Today, Coskata Inc. unveiled their semi-commercial flex ethanol factory in Madison, PA. This factory will serve as the first commercially viable flex ethanol factory, which produces ethanol from a variety of feedstocks other than just grain—which is an important step to satisfy food vs. fuel issues and start moving past ethanol from corn.
According to Coskata, their process uses less than half the water needed to make a gallon of gas, while producing seven times the energy of the fossil fuel used in the process.
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 [...]
Renewable fuels company Sustainable Oils shared the results of a life-cycle analysis of jet fuel created from proprietary Camelina seeds. According to the study, renewable jet-fuel made from Camelina reduces carbon emissions by 84% percent compared to the petroleum-based counterpart.
A team at Michigan Tech University based their research on Camelina grown in Montana and then processed into bio-jet fuel using “UOP hydroprocessing technology”. Next generation biofuels are true hydrocarbons and in the molecular aspect are indistinguishable from fossil fuels, which makes Camelina oil a good candidate to quickly reduce carbon emissions produced by aviation.
By Dave Harcourt •
May 4, 2009
Only a few years ago Jatropha was considered to be the wonder biodiesel feedstock suitable for production by small scale farmers in poor soils and arid countries. It has not lived up to the hype and it will be years before it can compete agronomically with soya and it is not scalable to the refining industry’s needs under small scale farming. Small scale rural farmers are more easily integrated into Jatropha based electrification in underdeveloped rural areas.
The Jatropha Spin
Jatropha curcas, also known as the Physic nut, is a perennial poisonous shrub. It is an uncultivated non-food wild-species that grows easily in hedges and scattered around homesteads. It was spread from Central America to Africa by Portuguese traders who introduced it as a hedge material and a source of oil for light.
By Ariel Schwartz •
September 24, 2008
Many different methods have been used to clean up the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site, but I never thought harvesting biomass crops would be one of them. Apparently, the Belarus government believes that harvesting biomass crops repeatedly on the disaster site will eventually remove radionuclides from the soil.
