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Researchers potentially find a renewable path to fuel additives, rubber and solvents

The right balance of zinc and zirconium oxides in this catalyst (purple block) converts ethanol to isobutene with low amounts of unwanted byproducts such as acetone and ethylene.

RICHLAND, Wash. – Researchers in the Pacific Northwest have developed a new catalyst material that could replace chemicals currently derived from petroleum and be the basis for more environmentally friendly products including octane-boosting gas and fuel additives, bio-based rubber for tires and a safer solvent for the chemicals industry.

To make sustainable biofuels, producers want to ferment ethanol from nonfood plant matter such as cornstalks and weeds. Currently, so-called bio-ethanol’s main values are as a non-polluting replacement for octane-boosting fuel additives to prevent engine knocking and as a renewable replacement for a certain percentage of gasoline. To turn bio-ethanol into other useful products, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and at Washington State University have developed a new catalyst material that will convert it into a chemical called isobutene. And it can do so in one production step, which can reduce costs.

Reported by researchers in the Institute for Integrated Catalysis at PNNL and in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at WSU, the findings appeared July 21 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“Isobutene is a versatile chemical that could expand the applications for sustainably produced bio-ethanol,” said chemical engineer Yong Wang, who has a joint appointment at PNNL in Richland, Wash. and at WSU in Pullman, Wash., and leads research efforts at both institutions.

In addition, this catalyst requires the presence of water, allowing producers to use dilute and cheaper bio-ethanol rather than having to purify it first, potentially keeping costs lower and production times faster.

No Z-Z-Z for the Weary

An important key to unlocking renewables to replace fossil fuel products is the catalyst. A catalyst is a substance that promotes chemical reactions of interest. The catalytic converter in a car, for example, speeds up chemical reactions that break down polluting gases, cleaning up a vehicle’s exhaust.

The PNNL and WSU researchers were trying to make hydrogen fuel from ethanol. To improve on a conventional catalyst, they had taken zinc oxide and zirconium oxide and combined both into a new material called a mixed oxide — the zinc and the zirconium atoms woven through a crystal of oxygen atoms. Testing the mixed oxide out, PNNL postdoctoral researcher Junming Sun saw not only hydrogen, but — unexpectedly — quite a bit of isobutene (EYE-SO-BEW-TEEN).

Hydrogen is great, but isobutene is better. Chemists can make tire rubber from it or a safer solvent that can replace toxic ones for cleaning or industrial uses. Isobutene can also be readily turned into jet fuel and gasoline additives that up the octane — that value listed on gas pumps that prevents an engine from knocking — such as ETBE.

Sun Shines

No one had ever seen a catalyst create isobutene from ethanol in a one-step chemical reaction before, so the researchers realized such a catalyst could be important in reducing the cost of biofuels and renewable chemicals.

Investigating the catalyst in greater depth, the researchers examined what happened when they used different amounts of zinc and zirconium. They showed that a catalyst made from just zinc oxide converted the ethanol mostly to acetone, an ingredient in nail polish remover. If the catalyst only contained zirconium oxide, it converted ethanol mostly to ethylene, a chemical made by plants that ripens fruit.

But the isobutene? That only arose in useful amounts when the catalyst contained both zinc and zirconium. And “useful amounts” means “a lot.” With a 1:10 ratio of zinc to zirconium, the mixed oxide catalyst could turn more than 83 percent of the ethanol into isobutene.

“We consistently got 83 percent yield with improved catalyst life,” said Wang. “We were happy to see that very high yield.”

Reactionary Insight

The researchers analyzed the chemistry to figure out what was happening. In the single metal oxides experiments, the zinc oxide created acetone while the zirconium oxide created ethylene. The easiest way to get to isobutene from there, theoretically speaking, is to convert acetone into isobutene, which zirconium oxide is normally capable of. And the road from ethanol to isobutene could only be as productive as Sun found if zirconium oxide didn’t get side-tracked turning ethanol into ethylene along the way.

Something about the mixed oxide, then, prevented zirconium oxide from turning ethanol into the undesired ethylene. The team reasoned the isobutene probably arose from zinc oxide turning ethanol into acetone, then zirconium oxide — influenced by the nearby zinc oxide — turning acetone into isobutene. At the same time, the zinc oxide’s influence prevented the ethanol-to-ethylene conversion by zirconium oxide. Although that’s two reaction steps for the catalyst, it’s only one for the chemists, since they only had to put the catalyst in with ethanol and water once.
More on New Catalyst For Ethanol Made From Biomass

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Marianne Lavelle
For National Geographic News
Published June 22, 2011

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

One of Indonesia’s most ardent rain forest protection activists is in what may seem an unlikely position: Spearheading a project to produce biofuel from trees.

But tropical forest scientist Willie Smits, ­­after 30 years studying fragile ecosystems in these Southeast Asian islands, wants to draw world attention to a powerhouse of a tree—the Arenga sugar palm. Smits says it can be tapped for energy and safeguard the environment while enhancing local food security.

Smits says that the deep-rooted feather palm Arenga pinnata could serve as the core of a waste-free system that produces a premium organic sugar as well as the fuel alcohol, ethanol, providing food products and jobs to villagers while it helps preserve the existing native rain forest. And scientists who have studied the unique harvesting and production process developed by Smits and his company, Tapergie, agree the system would protect the atmosphere rather than add to the Earth’s growing carbon dioxide burden.

“The palm juice chiefly consists of water and sugar—made from rain, sunshine, carbon dioxide and nothing else,” says Smits. “You are basically only harvesting sunshine.”

The project, being funded in part by a 73,160 euro grant (U.S. $105,000) from National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge initiative, has potential to disrupt a cycle of poverty and environmental devastation that has gripped one of the most vulnerable and remote areas of the planet, while providing a new source of sustainable fuel.

The Fuel Threat to Forests

Tapergie’s sugar palm production facility that opened last year in Tomohon (map), in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, and the microscale facilities called Village Hubs that Smits aims to launch on nearby islands, are a far cry from the oil palm biofuel operations that have devastated the rain forest.

Demand for oil made from the pulp and seeds of oil palm trees in Southeast Asia soared when European countries sought to displace petroleum fuels with biofuel in the past decade. It was a move that governments hoped would reduce carbon emissions, but the impact was the reverse. Tracts of rain forest were cleared, and peat land was drained and burned on a massive scale to make way for oil palm monoculture. Because of the carbon emissions caused by rainforest destruction, Indonesia leapt to the top tier of world greenhouse gas emitters, just behind giant energy consumers China and the United States.

Smits, who had been knighted in his native Netherlands, was among the forest advocates who sounded the warning around the world about the impact of large-scale biofuel production from oil palm in his adopted home of Indonesia.

Smits already had gained recognition as one of the world’s most prominent protectors of Asia’s great apes and their habitat, as founder of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. He laid out the biofuel problem, and the rain forest restoration efforts he had spearheaded, in talks around the world, including in the popular online series sponsored by the nonprofit TED.

But Smits felt he could take those restoration efforts much further, and the secret was a tree with a value that was first impressed upon him 31 years ago, when he was courting a native Indonesian woman of a mountain tribe of Sulawesi who would become his wife. (She was later elected a female tribal leader for her good deeds.)

By custom, before the marriage, he was required to pay his dowry in the form of six sugar palms. It seemed a meager offering, until Smits realized each tree’s potential yield.

The fruit can be harvested and sold as a delicacy. A starch, sago, can be extracted from the stems. The wood is stronger than oak. Most important of all, the tree has a distinctive sap, which can be tapped the way a sugar maple is tapped for maple syrup, but year-round and in vast quantities. The high-carbohydrate juice can be used to make a palm sugar that is a healthier substitute for white cane sugar. Smits estimated that there are at least 60 different products that can come from the Arenga sugar palm, making it a wholly appropriate marriage gift.

“This was enough to support a young family,” he said. “That got me interested in studying the sugar palm in more detail.”

“The Most Amazing Tree”

He found that the Arenga sugar palm had numerous qualities that made it a virtual sentry of the forest. Its deep roots mean it can be grown on steep, almost vertical, slopes—offering protection against erosion. It needs little water and is drought- and fire-resistant, important on volcanic islands. It is resistant to pests and needs no fertilizer; its presence in a forest actually enhances the soil.

Because of these qualities, Smits found that the Arenga sugar palm could be a key species in his efforts to restore Indonesian rain forests that had been brutally logged and burned for decades.

“It’s the anti-particle of oil palm . . . the most amazing tree I’ve ever run into,” says energy expert Amory Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado, and member of National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge advisory board. Lovins recommended Smits’ project as the first grantee in the society’s three-year energy initiative when he learned of his idea for furthering his rainforest restoration and protection efforts by tapping the sugar palm for fuel.

Smits knew the sugary juice tapped from sugar palms typically was fermented to produce a traditional alcoholic beverage. That meant it also could be used to produce the alcohol fuel, ethanol.

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VG ENERGY CONTRACTS BIOPROCESS ALGAE TO VERIFY “LIPID TRIGGER” RESULTS FOR COMMERCIAL BIOFUELS PRODUCTION

SAN MARINO, Calif. (March 24, 2011) – VG Energy, a subsidiary of Viral Genetics, Inc. (Pinksheets: VRAL), announced today that it has retained alternative energy producer BioProcess Algae, LLC to verify lab results on a large scale for the development of commercial production of its potential biofuel process. VG Energy has developed proprietary technology, with results reproduced multiple times from test-tube to small-pond studies, which holds promise in producing algal biofuel on a commercial scale, at prices competitive with or better than current oil prices.

“VG Energy’s technology has shown great promise as a viable and cost-effective additive for alternative energy sources,” said Haig Keledjian, CEO of VG Energy and Viral Genetics. “We are thrilled to be working with BioProcess Algae to take the next steps and move from the laboratory to a viable production setting.”

The agreement came together quickly and was facilitated by VG Energy SVP Monica Ord. “I have Richard Branson and Mike Willis from Virgin Green to thank for the introduction to Green Plains Renewable Energy (GPRE) and BioProcess Algae,” said Ord. “We have repeated our proof of principle research studies multiple times, internally and through Texas A&M, which have clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of the compound on a small scale. Bioprocess Algae gives us the ability to move quickly into full autotrophic, mixotrophic and heterotrophic scale-up studies, and we are excited to begin.”

A process increasing lipid production in algae cells and considerably improving their rate of recyclability has been discovered by VG Energy and its lead researcher, Dr. M. Karen Newell Rogers, the Raleigh R. White, Jr. Endowed Professor of Surgical Research at Texas A&M Health Sciences Center and Scott and White Hospital in Temple, Texas. A recent report by biofuels expert John Sheehan models several current production techniques, with their productivity enhanced by VG Energy’s process, with the results showing potential for a cost-effective energy source. A direct result of work undertaken by Dr. Newell Rogers for cancer treatment, this process, Metabolic Disruption Technology (MDT), appears to act as a long-sought lipid trigger to cause algae cells to store increased fat, making them more productive as an energy source. When the process was applied to algae cells in the lab, extractable lipid, or fat, production was increased by a minimum of 300%. Additionally, the process enables cells to release fats outside the cell walls, making much of the algae recyclable and increases its viability as an alternative energy source.

please visit www.vgenergy.net.

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University of California, Berkeley, chemists have engineered bacteria to churn out a gasoline-like biofuel at about 10 times the rate of competing microbes, a breakthrough that could soon provide an affordable and “green” transportation fuel.

The advance is reported in this week’s issue of the journal Nature Chemical Biology by Michelle C. Y. Chang, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, graduate student Brooks B. Bond-Watts and recent UC Berkeley graduate Robert J. Bellerose.

Various species of the Clostridium bacteria naturally produce a chemical called n-butanol (normal butanol) that has been proposed as a substitute for diesel oil and gasoline. While most researchers, including a few biofuel companies, have genetically altered Clostridium to boost its ability to produce n-butanol, others have plucked enzymes from the bacteria and inserted them into other microbes, such as yeast, to turn them into n-butanol factories. Yeast and E. coli, one of the main bacteria in the human gut, are considered to be easier to grow on an industrial scale.

While these techniques have produced promising genetically altered E. coli bacteria and yeast, n-butanol production has been limited to little more than half a gram per liter, far below the amounts needed for affordable production.

Chang and her colleagues stuck the same enzyme pathway into E. coli, but replaced two of the five enzymes with look-alikes from other organisms that avoided one of the problems other researchers have had: n-butanol being converted back into its chemical precursors by the same enzymes that produce it.

The new genetically altered E. coli produced nearly five grams of n-buranol per liter, about the same as the native Clostridium and one-third the production of the best genetically altered Clostridium, but about 10 times better than current industrial microbe systems.

“We are in a host that is easier to work with, and we have a chance to make it even better,” Chang said. “We are reaching yields where, if we could make two to three times more, we could probably start to think about designing an industrial process around it.”
butanol biosynthetic pathway

The enzyme pathway by which glucose is turned into n-butanol is set against the silhouette of an E. coli bacterium. The pathway, taken from Clostridium bacteria and inserted into E. coli, consists of five enzymes that convert acetyl-CoA, a product of glucose metabolism, into n-butanol (C4H9OH).

“We were excited to break through the multi-gram barrier, which was challenging,” she added.

Among the reasons for engineering microbes to make fuels is to avoid the toxic byproducts of conventional fossil fuel refining, and, ultimately, to replace fossil fuels with more environmentally friendly biofuels produced from plants. If microbes can be engineered to turn nearly every carbon atom they eat into recoverable fuel, they could help the world achieve a more carbon-neutral transportation fuel that would reduce the pollution now contributing to global climate change. Chang is a member of UC Berkeley’s year-old Center for Green Chemistry.

The basic steps evolved by Clostridium to make butanol involve five enzymes that convert a common molecule, acetyl-CoA, into n-butanol. Other researchers who have engineered yeast or E. coli to produce n-butanol have taken the entire enzyme pathway and transplanted it into these microbes. However, n-butanol is not produced rapidly in these systems because the native enzymes can work in reverse to convert butanol back into its starting precursors.

Chang avoided this problem by searching for organisms that have similar enzymes, but that work so slowly in reverse that little n-butanol is lost through a backward reaction.

“Depending on the specific way an enzyme catalyzes a reaction, you can force it in the forward direction by reducing the speed at which the back reaction occurs,” she said. “If the back reaction is slow enough, then the transformation becomes effectively irreversible, allowing us to accumulate more of the final product.”

Chang found two new enzyme versions in published sequences of microbial genomes, and based on her understanding of the enzyme pathway, substituted the new versions at critical points that would not interfere with the hundreds of other chemical reactions going on in a living E. coli cell. In all, she installed genes from three separate organisms – Clostridium acetobutylicum, Treponema denticola and Ralstonia eutrophus — into the E. coli.

Chang is optimistic that by improving enzyme activity at a few other bottlenecks in the n-butanol synthesis pathway, and by optimizing the host microbe for production of n-butanol, she can boost production two to three times, enough to justify considering scaling up to an industrial process. She also is at work adapting the new synthetic pathway to work in yeast, a workhorse for industrial production of many chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

The work was supported by UC Berkeley, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation and the Dow Sustainable Products and Solutions Program.

UC Berkeley

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How do we wean ourselves from the petroleum addiction?

Today’s energy challenges present us with good news, and bad news. First, the bad news. Each and every day the United States consumes twenty (20) million barrels of crude oil. We produce seven (7) million barrels leaving a delta of thirteen (13) million barrels of oil that we need to purchase from foreign sources. At current levels of $90 a barrel, that adds up to nearly $1.2B a day that we send outside the country to purchase oil, or $427B a year. That represents eighty per cent (80%) of our annual trade deficit.

Now for some good news. There are technologies being developed that could produce copious amounts of gasoline and other transportation fuels by using other fossil fuels such as natural gas. The United States has more natural gas than any other country in the world. Known estimated reserves are four thousand trillion cubic feet. That is the equivalent of seven hundred billion barrels of crude oil, or three times the current amount in Saudi Arabia.

Santa-Barbara, CA based, Carbon Sciences, is working on a technology that combines methane from natural gas with carbon dioxide (CO2) to create a syn gas, or fuel precursor, that can then be converted into gasoline. This is a drop-in replacement for the crude oil-based gasoline we currently use, allowing us to utilize the current infrastructure, supply chain and vehicles – an enormous advantage over other technologies. The consumption of large amounts of CO2 in the process that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, is an additional benefit.

The methane used in the process can be sourced from traditional natural gas fields, or other sources including landfills, algae and biomass, coal-fired plants, flare gas and livestock gas.

The world is not facing an energy crisis, it is facing a fuel crisis. We are not running out of electricity, we are running out of cheap, easy crude oil. The utilization of domestic natural gas and greenhouse gases to make transportation fuels will benefit the environment and the economy, create well-paying jobs and achieve the energy independence that we have longed for and talked about for too long.

Guest post by:Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences

Found a good paper today at UC Berkeley site that talks about development of biofuels to help spur the move away from fossil fuels and other polluting sources of energy. We are big fans of biofuel development but we do have concerns about the research being co opted by big energy concerns. Nevertheless I wanted to bring a sample of the article to you today and encourage you to read more on this topic of liquid biofuels helping run our energy needs in coming years.

A combination of rising costs, shrinking supplies, and concerns about global climate change are spurring the development of alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels to meet our transportation energy needs. Scientific studies have shown the most promising of possible alternatives to be liquid fuels derived from cellulosic biomass. These advanced new biofuels have the potential to be clean-burning, carbon-neutral and renewable. Some could also be delivered through existing pipelines and used in today’s engines, replacing gasoline on a gallon-for-gallon basis with no loss of performance.

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) is typically used to evaluate the potential impact of a product or activity on human health and the environment over the entire cradle-to-grave life cycle of that product or activity. In applying the LCA approach to advanced biofuels, McKone, Horvath and their co-authors identified the following seven grand challenges.

* Understanding farmers, feedstock options, and land use Biomass production for biofuels could displace existing products from land currently used for food, forage and fiber, which could increase the price of these goods in global markets. It could also induce deforestation that would exacerbate global climate change.

* Predicting biofuel production technologies and practices – Many options exist for biofuel production processes and final products. Much of the variability among LCA results for biofuels arises from lack of knowledge about how these different possible production and operation processes will evolve.

* Characterizing tailpipe emissions and their health consequences – Credible and reliable impact estimates for biofuel combustion are needed, but few studies of the health impacts from transportation fuel use have extended beyond air pollutants. Those that included an explicit metric for health damages emphasized mortality rather than morbidity and the overall disease burden.

* Incorporating spatial heterogeneity in inventories and assessments – The health consequences of pollutant emissions vary depending upon where the pollutant is released, with factors such as proximity to large populations looming large. Geographical variability also influences other factors, including soil carbon impacts and water demand consequences.

* Accounting for time in impact assessments – Air emission impacts from tailpipes and production facilities accrue within years and can be allocated to the year of emissions without discounting. GHG emission impacts are distributed over decades and even centuries using integrated assessment models, and are often discounted. Decisions about discounting can strongly influence the outcome of impact assessments, yet there is not a clear rational basis for making these decisions.

* Assessing transitions as well as end states – In addressing transitions, emerging technologies could profoundly change the assumptions that underlie biofuel LCAs. For example, changes in protein production and consumption patterns or in urban land-use policies could open up substantial agricultural land for biofuel production, an action that would fundamentally change a biofuel LCA.

* Confronting uncertainty and variability – Addressing uncertainty is among the greatest of LCA challenges, not only for biofuels, but for other LCA efforts as well. To confront uncertainty and variability, the “doable” and “knowable” must be separated from assumptions that are conditional components of the LCA.

More liquid biofuels info:

In their report, the authors of the EBI study say that confronting these seven grand challenges for a biofuels LCA requires a good balance between the needs of technology momentum and adaptive decision making, something, they say, that has not always been well-articulated among practitioners of LCA.

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The World’s Only Web-Based Biofuels Exchange Opens Today

Denver, CO (10/28/10). The US Biofuels Exchange, “the US-BX”, has opened today for live Ethanol and Biodiesel trading and will offer free trading on all listings posted before January 1, 2011. The US-BX’s web address is www.us-bx.com.

The US-BX’s proprietary “two-sided” trading platform was designed with direct input from Biofuels industry professionals, including Ethanol Producers, Biodiesel Producers, Biofuels Brokers and Petroleum Marketers. It is the most exciting, efficient and cost effective way to buy and sell Biofuels worldwide.

Allowing registered users to Post, Buy, Sell and Make Offers on and to both “Lot For Sale” and “Lot Wanted” listings, certifies that the US-BX is truly a disruptive innovation that will forever change the way Biofuels are bought and sold; the ultimate sales and procurement tool, bringing unmatched efficiency and cost effectiveness to a traditionally limited and outdated trading method.

And since the US-BX is web-based and utilizes “Cloud Computing” standards, no software needs to be purchased, downloaded or installed on the user’s computer. This allows accounts to be accessed and trades conducted from any computer on earth.

“We’re more than pleased to be the world’s only web-based Biofuels Exchange. We offer Biofuels Producers, Brokers, Blenders, Distributors, Importers, Exporters and Marketers the ability to anonymously buy and sell Ethanol and Biodiesel as well as the ability to make, receive and choose between multiple offers on listings,” said US-BX Vice President James Kaufman.

Kaufman added, “We believe the US-BX will create more consistent national pricing, increased price stability as well as expanded sales and purchasing opportunities, ultimately becoming a vital factor in the overall health and growth of the entire Biofuels Industry.”

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Kind of jammed up here today trying to get out of town next week for vacation but got work of this initiative being done by Qatar Airways and thought I should get something up on it right now. I will come back and do an interview with them for you later but for now please read this info on alternative fuels in jets.

Taking Leadership in the Application of Cleaner Alternative Fuels Qatar Airways is a travel industry innovator in the study of the potential commercial use of jet fuel derived from natural gas as a means of reducing the impact of aviation on local and global air quality.

We have partnered with companies such as Qatar Petroleum, Shell, Airbus, Rolls Royce, Qatar Science & Technology Park and Woqod with the view to test the use of cleaner burning alternative fuels on commercial flights. Qatar Airways and its partners are striving to make a jet fuel blend including Gas to Liquids kerosene a cleaner-burning fuel of choice for the air transport industry in the future.

The world’s largest Gas to Liquids production plant is currently under construction in Qatar under a development and production sharing agreement between Qatar Petroleum and Shell, with production scheduled to start around the end of the decade. Qatar Airways aims to be the first airline in the world to operate a commercial flight using jet fuel containing Gas to Liquids kerosene.

In February 2008, an Airbus A380 conducted the first test flight of a commercial aircraft using GTL Jet Fuel, flying from Filton, UK, to Toulouse, France. The study partners are driving industry initiatives (CAAFI) to include GTL Jet Fuel in jet fuel specification (50% blend) (with ASTM approval expected mid 2009).

Under the study agreement Qatar Airways intends to operate a commercial flight using GTL Jet Fuel during 2009, becoming the first airline to do so. Qatar Airways also intends to be the first airline to operate regular commercial flights using GTL Jet Fuel, assuming commercial agreements can be reached. GTL Jet Fuel will be produced in Qatar from around 2012.

GTL Jet Fuel will likely be used in a semi-synthetic 50/50 blend with conventional jet fuel and can be used without any modifications to existing aircraft and engines. GTL Jet Fuel is virtually free of Sulphur and aromatics. As a result the aircraft engine will emit less Sulphur Oxide and fewer particulates during operation. The environmental benefits of this are being quantified and are likely to include improved air quality around airports.

GTL Jet Fuel has higher energy content by weight compared to conventional jet fuel – i.e. it has a lower density. It also offers improved thermal stability, meaning engines would be able to run hotter. Both of these characteristics may lead to potential fuel economy and improved payload/range performance which could result in a limited CO2 benefit for specific aircraft/route combinations. This is being studied.

These cleaner-burning fuels could become a major factor in future air quality improvement initiatives for the entire airline industry, further proving that Qatar Airways’ product leadership extends far beyond passenger comfort.

But we do not stop there. Currently Qatar Airways is working on its own roadmap towards alternative fuels which also includes biofuels.

Biofuels are produced by converting organic matter into fuel for powering our society. These biofuels are an alternative energy source to the fossil fuels that we currently depend upon. The biofuels umbrella includes under its aegis ethanol and derivatives of plants such as sugar cane, as well aS vegetable and corn oils. However, not all ethanol products are designed to be used as a kind of gasoline. The International Energy Agency (IEA) tells us that ethanol could comprise up to 10 percent of the world’s usable gasoline by 2025, and up to 30 percent by 2050. Today, the percentage figure is two percent.

However, we have a long way to go to refine and make economic and practical these biofuels that we are researching. A study by Oregon State University proves this. We have yet to develop biofuels that are as energy efficient as gasoline made from petroleum. Energy efficiency is the measure of how much usable energy for our needed purposes is derived from a certain amount of input energy. (Nothing that mankind has ever used has derived more energy from output than from what the needed input was. What has always been important is the conversion—the end-product energy is what is useful for our needs, while the input energy is just the effort it takes to produce the end-product.) The OSU study found corn-derived ethanol to be only 20% energy efficient (gasoline made from petroleum is 75% energy efficient). Biodiesel fuel was recorded at 69% energy efficiency. However, the study did turn up one positive: cellulose-derived ethanol was charted at 85% efficiency, which is even higher than that of the fantastically efficient nuclear energy.

Recently, oil futures have been down on the New York Stock Exchange, as analysts from several different countries are predicting a surge in biofuel availability which would offset the value of oil, dropping crude oil prices on the international market to $40 per barrel or thereabouts. The Chicago Stock Exchange has a grain futures market which is starting to “steal” investment activity away from the oil futures in NY, as investors are definitely expecting better profitability to start coming from biofuels. Indeed, it is predicted by a consensus of analysts that biofuels shall be supplying seven percent of the entire world’s transportation fuels by the year 2030. One certain energy markets analyst has said, growth in demand for diesel and gasoline may slow down dramatically, if the government subsidizes firms distributing biofuels and further pushes to promote the use of eco-friendly fuel.

There are several nations which are seriously involved in the development of biofuels.

There is Brazil, which happens to be the world’s biggest producer of ethanols derived from sugars. It produces approximately three and a half billion gallons of ethanol per year.

The United States, while being the world’s greatest oil-guzzler, is already the second largest producer of biofuels behind Brazil.

The European Union’s biodiesel production capacity is now in excess of four million (British) tonnes. 80 percent of the EU’s biodiesel fuels are derived from rapeseed oil; soybean oil and a marginal quantity of palm oil comprise the other 20 percent.

A court has awarded over $10-million in damages for fraud perpetrated by Cello, a biofuel company. If you’ve read Anthony Trollope’s THE WAY WE LIVE NOW you could have predicted something like this. Scams are as old as the stock market. If you follow any current headlines you know any innovation or investment trend is quickly seized upon by a Worldcom, an Enron, a Bernie Madoff. Biofuel is so promising. And one thing it promises: scam artists.

Among the names connected to Cello: Vinod Khosla, a Silicon valley VC who’s supported several biofuel start-ups. It was recently reported that Khosla put over 12-million into the firm though it was NOT listed on his VC firm’s website. Can he get a refund?

Read more from Harry Fuller

Green-tech execs discuss the benefits of biofuel

At the GoingGreen conference in Sausalito, Calif., Susan Mac Cormac of Morrison & Foerster moderates a panel discussion about the benefits and risks of biofuel. Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures says that biofuel solutions could be cheaper than $50-a-barrel oil in 10 years if the venture capital community backs emerging technologies and starts funding new green start-ups.

At this years’ Going Green we talked to Bill Roe, the CEO of Coskata about his company’s work in developing bio fuel alternatives. They are making ethanol from a variety of feed stocks including switchgrass, wood chips, agricultural residues (bagasse, corn stover, etc.) as well as waste streams such as old tires and municipal solid waste.

Coskata is commercializing a proprietary process and related technologies for the conversion of a wide variety of input materials into ethanol. Coskata has an efficient, affordable, and flexible three-step conversion process:

1. Incoming material converted to synthesis gas (gasification)
2. Fermentation of synthesis gas into ethanol (bio-fermentation)
3. Separation and recovery of ethanol (separations)

After the carbon-hydrogen bonds in the feedstock are “cracked” using gasification and converted into syngas, bacterial fermentation (biofermentation) of the syngas into ethanol occurs using proprietary Coskata microorganisms.

Coskata microorganisms are extremely efficient, utilizing the entire energy value of available input material to produce ethanol. This is a significant advantage over other approaches that only use a fraction of this energy due to their inability to utilize all portions of biomass input material and/or result in non-ethanol byproducts hurting efficiencies.

Bill tells us about their system in the video below.

Bill Roe, CEO Coskata – Going Green 2008

Bio Fuels, using stock such as corn and sugar as the feed for the production of ethanol fuel, have been a big debate over the last year as the public has seen the effects of large scale ethanol production on supplies and pricing in commodity markets. However many of us may not know that behind the scenes there is real research going on to solve this problem and provide the world with renewable feed stock for bio fuel.

Mendel has discovered the functions of genetic switches that control many important aspects of plant growth, metabolism and stress responses. By modifying when and where these key genes are expressed within crops plants, it is possible to obtain significant improvements in plant productivity. Additionally, in many cases, knowledge of gene function enables the identification of natural or synthetic chemicals that can alter plant performance in useful ways.

At this years Going Green Conference in SF we spoke to Neal Gutterman of Mendel Biotechnology of Hayward, CA about his company’s efforts to develop feed stock for bio fuel production. Check out the conversation in the video below.

Neal Gutterman – Mendel Biotechnology – Going Green 2008

The Going Green conference kicked off last night at the spectacular setting of the Cavallo Pt Conference Center set in Fort Baker which is nestled among the hills at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. While the setting is beautiful the message of this meeting is optimistic in these days of fluctuating gas prices and concerns over global warming.

Tony Perkins has brought together a large group of industry leaders in bio fuels, solar, water tech, green tech and more to discuss where their industries are at and what they are shooting for in the coming years. Despite the swirling debate over fuels and what areas we should move into to solve our problems these industry execs and financial investment brokers are optimistic about the technologies that are being developed to resolve these problems on the large scale.

Vinod Khosla the noted VC investment broker who runs a large fund devoted to Green spoke most candidly in his key note address on Tuesday morning. He said,”Forget about the fashion statements made by celebrities about using one sheet of toilet paper or which hybrid car to buy, we need to focus on the issues that will make the biggest difference on the global scale.”

Vinod is bullish on biomass, but biomass that does not depend on food stock for fuel (as in corn for ethanol). He spelled out various technologies that are in development that do not depend on food stock but rather on perennial stock such as Miscanthus. He calls the corn market a stepping stone to the next generation of bio fuel.

GM is the big dancer in the room in terms of helping these biomass companies steer towards the future of oil independence. it will be 2030 before we have real energy independence with bio fuel supplies. Can these companies convince companies like GM away from corn ethanol and over to renewable source bio fuel sources. From what I have heard today I would say the answer is yes. Once we get some of our politicians away from “drill baby drill” and over to “grow baby grow”.

You can watch the conference webcast here

Watch for AEHQ’s video coverage of GoingGreen shortly

At the Going Green 2007 conference last week a panel sat down to discuss biofuels and whether the steamroller was actually moving on this energy front. The consensus from the panel of CEO was that there is indeed a [tag-tec]biofuels revolution[/tag-tec] going on and that big things are going to happen in the near term for [tag]biofuels[/tag].

Watch part one of the panel below:

Watch part two of the panel below:

In Japan meals are consumed with chopsticks everyday. Some with fancy ones and many with disposable wooden chopsticks. Now there are people in Japan who want to turn those throw away chopsticks into the next biofuel option. We all know there is heated debate about ethanol going on right now. Making ethanol out of corn and other mass produced crops has many shortfalls that our leaders don’t want to admit. However finding fuel uses for throw away items like chopsticks seems intriguing.

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Japan plans to turn millions of discarded wooden chopsticks into biofuels to supply the country’s power stations.

Restaurants and cafes in the country hand out the disposable implements to all their customers, with each person throwing away an average of 200 pairs a year.

The Japanese government says in a nation of 127 million people, that amounts to 90,000 tons of wood going to waste.

Japan has few natural energy resources of its own, and to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil it is examining the possibility of converting chopsticks into fuel.