Green Options

The tendency of African nations to invest in non-food crop is worrying the FAO which says that private and foreign ownership of large tracts of African land could destabilise local communities who will be deprived of access to water, food and other natural resources

Is Al Costa pulling our leg? The CEO of Delaware-based Alkol Inc. says he has a system that will convert your car to run on E85 in about an hour.

“Flexing” your vehicle with the Alkol conversion system will allow you to use one of those high-ethanol pumps, which contain a mix of 85 percent ethanol, as opposed to the normal 10 percent mix in conventional gasoline. You won’t need a brand new shiny vehicle with one of those “Flex Fuel” badges either.

How does it work? Does it work? Is it like one of those quick-fix radiator sealer bottles that high school kids used to pour into their old jalopies?

Hundreds of thousands of tons of watermelons are tossed every year because they aren’t good enough for market. A new study finds that the juice from these watermelons could easily be used to create the biofuel ethanol and other helpful products.

We’ve covered the numerous benefits of ethanol-based fuels over and over on this blog, but rarely through the eyes of the gearhead speed-junkies that make up the core of America’s automotive enthusiasts and enthusiast press.   If you’ve spoken to this bunch, you already that most talk of climate change and Peak Oil concerns fall on deaf ears.  What matters is power, everything else is irrelevant.

Of course, it’s easier to simply ignore this group, but the (sad?) truth of the matter is that many consumer still make their purchasing decisions based on what their “car friends” tell them.  In short:  this group, more than any other, is a group that must be reached for the “green car” movement to really take hold.

Enter:  Dyno-Comp.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from David Hone, Climate Change Adviser for Shell.

I have been in Sao Paulo this week at Sustentavel 2009, perhaps the premiere Sustainable Development event in Brazil, if not all of South America. At the opening I represented the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and then on the first day of presentations I participated in the main climate change panel session.

What is clear is that there is a passion in Brazil for sustainability – from the huge issues they face in the Amazon region to the road congestion in Sao Paulo. Talking with delegates at Sustentavel, it is also clear that the country faces an interesting future in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Algae, algae, algae. The research that is occurring on this second generation fuel has overfloweth the petri dish as just this week there have been five major algae announcements.

1. W2 Energy, based in Canada, announced that it has completed its Sunfilter commercial scale algae bioreactor.
2. Algaeventure Systems said that it has begun receiving orders for its algae harvesting, dewatering, and drying technology. The company that has placed the order is General Atomics.
3. Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) at University of North Dakota was awarded a subcontract by SAIC to use its proprietary technology to produce jet fuel from algal oils.
4. Kent BioEnergy, based on California, announced that it is going to establish a division of the company in Charleston South Carolina, partnering with a Grant Know, a local entrepreneur.
5. Algenol Biofuels, a Florida based company, has threatened to leave the state and now they are working with CEO Paul Woods to entice his company to stay.

With the fluctuating price of oil, a finite resource, and concerns over CO2 emissions, many energy companies and developers have turned to utilizing biomass as alternative fuel (biofuel). This trend is actually taking two pathways: using biomass to convert to ethanol to power automobiles (which has been around for awhile now), and, converting biomass to electricity to power electric (or hybrid) vehicles (a more recent alternative). The question of which path is most efficient, sustainable, and less carbon-intensive is an [...]

Who needs a gas station to fill your tank with ethanol? Not you. GreenHouse has just announced the E-Fuel MicroFueler, a portable in-home micro-refinery system that turns organic waste into ethanol. The first installation of the E-Fuel MicroFueler was in the home of none other than basketball great Shaquille O’Neal, who lives in Pacific Palisades a subdivision in LA.

The E-Fuel MicroFueler coverts the organic waste into ethanol for about two-thirds the cost of gasoline. The final product is E100 (100 percent ethanol) which burns cleaner emitting significantly less emissions into the air. The only vehicles designed to run on E100 are the IndyCars which in 2007 became the first motorsports league to sanction a renewable fuel.

A national consumer awareness campaign aimed at owners of flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) was officially launched in Orlando, Florida today at the Farm-to-Fuel Summit. The project is a cooperative effort between key Florida state government interests, gasoline/E85 distributors, the ethanol industry, and several nonprofit environmental and energy advocacy groups.

Ironically, Florida has one of the largest contingencies of FFVs in the country. Out of the current 8 million FFVs on the road, 500,000 are Florida residents. I know most of you assume they are in the Midwest but can you say snowbirds? Like many other states announcing initiatives to spur the development of alternative fuels such as ethanol, Florida is no different. At the helm of this initiative is Charles Bronson, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

A lot of concern has been expressed about ethanol.  From the overuse of antibiotics to watering down Waxman-Markey in support of corn farmers, it is questionable as to whether ethanol is the solution America needs for its foreign oil dependency. Thomas R. Blakeslee of the Clearlight Foundation thinks we are better off using corn for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) biomass power plants to run electric vehicles rather than converting it to ethanol.

Researchers have discovered that using electrolyzed water in the pretreatment of ethanol waste products can create a clean and effective acetone-butanol-ethanol fuel mix.

Previously a similar method aimed at deriving biofuel from ethanol waste products required the use of harsh chemicals like sulfuric acid, which aside from being a pollutant also had ill-effects that made the method impractical. But because electrolyzed water is nontoxic, biofuel can be derived effectively and efficiently from byproducts previously labeled as waste.