Under a new research directive at Ames National Laboratory, scientists are honing in on a way to use a process called gasification to create cheap ethanol from almost any carbon source without fermentation. If they’re successful, crops, agricultural waste, lawn clippings, raked leaves, sewage sludge and garbage could all be turned into ethanol using the same efficient process, in the same facility, under one roof.
Photo Credits: deborah sherman photography
A commenter on Ben’s wood-powered truck post pointed us to a similar car hack. The truck above is also powered by a wood gas generator, except this one runs on coffee grounds. The Cafe Racer is a 1975 GMC pickup that essentially burns up used coffee to create a combustible gas. The gas is filtered on its way to the engine and, Viola, a caffeine-powered truck.
Earlier this year, headlines were made on the announcement of biotech start-up Coskata promising to revolutionize the production of ethanol with a process that could use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from wood chips and switchgrass, to old tires, and even directly from municipal waste. Most importantly, it did not rely on corn or other food stocks in order to produce fuel. At the time, Coskata was predicting an aggressive timeline, with a pilot demonstration plant to begin operation in 2009, and a first full-scale plant to be underway by 2011.
Last week Coskata announced the location for their pilot demonstration plant, a facility that will begin producing 40,000 gallons of ethanol per year, starting in 2009. While that is only a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket, it’s another step along the path to having a full-scale plant in operation and producing 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol per year.
On Friday I spoke with CEO Glenn Farris about his company, Biomass Gas & Electric.
CleanTechnica: What does your company do?
GF: We use biomass (primarily woody biomass), but also forest residues, agricultural waste, and woody crops, to produce renewable energy in an environmentally beneficial gasification process that doesn’t involve combustion, and so is carbon neutral. BG&E currently has three contracts (Georgia Power Company, The City of Tallahassee and Progress Energy of Florida) to provide biomass-generated electricity, pipeline gas, and hydrogen. We have many, many other projects in development both in the U.S. and abroad. In states that have a Renewable Portfolio Standard, we provide tradeable renewable energy certificates. In other states, we sell renewable energy credits to large companies like IBM and Alcoa, who want to reduce their carbon footprint. We believe the future of the company is in the production of methane.
With all the writing we’ve done recently about the Coskata partnership with GM, and the unique process the company’s created to make ethanol from almost any material containing carbon, you might think we’re getting paid to cover this. That’s not the case, of course; rather, this news points to some really exciting new directions in ethanol development. We’ve got some more posts up on Coskata… but not here at Gas 2.0…
Today, we [...]
As you’ve almost certainly already heard by now, General Motors has announced a partnership with Coskata, Inc. to produce ethanol less expensively and without using food materials as feedstock for the process. This is exciting for a number of reasons. First of all, Coskata is close to completing a continuous demonstration stream at their laboratory. They also expect to have a pilot demonstration plant in place by the end of the year that will produce 40,000 gallons of ethanol. And later this year, they expect to announce the site for their first full-scale plant which will be capable of annual production of 100 million gallons of ethanol. The process also consumes less water resources (less than one gallon of water per gallon of ethanol produced) and delivers 7.7 units of energy per unit of energy used in the process.
The process relies on using anaerobic microbes that consume carbon monoxide and hydrogen and produce ethanol. Because the process uses specially bred strains of microbes, they produce ethanol exclusively, unlike other fermentation processes, which often produce a range of alcohols and which require further distillation. Furthermore, the flexibility of the Coskata process allows for other microbes to be used in the same process setup (or even a parallel setup). Other strains of microbes that produce other useful alcohols, including some used as precursors for plastic production, so that the same technology could be used in other applications to provide a petroleum replacement.
LIVE FROM DETROIT AUTO SHOW: GM ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH BIO-BASED ETHANOL PRODUCER COSKATA BIOFUELS TO RAPIDLY COMMERCIALIZE AND DISTRIBUTE ETHANOL FOR FLEXFUEL VEHICLES.
At noon today, General Motors announced an undisclosed equity share in Coskata, Inc., a renewable energy company with the means to produce low-cost ethanol from virtually any carbon-containing feedstock including biomass, municipal solid waste—even used car tires. GM believes Coskata has the premier technology for rapidly implementing ethanol production technology worldwide. Click here for a video of the announcement.
GM already has a vested interested in ethanol, with 2.5 million FlexFuel model vehicles already on the road (15 models planned for 2009), and plans to make half their fleet ethanol-ready by 2012. The partnership is a win-win situation as Bill Roe, President and CEO of Coskata puts it: “GM is enabling Coskata to produce the next generation of biofuels - without using a food source - making it economically viable and commercially available.”
GM will test Coskata’s ethanol at the Milford Proving Grounds by late 2008, followed by completion of a 40,000 gallon per year commercial demonstration facility by the end of the year. A larger, 100 million gallon per year facility is currently being sited for construction in the U.S.
One of the problems that advocates of global warming awareness face is what is actually causing global warming. As a whole, we have a tendency to blame global warming on anything that comes our way, from coal to cats. It opens us up to counter attack, and at the rate at which it happens, it degrades our credibility. What we have to be careful of is not attributing everything that is reported as being
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Following in step with Boeing's prophecy for future aviation biofuels, the Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded a $1.1 million contract to Shell Oil to produce synfuel for the U.S. Air Force and one NASA facility. The contract, signed on June 6th, requires Shell to produce and ship 315,000 gallons of synfuel through August 1-31, 2007.
What, you might ask, is 'synfuel'? As
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I wrote recently about the issues surrounding landfills and the world's problems in grappling with the immense amount of garbage we create on a daily basis. One perfect solution would be to reduce consumption and waste, but if our habits will not follow our desires, then perhaps technology can help bridge the gap.
A promising invention that I found today is a mobile machine that takes any type of garbage and converts it into
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