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The Caribbean islands are often viewed by North Americans as a pleasant place to escape from the grasp of winter. What many don't realize is that the islands have been a source of wealth for centuries-and that there is a source of wealth waiting for today's savvy investor.

Columbus arrived in search of gold. European planters arrived in search of agricultural land. The islands truly came into their own when sugar cane developed as their primary crop. That was the real gold, as real as the gold that covers the ceilings of British aristocracy's homes. That gold was paid for from the proceeds of sugar, rum and molasses. Was it profitable? My graduate research at Bettie's Hope Estate in Antigua revealed 18th century documents that proved the profitability of the islands for sugar cane production. In one year alone, Bettie's Hope delivered a profit of over one million pounds at the end of the eighteenth century. This is a fortune by any century's standards and this was only one plantation on one island.

Sugar cane agriculture died out in the islands soon after World War II when sugar beets became a cheaper source of sugar for world markets. Many of the islands now have acres of land lying in scrub brush where sugar cane used to grow. The land is primarily owned by governments who bought out the planters when they abandoned the islands for more lucrative investments.

Energy Tags: clean energy, alternative

Solar energy is renewable, and has become quite common in areas that have a dependable number of days of sunshine such as California and Arizona. Solar heat collectors can be seen on roofs all over the Southwest.

There are many ways to use the sun to generate renewable energy. These can include the generation of electricity through photovoltaic solar cells, the generation of electricity through a concentration of solar power, or the generation of electricity by turbines and a solar updraft tower which traps heated air and thus rotates the turbines.

Solar renewable energy can heat dwellings and other commercial buildings through a passive solar design. It can heat food with the use of solar oven, and heat air or water for hot water or heating space with the thermal panels we mentioned earlier. Solar chimneys are another means of heating and cooling air.

Another [tag-tec]renewable energy resource[/tag-tec] is bio matter, which produces bio fuel. Plants are one example of bio fuel sources. Sugar can give off bio diesel, bagasse and ethanol. These can be burned in boilers or internal combustion engines. The typical method is to burn the bio fuel, thus releasing its chemical energy. Researchers are strenuously working on other ways of converting these bio fuels into electricity, perhaps through such as fuel cells.

Liquid bio fuel is composed of either bio alcohol - ethanol is one example - or bio-oil. Vegetable oil and bio diesel are two examples of the latter. Bio diesel is used in diesel engines and doesnt require much if any modification to the engine for that to happen. It can be devised from animal and virgin vegetable oil, from waste and from fats also referred to as lipids. Not only can you use virgin vegetable oil in a diesel engine but these engines were actually first designed to run not on fossil fuel but on vegetable oil.

The primary benefit of using renewable bio diesel energy is that its emissions are considerably lower. Carbon monoxide and other harmful hydrocarbon emissions are reduced by 20-40 percent with bio diesel energy. There are areas where farmers grow corn, sugar beets, switch grass, sugar cane and corn stalk for the express purpose of providing energy for fuel cells and combustion engines. These products produce ethanol, otherwise known as grain alcohol, which is becoming more and more common an automotive fuel resource. E85, an automotive fuel, is made up of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. It is now being sold to the general public.

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Energy Tags: bio diesel

DuPont and Genencor of Palo Alto, CA have announced they are working together to create the World's-Leading Cellulosic Ethanol Company. Why is this important? Well as you may have read lately there is a large debate over making ethanol from existing food stocks and causing shortages and price in creases for those items such as corn and sugar.

If these companies can create viable ethanol product using no food stock sources then it will mean a boom to our economy of energy production and not a bust.

Here is the announcement of the joint venture:

DuPont and Genencor, a division of Danisco A/S, today announced an agreement to form DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC, a 50/50 global joint venture to develop and commercialize the leading, low-cost technology solution for the production of cellulosic ethanol — a next generation biofuel produced from non-food sources – to address a $75 billion global market opportunity.

The partners plan an initial three-year investment of US$140 million, which will initially target corn stover and sugar cane bagasse. Future targets include multiple ligno-cellulosic feedstocks including wheat straw, a variety of energy crops and other biomass sources.

“With food and gas prices surging at double-digit rates, there is an imperative for sustainable biofuels technologies. This joint venture addresses this issue head on,” said DuPont Chairman and CEO Charles O. Holliday, Jr. “By integrating our companies’ strengths and expertise in this new venture, we are significantly increasing the potential to make cellulosic ethanol from multiple non-food sources an economic reality around the world.”

“By combining the world-class capabilities of DuPont and Danisco, our joint venture will offer the technology standard for cellulosic ethanol production,” said Danisco CEO Tom Knutzen. “This joint venture will be a powerhouse of discovery, development and engineering. It represents a major step forward in Danisco’s new strategic intent to be a leading force in the field of industrial biotechnology.”

Through the scientists and technologies of both companies, DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC will launch an accelerated effort to integrate the unique cellulosic processing capabilities of both companies to economically produce ethanol from non-food sources. The parent companies will license their combined existing intellectual property and patents related to cellulosic ethanol. The goal is to maximize efficiency and lower the overall system cost to produce a gallon of ethanol from cellulosic materials by optimizing the process steps into a single integrated technology solution.

In the United States, the joint venture will scale up an optimized technology package for corn cobs from integrating the proprietary DuPont pretreatment and ethanologen technologies with the innovative enzyme technology of Genencor, while DuPont continues to analyze the collection and storage of cellulosic feedstocks. The global joint venture expects its first pilot plant to be operational in the United States in 2009, and its first commercial-scale demonstration facility to be operational within the next three years. The joint venture will be headquartered in the United States and will be formed after receipt of required regulatory approvals.

The joint venture will license its technology package directly to ethanol producers for deployment in the United States and around the world, as well as through the establishment of regional cellulosic ethanol affiliates. The regional ethanol affiliates will invest in equity interests with strategic partners, including ethanol producers and energy companies, to enable the rapid deployment of the joint venture’s cellulosic ethanol technology at commercial scale. The joint venture’s technology package can be used both as a “bolt-on” to an existing ethanol plant — expanding its capacity to accept cellulosic feedstocks — or as the design basis for a stand-alone cellulosic ethanol facility. The joint venture expects to enable production of commercial volumes of cellulosic ethanol by 2012.

A video primer on Cellulosic Ethanol:

Energy Tags: biodiesel, hybrid cars

6 Steps To make e85 Ethanol

Step One: . . . The Conversion Process

We have to break down carbohydrate sugars, such as the starch from corn. Create it into 'Mash'. Grind or crush the feedstock (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc…). Then dilute and add an enzyme (alpha amylase) to turn the mixture into a liquid. Once liquified a second enzyme is added(glucoamylase) to convert the starch into sugar. (If the source is mainly sugar, i.e…rotten fruit, molasses, etc…, the conversion step can be skipped.

Step Two: . . . Fermentation

Add yeast and make it into a beer (wine) type solution.

Step Three: . . . Distillation

The beer (wine) type solution needs to be run through a still to extract the alcohol from the solution.

Step Four: . . . Filtration

The ethanol now needs to be filtered to get rid of excess organic volatiles.

Step Five: . . . Dehydration

The ethanol needs to be 'dried'. After the distillation process there will be a certain amount of water in the ethanol you have just created - this can be dried running the ethanol through Zeolite a readily available product for drying ethanol.

Step Six: . . . Ethanol Into e85

Now simply convert the pure ethanol into e85 by adding 15% unleaded gasoline to your ethanol. e85 is nothing more than 85% ethanol mixed with 15% gasoline.

Frederick Musser

Frederick Musser is the owner of e85 Tips. A site dedicated to informing the world about e85 and its benefits.

For more information on e85 please visit e85Tips.com

Cellulosic ethanol, or "treethanol," is a promising new energy source with the potential to mitigate high gas prices, national security concerns, and global climate change. Ethanol derived from cellulose-the complex sugar polymer that gives green plants their structure-has a smaller carbon footprint than other fuels and could be used to supplement or replace gasoline. But anything that requires cutting down trees while purporting to save the environment should attract a reasonable dose of skepticism.

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