gives a very low carbon footprint since it comes from a “waste vegetable product”.
McDonalds Producing biofuel
McDonalds says that this is a small step in huge plans that it has set for the future. They are also a part of the largest environmentalist group in the Emirates i.e. Emirates Environment Group. Rafic Fakih, the partner as well as managing director of McDonalds UAE said that in the UAE McDonald’s had managed to demonstrate a passionate as well long term commitment in order to invest in the environmental initiatives as well. In the Neutral facility in Dubai, around 1 million liters of biodiesel can be produced and if there is an increase in the number of shifts then double of that amount can be produced.
But this isn’t the first time that McDonald’s is running its cars on vegetable oil. The same has been done for their outlets in England and recently in Austria. But then in the Middle East it is the very first time that any company is taking on a venture like this. This is because the Middle East is a country where people don’t really use a lot of alternative fuels because of the existing low price of fuels. The vehicles of this fast food chain are also powered using pure biodiesel.
According to Feilder the main reason for this is because they want to prove to people that to run a car completely on biodiesel, exactly no modifications are required. They also want to show how brilliant that technology is and pure McDonald’s oil is that bio diesel can be produced at the same price as you would pay for oil.
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