Alternative Energy / Biofuels

• Artificial Cells and Fuel Production from Algae

  In the latest issue of "Chemistry World" is a report describing "the first synthetic cell". What has in fact been done is to insert a chemically synthesised genome into a bacterial cell. The M.mycoides genome contains over a million letters of genetic code and current DNA-technology can string-together perhaps a few thousand units in one go. The team led by Dan Gibson and Craig Venter have exploited the ability of yeast to join together small pieces of DNA using enzymes. Grown in a Petri-dish the synthetic bacterium looks almost identical to the natural version and can similarly self-replicate. For the…

• Algae is the Next Big Thing in Biofuels

  The Earth is 70% covered by salt water. It makes sense to utilise the saltwater marine environment to produce feedstocks for fuels, chemicals, plastics, and other materials. Biofuels from algae grown in seawater are the only fossil fuel alternative that doesn't compromise food and freshwater supplies, believes Yusuf Chisti. Algae are an increasingly popular potential feedstock for biofuels, but the Massey University, New Zealand, scientist says that currently used techniques won't provide fuel in the quantities needed. _IOP Algae, says Mayfield, is going to be the next big agricultural crop. The only difference is algae grows on water, whereas traditional…

• Algae Fuels Coming Under Pressure

  The conventional route to biodiesel consists of extracting oil from plants and converting it to the methyl esters of fatty acids that are present in the lipid-components, known as triglycerides. These esters as a mixture constitute biodiesel: a specific kind of biofuel. High oil-yielding strains of algae can be grown and dried and the oil extracted from the dry algal mass, before being similarly converted to biodiesel in a process called transesterification. Removing the water from raw algae is a highly energy intensive process, and to minimise the overall energy costs of biofuel production from algae, a process called hydrothermal…

• The Massive Potential of U.S. Biofuels

  More than 80% of total agricultural production in the United States is used to feed animals, not human beings directly; Our analysis shows that the US can produce very large amounts of biofuels, maintain domestic food supplies, continue our contribution to international food supplies, increase soil fertility, and significantly reduce GHGs. If so, then integrating biofuel production with animal feed production may also be a pathway available to many other countries. Resolving the apparent “food versus fuel” conflict seems to be more a matter of making the right choices rather than hard resource and technical constraints. If we so choose,…

• Rising Ethanol Prices and the Lessons to be Learned

  I thought it was a bit humorous recently — when corn ethanol prices dipped and were cheaper than both sugarcane ethanol and gasoline (even when adjusted for lower energy content)  — that some corn ethanol proponents pointed to this as a watershed event. Their underlying message, which was repeated almost daily in the comments on my blog, was that corn ethanol had now reached the point of permanent price competitiveness with gasoline. But I have repeatedly warned about price volatility in the energy business; that nothing is permanent. Today natural gas is $4 per million BTUs, but a few years…

• The Great Ethanol Boondoggle

  One of my biggest disappointments with Obama so far is his continued support of the ethanol boondoggle. The program was ramped up by the Bush administration to achieve energy independence by subsidizing the production of alcohol from domestically grown corn. Add clean burning moonshine (yes, it's the same alcohol—C2H5OH), whose combustion products are carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O), to gasoline and emissions also go down. The irony is that if you include all the upstream and downstream inputs, the process consumes far more energy than it produces. It also demands massive quantities of fresh water, which someday will become…

• Biofuel Sector in African Land Grab

  EU biofuel targets are driving a “land grab” in Africa, according to a report by Friends of the Earth. The report, Africa: up for grabs, released on Monday, says the biofuel sector is generating an African land grab that will cause deforestation, promote food insecurity and create conflict with local communities. The report details the trend among foreign governments, private companies and investment funds to acquire land in Africa to grow crops for biofuel. According to Friends of Earth, around five million hectares across 11 African countries have been bought or leased for biofuel purposes, chiefly by European and Chinese…

• A More Rational Approach to Ethanol Policy

  In my recent post Thoughts on an Ethanol Pipeline, I described what I feel would be a more rational approach to ethanol policy than some of the policies that have been pursued over the years. This gist is that the Midwest currently produces about 95% of the ethanol in the U.S. (12.5 billion gallons), but they export 70% of that ethanol out of the Midwest. At the same time, they import gasoline that is the energy equivalent of 37 billion gallons per year of ethanol. It would seem to be a more sensible energy policy to utilize ethanol production closer…

• The Future Looks Great for the Ethanol Boondoggle

  One of my biggest disappointments with President Obama so far is his continued support of the ethanol boondoggle. The program was ramped up by the Bush administration to achieve energy independence by subsidizing the production of alcohol from domestically grown corn. Add clean burning moonshine (yes, it’s the same alcohol—C2H5OH), whose combustion products are carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O), to gasoline and emissions also go down. The irony is that if you include all the upstream and downstream inputs, the process consumes far more energy than it produces. It also demands massive quantities of fresh water, which someday will…

• USDA Publishes New Papers on the Energy Return of Corn Ethanol

  Over the past decade, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has published several papers in which they investigated the energy return of corn ethanol. The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is simply the value of the energy outputs for a process divided by the energy inputs into the process. In simple terms, if a process required 1 BTU of energy to produce 2 BTUs of ethanol, the EROEI is 2. EROEI is calculated by taking the value of the energy outputs and dividing them by the energy inputs. However, in reality it is somewhat more complex than that.…