Algae, the photosynthetic organisms that float at the ocean’s surface, already produce roughly three quarters of the planet’s oxygen. But one group of scientists think these simple cells could do even more to clean the atmosphere.
Algenol, a Florida-based biotech company founded in 2006, has patented a way for the blue-green, single-celled organisms to produce four key fuels — ethanol, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — all for a little under $1.30 a gallon and with two-thirds less greenhouse gas emissions.
While it may sound strange to think of pulling up to a gas station to buy algae, supporters point out that’s what drivers are already doing: crude oil pumped from underground is often derived from algae that settled on the seafloor eons ago and decayed into a waxy substance known as kerogen. When heated by pressure, kerogen liquifies into either oil or natural gas. Essentially, Algenol has condensed the timeline, creating the biofuels at their four-acre plant, rather than waiting for them to be drilled out of the crust.
In broad strokes, Algenol’s technology looks similar to what many biofuel companies already do to ferment sugars from corn, soybeans or animal fats into fuels like ethanol. But its method requires no farmland or freshwater. Instead, Algenol’s algae hangs in bags of seawater and is exposed to the Florida sunshine and carbon-dioxide to produce the sugars required for ethanol directly. That’s where the science gets tricky: by adding enzymes, the process enhances algae’s fermentation, so that it devotes its energy to producing sugar for fuel rather than its own maintenance and survival. After that, the spent “green crude” by-product is further refined into other fuels. The company boasts that the process is far more efficient than anything farm-raised, converting more than 85 percent of its inputs into fuel.
It’s an impressive scientific achievement, but Algenol’s financials face strong headwinds. A recent glut of oil from worldwide markets caused a steep drop in prices at the pump, creating obstacles to market penetration and slowing emergent technologies. And major support from the federal government, in the form of grants, loans and tax credits, largely expired in 2011. In late October, the company announced a 20 percent reduction in the workforce and the Algenol’s founder, Paul Woods, stepped down.
While cheap gas may be a boon to consumers’ pocketbooks now, eventually we will all have to pay the steep price for its pollution. It’s up to us to pick what kind of algae we want to keep putting in our cars.
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Tag: biofuel
How Deep-Fried Food Can Reduce Our Fossil Fuel Addiction
You’d expect that oils from McDonald’s deep-fryer traps, fat from slaughtered pigs and cattle and the grease caught in city sewer traps would be pretty much useless, right? But two researchers are investigating how to recycle all those leftover oils and fats into biodiesel motor fuel, an alternative that can reduce our dependence on oil.
After a decade in the lab, two Minnesota chemical engineers are designing a plant that will convert yellow and brown grease into fuel. With so many experiments, they’ve found a way that’s cheaper and more energy-efficient than the alternatives, like soybean-based biodiesel. Kirk Cobb and Joe Valdespino, the brains behind Superior Process Technologies, a little-known chemical company in Minneapolis, will soon have their ideas put into practice at a full-scale refinery near downtown Los Angeles that can churn out 20 million gallons of biodiesel annually.
“Our process is superior to the traditional method,” Valdespino tells the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It saves energy. It increases yield. It enables you to use cheaper feedstocks,” he says, referring to the raw material inputted to machines.
Biodiesel took off after major environmental legislation in 2005 and 2007 and a farm bill in 2008 that contained several incentives. At the last count by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the country has roughly 100 producers, with most output clustered in the Midwestern states of Texas, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. Most of them rely on soybean, canola and corn oils for their raw material — about 2.2 billion pounds worth just in the first half of this year. Animal fats (403 million pounds) and other recycled grease (535 million pounds), on the other hand, lag behind in the industry.
Cobb and Valdespino are hoping greater efficiency will change that. The pair became friends fifteen years ago while working for a paper company in Savannah, Ga., where they converted resin from the pulp of pine trees into profitable adhesives, plastics and inks. After 24 years on the job, Cobb left to work on biodiesel at Superior Process Technologies in 2004 and hired Valdespino in 2007.
Since then, they’ve been laying the groundwork for a tactic that diverges from the rest of the field. Other refiners add sulfuric acid to remove fat, but that reaction creates water which contaminates other key compounds like methanol and must be removed — a “really messy” and “very limited” business, Valdespino says. Their company adds glycerol at around 450 degrees, enough heat to evaporate the water and skip the extra step of eliminating impurities.
“People misconstrue higher temperatures with higher energy use,” says Cobb. “That is not the case.” Cobb says the plant will be able to do the job better — using six times less energy than the standard method — and provide diesel to large customers like airliners and the Navy at lower prices.
Almost all the industry’s innovation had been fueled by hefty support from the federal government, but most of those tax credits, loans and grants recently expired. Cobb and Valdespino are hoping the incentives return, so that for once, greasy fat can actually do something good for America.
The Surprising Second Life of Plastic
At home, at work, at the grocery store — plastic sneaks into our lives in countless ways. The ubiquitous material is undeniably convenient, but using it in such large quantities comes at a great cost to our environment.
Unfortunately, Americans generate about 10.5 million tons of plastic waste a year. Since only 1 to 2 percent of it is recycled, it either ends up in the landfill or gets dumped in the ocean. In fact, 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean’s surface is plastic.
But plastic doesn’t have to be a waste. In Akron, Ohio a company is giving it a second life by turning it into fuel. RES Polyflow specializes in pyrolysis, which is basically a process that turns plastic and rubber waste into energy.
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According to Chemistry World, a single RES plant operating at full capacity could convert 60 tons of plastic waste a day, which translates to 1.4 million liters (about 370,000 gallons) of transportation fuel annually. The company says they will be operational in the first quarter of 2016.
The potential of pyrolysis technology could be huge. In a study from the American Chemistry Council (ACC), pyrolysis not only reduces the tremendous amount of plastic waste that the country sends to the dumps, but it could also contribute $9 billion to the county’s economy and create about 40,000 domestic jobs, Chemistry World reports.
While turning plastic into fuel isn’t exactly the most sustainable form of energy, it can help the country curb its reliance on foreign fossil fuels. Also, as RES Polymer CEO Jay Schabel says, “We are taking a waste stream that is in abundance and readily available in every large city, and turning it into a finished product with a lot of demand, instead of it just going into a landfill.”
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What’s That Strange Crop Growing in America’s Fields?
You’re familiar with corn and wheat and cotton. And maybe even soybeans. But you’re probably never heard of miscanthus.
This funny-sounding crop is already providing renewable energy in Europe, and now, it’s beginning to catch on with more farmers here in the United States. Currently, it’s sprouting in fields in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, among others — although still on a small-scale basis.
A relative of sugar cane, miscanthus yields 15 tons of biomass fiber per acre. It’s a perennial, so once planted, it returns every year for up to two decades. A relatively small amount of chemicals are required to keep this crop healthy, and once it’s established, many farmers use no pesticides at all. For all these reasons, miscanthus promises to outperform corn as a clean and efficient energy crop.
“Miscanthus is such a new crop that we are the first 16 acres to be planted in Iowa,” Steve Schomberg, the farmer with Iowa’s biggest miscanthus crop, told Rick Frederickson of Iowa Public Radio. “It gets gawkers, yes. People stop along the road and talk about it, (and ask) ‘What are you growing there?'”
Schomberg sends his miscanthus harvest to the University of Iowa, where it is mixed with coal and converted into steam and electricity at the University’s power plant. Iowa is currently recruiting more farmers to grow the crop. The state hopes to have 2,500 acres of it by 2016.
In Illinois, farmer Eric Rund is promoting miscanthus as a cheaper heating fuel alternative to liquid propane.
Iowa State University agronomist Emily Heaton is studying ways to mix miscanthus with existing fossil fuel sources so that less non-renewable energy is consumed. “When I look at a crop like this, I see a chance to make fossil fuels cleaner,” Heaton told Frederickson. “Because what we’re talking about is blending this clean grassy biomass with coal, so it just cleans up coal a little bit.”
And when you’re talking about an energy source as dirty as coal, even a little bit cleaner is a whole lot better.
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Read About the Remarkable Scientists Making Corn-Free Ethanol
When we first heard of the sustainable biofuel known as ethanol, it was heralded as a smart, home-grown alternative to our dependence on foreign oil. It turns out, however, that while corn-based fuel has a lot going for it, it’s far from being the most environmentally-friendly type of energy.
There are a whole slew of problems with ethanol — from the amount of land space, natural resources, and startling amount of money it takes to grow so much corn. (It takes, for example, about 800 gallons of water to grow a bushel of corn, which yields just three gallons of ethanol.) The challenge, it seems, is to find a way to reap all the benefits of ethanol without taking a toll on the planet.
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Now, it appears, researchers from Stanford University have developed an eco-friendly alternative to traditional ethanol. The best part? They’ve done it without using any corn or other crops.
As announced in a recent press release, the California-based team has figured out how to produce liquid ethanol from carbon monoxide gas using an electrode made of a form of copper.
Matthew Kanan, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford and co-author of study, told Reuters that the prototype could be ready in two to three years.
“I emphasize that these are just laboratory experiments today. We haven’t built a device,” Kanan said. “But it demonstrates the feasibility of using electricity that you could get from a renewable energy source to power fuel synthesis — in this case ethanol. There are some real advantages to doing that relative to using biomass to produce ethanol.”
ALSO: How Used Cooking Oil Can Have an Extraordinary Second Life
As Fox News puts it lightly, the team has pretty much produced fuel out of thin air. Just think — if this Stanford method were to actually leave the laboratory, it could completely eliminate acres and acres of crops, water and fertilizer needed to produce biofuel. Sounds like smart — not to mention, eco-friendly — move to increase our country’s energy independence.
How Used Cooking Oil Can Have an Extraordinary Second Life
The next time you’re frying something in the kitchen, don’t pour the used oil down the drain; not only can that lead to clogged pipes, you’re throwing out precious fuel. As this TED-Ed video explains, we all should be recycling our used cooking oil because that muck can have an amazing afterlife as biodiesel. Simply funneling the grease into any plastic container and occasionally sending your stockpile to a processing plant can help make sustainable fuels and protect the environment.
Not convinced it’s really worth the hassle? Check out this slick fact: If everyone in New York contributed the grease they throw out in a single day, it would make enough jet fuel to fly to Los Angeles a few hundred times. Visit oil4good.org to learn more about how you can recycle goop into good.
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The Cars of the Future Might Be Powered By… Algae
Oil is going green — literally. Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have discovered a way to simplify the process of turning algae and water into crude oil. The process, called hydrothermal liquefaction, has long been touted as a viable way to produce more energy. In fact, most of the oil that’s drilled from the ground was formed by algae, compacted and heated over the course of millions of years until it transformed into petroleum. But now scientists have figured out how to quickly reproduce the process in the lab, converting algae into oil in less than an hour.
“It’s a way of mimicking what happens naturally over an unfathomable length of time,” says lead investigator Douglas C. Elliott. “We’re just doing it much, much faster.”
So how does it work? PNNL researchers mix 20% algae with 80% water, and send the mixture down a tube at 660 degrees Fahrenheit and 3,000 psi for 30 minutes. The pressure cooker breaks down the algae and converts it into oil. An added bonus is that the process yields byproducts, such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen, which can be reused to generate more heat or fertilize the algae.
The same hydrothermal liquefaction process can also be used on other organic wastes, such as manure, sewage or compost, which could have big implications for recycling waste into energy all across the country. Researchers’ next challenge is figuring out how to make the process cheap. Algae-powered cars aren’t here yet, but they’re a bit closer thanks to this new innovation.
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