Alternative Energy / Biofuels

• US States start to Battle it out to Win the Eye of the Algae Industry

  Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a pair of bills recognizing so-called “algaculture” following passage in the Arizona state legislature that will see the Grand Canyon State encourage and support the algae industry. Arizona is the second American state, after Ohio, to classify the algae industry as agriculture. It’s a shot best heard by state legislatures nationwide, algae is going commercial in specialty chemicals right away with fuel products coming later. Florida is getting in the game in a way, too.Dr. Mark Edwards, an Arizona State University professor, author, and well known “algaevangelist,” whose work focuses on resolving world hunger…

• U.S. to Fund $35m in Bio-Oils Research Amid Food Price Concerns

  The US Department of Energy and the US Department of Agriculture will jointly spend $35 million in research toward developing biomass-based oil supplements (bio-oils) that could eventually be mixed with petroleum, as the world struggles with increasing food prices as a result of biofuels production. The DOE describes the bio-oils as “precursors for fully renewable transportation fuels” that could be integrated into the oil refining processes for conventional gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. The Biomass Research and Development Initiative (BRDI) will fund a number of projects to develop bio-oil prototypes for testing at oil refineries. The potential biomass products to…

• U.S. Military Gets Serious About Biofuels

  Biofuels, long struggling with a plethora of problems, may finally be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, as the largest fuel consumer, in the U.S, the Pentagon, is seeking proposals. Last month U.S. Army Energy Initiatives Task Force (AEITF) issued a draft request for proposals (Draft RFP) renewable energy contracts. What’s on offer? Over the next decade, an impressive $7 billion. During the AEITF’s pre-solicitation phase, the Draft RFP is designed to gather information from potential bidders to assist the AEITF to develop a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) that it intends to issue later this year.  The United…

• Brazil Look to Benefit from US Renewable Fuel Standard Mandates

  US rules on ethanol usage will favour Brazilian cane sugar producers and could lead to a surge in imports in the coming years, according to a research note from Rabobank International. However, if Brazilian imports do surge, US legislators will likely act to change the rules, the analysts warned. The 2010 update of the US Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2) mandates that a steadily rising quantity of renewable fuels be used in transportation, with particular emphasis on expanding ‘advanced’ biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels that do not compete with food production and produce less greenhouse gas over the…

• The Future of Aviation Biofuels

  In New York, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that jatropha-based fuels were the near-term candidate as sustainable aviation fuels available at prices competitive with conventional jet fuel. The BNEF research unit said that it expected jatropha-based jet fuel to be available at $0.86-a-litre ($3.25 per gallon) by 2018. The Bloomberg report Following the emergence of jatropha-based fuels, BNEF said that aviation fuel made from pyrolysis of woody biomass represented the next most affordable category of aviation biofuels, projecting that jet fuel from this source could be available at $0.90 per litre ($3.40 per gallon) by 2018. BNEF projected that aviation biofuels…

• Why Algal Biofuels May Never Hold the Key to the Future

  The depletion of world rock phosphate reserves will restrict the amount of food that can be grown, a situation that can only be compounded by the production of biofuels, including the potential large-scale generation of diesel from algae. The world population has risen to its present number of 7 billion in consequence of cheap fertilizers, pesticides and energy sources, particularly oil. Almost all modern farming has been engineered to depend on phosphate fertilizers, and those made from natural gas, e.g. ammonium nitrate, and on oil to run tractors etc. and to distribute the final produce. A peak in worldwide production…

• How the U.S. Can Produce 36 Billion Gallons of Biofuels Annually

  Jim Lane at Biofuelsdigest.com has written an article worthy of serious consideration to answer the U.S. challenge in law to produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel annually. Ethanol from corn, now well past the E-10 or 10% blend share and looking to get to 15% and much more E-85 (85%) sales plus various ratios in between, is closing in on a third of the legal requirement.  So far the legal requirement is being waived, as the technology isn’t fully there for cellulosic ethanol production.  The special interests are resisting and the consumers aren’t on board.  It’s tough going from farmers…

• New Technique Discovered to Help Harvest Algae

  At the UKs Sheffield University (SU) a team led by Professor Will Zimmerman in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering believes they have developed an inexpensive way of producing microbubbles that can float algae particles to the surface of the water, making harvesting easier, and saving biofuel-producing companies time and money. One of the cost of production problems that holds algae back as a major biomatter resource is an efficient cost-effective method of harvesting and removing the water from the algae for it to be processed. Algae have the potential to be a very efficient biofuel producer.  The one cell…

• The Dirty Truth: Some Biofuels are More Polluting than Fossil Fuels

  Biofuels are a clean, alternative energy that many are hoping will become the next source of liquid fuels for internal combustion engines; a clean substitute for polluting fossil fuels. The US is a huge supporter of biofuels, last year producing 1 billion gallons, and the EU has also stated its intentions for 10% of all transport fuel to be biofuel by 2020. Wait a minute though, new data obtained from a leak by the European Commission provides evidence that not all biofuels are clean. In fact some are more polluting than fossil fuels. The EU proposed a default value of…

• Algal Biofuels - Time for Grand Scale Production?

  Though there is much mention of the promise of algal biofuels and word of their commercial development, it seems timely to view what precisely has been achieved in terms of significant algal biofuel production rather than laboratory-based research, which has been going on for about 50 years. The U.S. Navy has fuelled a destroyer ship using 20,000 gallons of algae-based biofuel for a 20-hour trip, and is its largest alternative fuel experiment to date. Thus a decommissioned destroyer made a successful journey from San Diego to Port Hueneme, in California. In terms of air-transport, United/Continental Airlines have made a second…