15Aug

10 unconventional sources of biofuel

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10 unconventional sources of biofuel

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Biofuels are fuels produced from organic material, as different from fossil fuels such as petroleum or coal. The fossil fuels are non-renewable. In particular, petroleum on which the entire transportation industry is based, is expected to run out within next 30 years. There are stepped up efforts round the world to find alternative energy sources. Biofuels, as a renewable energy source, has made some headway, meeting some 2.7 percent of the global energy usage in 2010. This is projected to rise to 25 percent by the year 2050.

Biofuels can be broadly classified in three categories solid, liquid, and gas. Of these, the liquid form is getting the most attention due to the possibility of substitution for petroleum usage in transport vehicles. The next in important alternative source of energy is the bio gas and then the solid form. The developments in all three forms, holds the promise of biofuels emerging as an alternative energy source, in the coming years.

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10Aug

Brazilian Companies Study Feasibility of Renewable Jet Fuel from Sugar Cane

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Brazilian Companies Study Feasibility of Renewable Jet Fuel from Sugar Cane

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If this Brazilian feasibility analysis works out as planned, jet fuel might move over to the sweeter and greener side of the environmental ledger.

Two aircraft manufacturers – Boeing and Embraer S.A. – have joined with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in announcing they will jointly fund a sustainability analysis of renewable jet biofuel made Brazilian sugar cane.

Last month, IDB announced a regional cooperation grant to help public and private institutions develop a sustainable jet biofuels industry.

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4Aug

Drax coal power station ‘could be transformed to produce biomass fuel’

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The UK’s largest coal-fired power station could be turned into one of its biggest sources of renewable energy – if subsidies are increased.

Drax generated about 6% of the UK’s total renewable power in the first half of this year, through burning straw and other biomass at its Yorkshire power station. This was achieved despite burning a much lower proportion of biomass than the plant could sustain if run under optimal conditions.

Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of Drax, said the power station could be transformed to produce more renewable energy than fossil fuel power, using biomass from straw, waste wood and other sources instead of coal.

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4Aug

5 Companies Making Fuel From Algae Now

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5 Companies Making Fuel From Algae Now

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Ubiquitous and easy to grow, algae has long been a promising biomass-to-fuel candidate in the eyes of researchers. Now algae is a burgeoning sector in biofuels with several high-profile start-ups, including Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics, and the interest of big-time investors like Bill Gates and ExxonMobil. Of course, hurdles still exist to make a competitive fuel. Algal biofuels still cost too much to produce—over $8 a gallon (pdf), according to the DOE. Furthermore, most existing strains do not yield oil in the quantities needed to quickly scale up to commercial production of biofuels. Companies also need to worry about contaminating local ecosystems and the amount of water needed to grow cultures in large batches. Despite these challenges inroads—and actual fuel—are being made in the nascent field. Here are 5 projects leading the pack today.

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26Jul

Two Michigan Airports Plan to Grow Their Own Biofuel

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According to some reports, a major amount of greenhouse gases is produced by airplanes. Airports in Michigan are planning to help solve this problem by growing biofuel-producing plants on the airport’s land. These crops will generate biofuel for planes and will also cut their carbon footprint.

The Willow Run and Detroit Metro airports have already adopted the idea of growing crops, both having an area of 1,700 acres. According to Biodiesel Magazine, airport owner Wayne County in collaboration with Michigan State University plan to plant canola and mustard seeds and use them as biofuel sources. The project is expected to run through February 2012 and has been funded with a $476,000 state grant.

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21Jul

Finnair to Launch World’s Longest Biofueled Commercial Flight Today

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Today Finnair is set to break a world record as it launches a cooking oil-powered flight from Amsterdam to Helsinki – the world’s longest biofueled commercial flight to date. Commercial airlines have been jumping on board with biofuels lately – many have been making test flights in hopes of transitioning to alternative fuels in the near future.

Today’s flight is the first in a series of four tests flights that Finnair is conducting to test the efficiency of biofuel. Like other airlines, Finnair will be testing flights with a combination of biofuel and conventional jet fuel, which will be used to power both of the SkyNRG aircraft’s engines. The biofuel portion used for these flights is made from recycled cooking oil from restaurants.

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14Jul

What’s next: Producing biofuels from waste materials

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New Design Strategy for the Artificial Leaf

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Organic WasteWaste to biofuel

As we know it:

Faced with the twin threat of global warming and climate change, the human race is making major strides in the field of energy technology to secure its future as well as to guarantee its existence in the long run. Almost everyday we get to hear about something new in the field of renewable energy, which goes a step further to reduce carbon footprint on the earth’s atmosphere. As far as renewable energies are concerned, nature has provided man with enough options. Everything now depends on man’s willingness to accept and use those options to his own benefit. Biofuel is one such source.

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8Jul

Biofuels May be Harvested from the Sea

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London, UK — The use of kelp (Laminaria digitata) could provide an important alternative to terrestrial grown biofuels, but the suitability of its chemical composition varies on a seasonal basis. Harvesting the kelp in July when carbohydrate levels are at their highest would ensure optimal sugar release for biofuel production.

“The storage carbohydrate and soluble sugars get converted into ethanol in the fermentation process, so we need as much as possible,” explained Dr. Jessica Adams, a lead researcher at Aberystwyth University. “Metals can inhibit the yeast too so we also want these to be as low as possible.”

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5Jul

McDonald’s to power delivery trucks with waste vegetable oil in UAE

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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.

Source: ecofriend

 

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4Jul

Biofuels from Engineered Tobacco Plants?

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Biofuels from Engineered Tobacco Plants

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A biofuel is tricky to define because the usual fossil fuel we use, is in a way biofuel too. But we can safely say that most of the biofuels don’t add up their quota of carbon dioxide to the environment. The biofuels are therefore considered to be “CO2 neutral.” Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a new method to increase the quantity of oil in tobacco leaves. So that oil in tobacco leaves can be utilized as biofuels in future. Their paper was published in Plant Biotechnology Journal which is an online journal.

Vyacheslav Andrianov is a Ph.D. and assistant professor of Cancer Biology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. According to him tobacco can produce biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops. But there is a hitch. When we try to extract oil, most of it is available in tobacco seeds. Statistics say that tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil per dry weight. Another snag is tobacco plants don’t produce seeds in copious amounts. It is about 600 kg of seeds per acre. Dr. Andrianov and his colleagues aim to find ways so that the tobacco leaves produce more oil.

A usual tobacco plant leave has 1.7 percent to 4 percent of oil per dry weight. The researchers modified two genes of the plant. They are the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The plants were engineered to over express one of the two genes. The alteration of DGAT gene resulted in about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves. It is around twice the amount of oil produced by and large. When the researcher went for the LEC2 gene modification it yielded around 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.

According to Dr. Andrianov, “Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren’t used in food production. We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves.”

Dr. Andrianov opines, “Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising ‘energy plant’ platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production.”

Source: alternative-energy
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