The Case for Burying Charcoal

Research shows that pyrolysis is the most climate-friendly way to consume biomass.

By Tyler Hamilton

Carbon capture: Heating biomass such as wood pellets (right) in an oxygen-free environment produces char (left) and byproducts such as methane that can be burned. Research shows that turning biomass into char and burying the char is a good way to avoid releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Several states in this country and a number of Scandinavian countries are trying to supplant some coal-burning by burning biomass such as wood pellets and agricultural residue. Unlike coal, biomass is carbon-neutral, releasing only the carbon dioxide that the plants had absorbed in the first place.

But a new research paper published online in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy argues that the battle against global warming may be better served by instead heating the biomass in an oxygen-starved process called pyrolysis, extracting methane, hydrogen, and other byproducts for combustion, and burying the resulting carbon-rich char.

Even if this approach would mean burning more coal--which emits more carbon dioxide than other fossil-fuel sources--it would yield a net reduction in carbon emissions, according to the analysis by Malcolm Fowles, a professor of technology management at the Open University, in the United Kingdom. Burning one ton of wood pellets emits 357 kilograms less carbon than burning coal with the same energy content. But turning those wood pellets into char would save 372 kilograms of carbon emissions. That is because 300 kilograms of carbon could be buried as char, and the burning of byproducts would produce 72 kilograms less carbon emissions than burning an equivalent amount of coal.

Such an approach could carry an extra benefit. Burying char--known as black-carbon sequestration--enhances soils, helping future crops and trees grow even faster, thus absorbing more carbon dioxide in the future. Researchers believe that the char, an inert and highly porous material, plays a key role in helping soil retain water and nutrients, and in sustaining microorganisms that maintain soil fertility.

Johannes Lehmann, an associate professor of crops and soil sciences at Cornell University and an expert on char sequestration, agrees in principle with Fowles's analysis but believes that much more research in this relatively new area of study is needed. "It heads in the right direction," he says.

Interest in the approach is gathering momentum. On April 29, more than 100 corporate and academic researchers will gather in New South Wales, Australia, to attend the first international conference on black-carbon sequestration and the role pyrolysis can play to offset greenhouse-gas emissions.

Lehmann estimates that as much as 9.5 billion tons of carbon--more than currently emitted globally through the burning of fossil fuels--could be sequestered annually by the end of this century through the sequestration of char. "Bioenergy through pyrolysis in combination with biochar sequestration is a technology to obtain energy and improve the environment in multiple ways at the same time," writes Lehmann in a research paper to be published soon in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Making Gasoline from Carbon Dioxide

A solar-powered reaction turns a greenhouse gas into a valuable raw material.

By Kevin Bullis

Solar splitter: An amber-colored semiconductor (gallium phosphide), together with metal contacts, is part of a new device that uses solar energy to split carbon dioxide to make carbon monoxide.

Chemists have shown that it is possible to use solar energy, paired with the right catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into a raw material for making a wide range of products, including plastics and gasoline.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), recently demonstrated that light absorbed and converted into electricity by a silicon electrode can help drive a reaction that converts carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. Carbon monoxide is a valuable commodity chemical that is widely used to make plastics and other products, says Clifford Kubiak, professor of chemistry at UCSD. It is also a key ingredient in a process for making synthetic fuels, including syngas (a mixture largely of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), methanol, and gasoline.

The work is part of a growing effort to find practical uses for carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, says Philip Jessop, professor of chemistry at Queen's University, in Ontario, Canada. Converting carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide is difficult to do, which Jessop says makes the UCSD work impressive and exciting.

At least at first, such a process will not make a significant impact on reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere--that would take quite large-scale operations, Kubiak says. But "any chemical process that you can develop that uses CO₂ as a feedstock, rather than having it be an end product, is probably worth doing." He adds that "if chemical manufacturers are going to make millions of pounds of plastics anyway, why not make them from greenhouse gases rather than making tons of greenhouse gases in the process?"

The system may also be part of a solution to a continuing problem with solar energy. For solar panels to be useful when the sun isn't shining, the electricity they produce has to be stored. A potentially practical way of doing that is by converting the electrical energy into chemical energy. One popular approach is to use solar cells to produce hydrogen, which could then be used in fuel cells. But hydrogen gas is much more difficult to transport and store than are liquid fuels, such as gasoline, which contain far more energy by volume than hydrogen does. The UCSD system shows that it is possible to use solar energy to make carbon monoxide that then, together with hydrogen, can be converted into gasoline. Currently, carbon monoxide is made from natural gas and coal. But carbon dioxide is a more attractive raw material in part because it's very cheap--indeed, it's something industrial companies will pay to get off their hands, Jessop says. "There are very few chemicals which are cheaper than free, and carbon dioxide is one of them," he says.

GM's New Fuel-Cell Car

The flexible electric car platform is innovative, but the fuel-cell version is freighted with hydrogen's flaws.

By Kevin Bullis

The volt returns (top): This schematic (top image) of a new version of GM's Chevrolet Volt concept car is similar to an earlier version announced in January. There are three main differences: 1) the battery pack (blue box) is half as long, in part to make room for one of two hydrogen storage tanks; 2) a gas-powered generator is replaced by a fuel cell; and 3) this version also includes rear-wheel-mounted motors.

Hydrogen hope (bottom): A fuel cell (between wheels) and a battery pack (blue box at center) work together to power one electric motor for the front wheels and two more mounted in the rear wheels. The battery pack can be recharged by being plugged in or by drawing electricity from the fuel cell, generated using hydrogen from one of two storage tanks (foreground).

Last week General Motors (GM) unveiled a hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered version of its Chevrolet Volt concept, a family of electric cars that get a portion of their energy from being plugged into the electrical grid. The first version, announced in January, married plug-in electric drive to a gasoline or ethanol generator that can recharge the battery.

But swapping out the generator for a fuel cell may be a step backward. That is in part because producing the hydrogen needed to power the fuel-cell version could increase rather than decrease energy demand, and it may not make sense economically.

"The possibility that this vehicle would be built successfully as a commercial vehicle seems to me rather unlikely," says Joseph Romm, who managed energy-efficiency programs at the Department of Energy during the Clinton administration. "If you're going to the trouble of building a plug-in and therefore have an electric drive train and a battery capable of storing a charge, then you could have a cheap gasoline engine along with you, or an expensive fuel cell." Consumers will likely opt for the cheaper version, Romm notes.

Still, the Volt is part of a promising trend toward automotive electrification--which could decrease petroleum use and reduce carbon emissions. It is part of GM's response to an anticipated future in which both petroleum and carbon-dioxide emissions will carry a heavy price, driving consumers to buy vehicles that run on alternative, low-carbon power sources.

The new Volt, announced in Shanghai, replaces the generator with a fuel cell and cuts the battery pack in half, in part to make room for storing hydrogen. The lithium-ion battery pack can be recharged by plugging it in. The fuel cell kicks in immediately when the car is started and provides power at a constant rate at which it is most efficient. If more power is needed, such as for acceleration or high speeds, the battery provides a boost of power, much like what happens in today's gas-electric hybrid vehicles. When less power is needed, such as when the vehicle is stopped or at low speeds, the battery stores energy to be used later.

By allowing the fuel cell to run at a constant rate, the batteries improve efficiency, cutting down on hydrogen consumption. The battery further improves efficiency by storing energy generated during braking. Compared with earlier prototypes, the new concept also uses a more advanced fuel-cell design (thinner stainless-steel parts were substituted for thick composite parts) and the vehicle is lighter, making it possible to have a 300-mile range using half the hydrogen.

The car emits no harmful emissions from the tailpipe. But because hydrogen fuel today is primarily made from fossil fuels this means the carbon-dioxide emissions are simply happening someplace else, Romm notes. He says that using renewable energy to charge up the battery in the gas-generator version of the Volt makes more sense than using it to make hydrogen. That's because it's more efficient to charge a battery than to make hydrogen, compress it, and then convert it back into electricity using a fuel cell.

Lanza Tech Bacteria Produce Ethanol from Carbon Monoxide

A New Zealand company, LanzaTech, based in Auckland, announced that it had developed a fermentation process in which bacteria consume carbon monoxide and produce ethanol. Khosla Ventures has invested $3.5 million in the company to establish a pilot plant and perform the engineering work to prepare for commercial-scale ethanol production.

LanzaTech's innovation lies in using a bacterium to produce ethanol not from a carbohydrate, but from a gas, carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a waste product of a number of industrial processes, including the production of steel.

This technology could produce 50 billion gallons of ethanol from the world's steel mills alone, turning the liability of carbon emissions into valuable fuels worth over $50 billion per year at very low costs and adding substantial value to the steel industry. The technology will also be a key contributor to the cellulosic biofuels business as it can convert syngas produced through gasification into ethanol.

"We have proven in our laboratories that the carbon monoxide in industrial waste gases such as those generated during steel manufacture can be processed by bacterial fermentation to produce ethanol. Garnering the financial and strategic support of Khosla Ventures is a significant validation of our approach, and we welcome Khosla Ventures Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Doug Cameron, to our Board of Directors," said Dr. Sean Simpson, Chief Scientist and Founder of LanzaTech.

Their bacterium is described as seven nongenetically modified, non-pathogenic bacteria, isolated from natural environments that produce novel bioproducts via small scale fermentation.

LanzaTech New Zealand Ltd. is a privately held company, founded in 2005, whose mission is to enable industries that produce high volumes of carbon monoxide containing flue gases to become the lowest cost, highest volume producers of fuel ethanol.

Tidal Turbines Help Light Up Manhattan

Turbines are being submerged in the East River to generate electricity from rapid tidal currents.

By Peter Fairley

Power ebb: Verdant Power is installing six of these underwater turbines in New York’s East River. Each can capture up to 35 kilowatts of power from the river’s tidal currents.

Working from barges and tugboats off New York City's Roosevelt Island, engineers are battling northeasters and this month's heavy spring tides to install the first major tidal-power project in the United States. The project involves a set of six submerged turbines that are designed to capture energy from the East River's tidal currents. The three-bladed turbines, which are five meters in diameter and resemble wind turbines, are made by Verdant Power of Arlington, VA.

Thanks to lessons learned by wind turbine designers, tidal power is already economically competitive, producing electricity at prices similar to wind power, according to feasibility studies by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry R&D consortium. And it offers a big advantage over wind and other renewables: a precisely predictable source of energy. As a result, developers in the United States have laid claim to the best sites up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the past four years the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, DC, has issued preliminary permits for tidal installations at 25 sites, and it is considering another 31 applications.

Current-harvesting turbines represent a sharp break from the first wave of tidal power, so-called "barrages" in which impoundments installed across estuaries or bays created hydroelectric reservoirs refilled twice daily by rising tides. The La Rance barrage in Normandy has produced up to 240 megawatts of power--as much as many natural-gas-fired power plants--since 1966. Halifax utility Nova Scotia Power has been generating up to 20 megawatts of power since 1984 at a tidal barrage in the Bay of Fundy, whose funnel-shaped inlet produces the world's largest tides--16 meters at its head.

But these constructions have fallen out of favor because of their outsize impact on ocean ecosystems. James Taylor, general manager of environmental planning and monitoring for Nova Scotia Power, notes that commercial-scale installations planned for the Bay of Fundy in the 1980s would have altered tides as far away as Boston. "It would be a pretty hard thing to get permitted today," says Taylor.

Hence the attraction of in-flow turbines such as Verdant's. "The whole point of doing kinetic hydro is to have a very small environmental footprint," says Dean Corren, Verdant's director of technology development, who designed the tidal turbines in the early 1980s while conducting energy research at New York University.

Corren's team installed its first two turbines in the East River in December. One has been delivering a maximum of 35 kilowatts of power to New York City, swiveling to generate power as the river swells with the high tides and empties with the low. The other turbine delivers performance data that Corren says will be crucial to refining the blades and gearbox, generator, and control system to optimize power generation.

This month Verdant added four more 35-kilowatt turbines. Corren says Verdant is now working on a next-generation design that will be cheaper to mass-produce, in anticipation of installing a farm of at least 100 turbines at the East River site.

Greener Shopping Bags?

Consumers may find that the virtues of biodegradable plastics are really a mixed bag.

By Peter Fairley

Disappearing act: Novamont’s plant in Terni, Italy, turns out a polymer used in plastic bags. The polymer is a biodegradable blend of petroleum-based polyester and plant starch.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors' vote last month to institute the first ban on polyethylene shopping bags in the United States may reduce the volume of plastic in landfills, but, despite many advocates' hopes, it is unlikely to dramatically reduce dependence on imported oil. That's because most biodegradable plastic bags (which San Francisco officials hope will take polyethylene's place) rely on a petroleum-based form of polyester.

San Francisco's ban will, however, create an important new market for biodegradable plastics that could bring plastics based on renewable feedstocks into the market. The best hope may be Metabolix, based in Cambridge, MA, which last year completed a $95 million initial public offering and signed a joint venture with agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to develop its corn sugar-based biodegradable polymer.

Standard polyethylene bags have multiplied (San Franciscans alone use 181 million a year) because they are cheap and easy to use. They also produce less pollution in their manufacture than paper bags do. Until recently, biodegradable plastic bags have cost at least three times more and fallen short on performance, but the picture has changed over the past decade. "Today you've got some products that work from a functionality standpoint--the price gap has come way down," says Keith Edwards, biopolymers business manager in North America for German plastics and chemicals giant BASF.

Most biodegradable plastic bags are produced by blending plant starch with petroleum-based polyesters, which improves the bag's strength and processibility with conventional film equipment. Leading producers are BASF and Italian polymers firm Novamont. Edwards estimates that biodegradable bags from these polymers could cost three to four cents more than the one-to-two-cents-per-bag cost of polyethylene. But he's betting that San Francisco consumers will demand them thanks to San Francisco's curbside organic-waste recycling program.

San Francisco's environmental officials are making the same bet. Currently, the program collects about 300 tons of food per day, contributing to a 67 percent recycling rate for its municipal waste overall. But that number must rise significantly if the city is to meet a self-imposed goal to recycle 75 percent of its waste by 2010.

BASF recently boosted capacity for its biodegradable resin from 8,000 metric tons to 14,000 metric tons per year. Overall, the company expects annual production of biodegradable and bio-based polymers to triple or quadruple by 2010 from an estimated 50,000 tons produced worldwide in 2005. Meanwhile, Novamont plans to scale up a process for producing its biodegradable form of polyester from vegetable oils; it could begin within the next two years.

A New Biofuel: Propane

Propane chemically derived from corn could be used in heating and transportation.

By Katherine Bourzac

Biofuel alternative: MIT researchers are developing an efficient process for making propane from corn or sugarcane.

MIT researchers say they have developed an efficient chemical process for making propane from corn or sugarcane. They are incorporating a startup this week to commercialize the biopropane process, which they hope will find a place in the existing $21 billion U.S. market for the fuel.

While much of the attention on biofuels has focused on ethanol, the process developed by the MIT researchers produces propane, says Andrew Peterson, one of the graduate students who demonstrated the reactions. Propane is used in the United States for residential heating and some industrial processes, and to a limited extent as a liquid transportation fuel. "We're making a demonstrated fuel" for which a market and an infrastructure already exist, says Peterson, who works in the lab of chemical-engineering professor Jefferson Tester and has founded the startup C₃ BioEnergy, based in Cambridge, MA, to commercialize the technology.

Propane, which is currently made from petroleum, has a higher energy density than ethanol, and although it is often used in its gaseous form, it's the cleanest-burning liquid fuel.

The C₃ BioEnergy process depends on supercritical water--water at a very high temperature and pressure--which facilitates the reactions that turn a biological compound into propane. Peterson wouldn't reveal the starting compound, but he says that it is a product of the fermentation of the sugars found in corn or sugarcane. The reaction is driven by heat, requiring no catalysts. At supercritical temperature and pressure, Peterson says, "water does bizarre things. It becomes like a nonpolar solvent" and mixes with the organic compounds. Once the reaction has taken place, the solution is kept under high pressure and cooled to room temperature so that the propane comes out of the solution and floats to the top. "We've demonstrated that we can make propane," says Peterson. "Now we're trying to optimize the reaction rate and get it to a scalable stage."

Peterson says the biopropane conversion has a good energy balance: not much fossil fuel needs to be burned during production. The reaction does not require the input of a large amount of energy because the heat that's key to the biopropane conversion is recoverable using a heat exchanger, a device that transfers heat in and out of a fluid.

"All biofuel reactions involve removing oxygen from the starting compound," says George Huber, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst. There are a number of strategies for doing this, including reactions that rely on biological catalysts. But, says Huber, "supercritical fluids are a very promising way to make biofuels. You can do it in a very small reactor in a very short time, so you can do it very economically."

Other academic labs are developing processes that use high-temperature, high-pressure fluids to make biofuels. Douglas Elliott, at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, WA, is using near-supercritical conditions in combination with a catalyst to treat wastewater and unprocessed biomass. Under these conditions, organic compounds can be made into a mixture of methane (the main component in natural gas) and carbon dioxide. "We've gone all the way from small-batch reactors to treating a few gallons of wastewater per hour," says Elliott, who is working with a company on commercializing the technology for water treatment. "We're still in the lab with biomass."

Huber and Elliott say the MIT biopropane process is novel. "I've never seen anyone make propane with supercritical fluids," says Huber.

In some countries, including Australia, propane is more widely used as a transportation fuel. In the United States, "you would have to modify engines to use it," says Huber. "Biopropane could be used where we already use propane."

BP, DuPont Update Progress on Biobutanol Plans

At the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) annual conference BP and Dupont speakers reported that biobutanol has proven to perform similarly to unleaded gasoline on key parameters, based on ongoing laboratory-based engine testing and limited fleet testing.

In 2006, the companies announced their joint strategy to deliver advanced biofuels that help meet increasing global demand for renewable transportation fuels, leveraging DuPont’s advanced biotechnology capabilities and BP’s fuel marketing and technology expertise. The first product targeted for introduction will be biobutanol.

“Biobutanol addresses market demand for fuels that can be produced from domestic renewable resources in high volume and at reasonable cost; fuels that can be used in existing vehicles and existing infrastructure; fuels that offer good value to consumers; and fuels that meet the evolving demands of vehicles,” said Frank Gerry, BP Biofuels program manager.

Gerry spoke about results of tests that confirm biobutanol is a desirable fuel component. According to Gerry, biobutanol formulations that meet key characteristics of a “good” fuel include high energy density, controlled volatility, sufficient octane and low levels of impurities. He described early phase testing data that indicate that biobutanol fuel blends at a nominal 10 volume percent level perform very similarly to unleaded gasoline fuel. Additionally, the energy density of biobutanol is closer to unleaded gasoline:

Bioethanol = 21.1-21.7 MJ/L (megajoules per liter)
Biobutanol = 26.9-27.0 MJ/L
Gasoline = 32.2-32.9 MJ/L

In an earlier statement DuPont said biobutanol improves blend flexibility, allowing higher biofuels blends with gasoline; it improves fuel efficiency (better miles per gallon) compared to incumbent biofuels; it is suitable for transport in pipelines, unlike existing biofuels thus avoiding the need for additional large-scale supply infrastructure and, it enhances ethanol-gasoline blends by lowering the vapor pressure when co-blended with these fuels. Biobutanol is targeted for introduction later this year in the United Kingdom. Additional global capacity will be introduced as market conditions dictate.

ConocoPhillips-Tyson Foods to Produce Next Generation Renewable Diesel

Condensed from press release:

ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) and Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN) announced a strategic alliance to produce and market the next generation of renewable diesel fuel. The alliance plans to use beef, pork and poultry by-product fat to create a transportation fuel which will contribute to America’s energy security and help to address climate change concerns.

Using a proprietary thermal depolymerization production technology, the animal fats will be processed with hydrocarbon feedstocks to produce a high-quality diesel fuel that meets all federal standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel. The addition of animal fat also improves the fuel’s ignition properties, while the processing step improves its storage stability and handling characteristics.

Tyson will make capital improvements this summer in order to begin pre-processing animal fat from some of its North American rendering facilities later in the year. ConocoPhillips also will begin the necessary capital expenditures to enable it to produce the fuel in several of its refineries. The finished product will be renewable diesel fuel mixtures that meet all federal standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Production is expected to ramp up over time to as much as 175 million gallons per year of renewable diesel.

Investments made by ConocoPhillips and Tyson will allow for the processing and handling of fat and enhance the ability of the United States to produce energy from a variety of sources, including domestically-produced vegetable oils.

The processing technology was developed at ConocoPhillips, culminating in a successful test at the company’s Whitegate Refinery in Cork, Ireland. ConocoPhillips began commercial production of renewable diesel using soybean oil in Ireland late last year.

This alliance is expected to be a positive step for Tyson’s long term financial performance. “Production is expected to begin in late calendar year 2007, ramping up through spring 2009.” Bond said. “Once at full production, we currently project between $0.04 and $0.16 cents per share in additional annual earnings. However, this will be driven by factors such as the prices of wholesale diesel and animal fat.”

175 mgy is only a moderately sized renewable fuel capacity, but it does represent a new technology which may have larger applications than just this alliance. By any other name it still is a form of biodiesel. It probably is applicable to all slaughtering operations, which is a larger market. If Conoco has used the process using soybean oil, could it have wider applications on a wide variety of oils? It makes sense for Tyson, as a means of disposing of its waste fats. It seems like a pretty small endeavor for Conoco, even with a larger market, but they are probably anxious to improve their image by doing anything green.

Solar Cells That Work All Day

On the surface of a new photovoltaic prototype, microscopic nanotube towers perform best when they catch light on their sides.

By David Talbot

3-D solar: Jud Ready, a senior research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, holds up a prototype photovoltaic material that is efficient at generating electricity when sunlight strikes it from many different angles. The surface is covered with thousands of microscopic tower structures that are 100 micrometers tall, 40 micrometers wide, and spaced 10 micrometers apart.

Solar cells generally crank out the most power at noon, when the sun is at its highest point and can strike the cell at a 90-degree angle. Before and after noon, efficiencies drop off. But researchers Georgia Tech Research Institute have come up with a prototype that does the opposite. Their solar cell, whose surface consists of hundreds of thousands of 100-micrometer-high towers, catches light at many angles and actually works best in the morning and afternoon.

"It may be intuitive: when the light goes straight down, the only interaction is with the tops of towers and the 'streets' below," says Jud Ready, senior research engineer at the institute's Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory. "But at an angle, the light has an opportunity to reflect off the sides of the towers." When the sun is at a 90-degree angle, the prototype delivers only 3.5 percent efficiency. But it delivers better efficiencies at many other angles and is actually at its peak efficiency--7 percent--when light comes in at a 45-degree angle. That means the device operates at relatively high efficiencies during much of the day and has two efficiency peaks: one before noon, and one after noon.

While those efficiencies are too low for commercialization, Ready is working on optimizing the size and spacing of his towers as well as their chemical composition. As a first application, his sights are set on powering spacecraft and satellites, which could benefit from solar cells that don't require a mechanical means of moving the orientation of the cell to keep it facing the sun. "Anytime you have anything mechanical, it breaks," says Ready. "In space, that is fabulously difficult to try and repair."

Construction of the towers begins with a foundation of silicon wafers coated with a patterned layer of iron. The iron-coated areas become a seedbed for carbon nanotubes, which are grown using standard chemical vapor deposition; the carbon--separated from hydrocarbon gases in a furnace--assembles into nanotubes on the iron areas. The finished towers, each made of arrays of nanotubes, are 100 micrometers tall, 40 micrometers wide, and 10 micrometers apart.

Once the carbon-nanotube towers are complete, they are coated with cadmium-telluride and cadmium-sulfide semiconductors, which do the work of electron generation. Finally, a thin coating of indium tin oxide is deposited to serve as an electrode. In the finished cells, as with some other nanosolar approaches, the nanotubes serve both as a scaffold for the photovoltaic material and also as a conductor to help move electrons to the electrodes. (See "Cheap Nano Solar Cells.") In Ready's technology, each square centimeter of the finished solar cell contains 40,000 towers, and each tower consists of millions of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes.

Ready says that over the next two years, he will scale up the prototypes and test them to ensure that they can survive a rocket launch and the harsh environment of space. He is also trying to make the technology work with semiconductors other than cadmium telluride, which is considered too toxic for widespread commercial use. If all goes well, some version of the technology could be commercialized in five to ten years, Ready says.

Russia Commences Construction of Floating Nuclear Power Plants

SEVERODVINSK (northern Russia), April 15 - Russia has launched the construction of floating nuclear power plants said Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's nuclear power agency.

Kiriyenko said the first floating nuclear power plant, to be named after the great Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov, will have a capacity of 70 megawatts of electricity and about 300 megawatts of thermal power.

Floating nuclear power plants can operate without fuel reload for 12-15 years and have enhanced radiation protection.

Floating NPPs are expected to be widely used in regions that experience a shortage of energy and also in the implementation of projects requiring standalone and uninterrupted energy supply in the absence of a development power system.

Source: RIA Noesti via Peak Oil News & Message Boards

Structures Designed with Reticular Chemistry Store Voluminous Amounts of Gases

A press release from UCLA outlines how chemists at UCLA have designed and developed a class of materials for the storage of very large quantities of gases which could be used in alternative energy technologies.

The research, to be published on April 13 in the journal Science, demonstrates how the design principles of reticular chemistry have been used to create three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks, which are entirely constructed from strong covalent bonds and have high thermal stability, high surface areas and extremely low densities.

Led by Omar Yaghi, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, the team has developed reticular chemistry, which describes a new class of materials in which components can be changed nearly at will. Reticular chemistry is the chemistry of linking molecular building blocks by strong bonds into predetermined structures. The principles of reticular chemistry and the ability to construct chemical structures from these molecular building blocks has led to the creation of new classes of materials of exceptional variety.

The covalent organic frameworks, or COFs (pronounced "coffs"), one of these new classes of materials, are the first crystalline porous organic networks. The image shows the crystal structure of COF-108, which is synthesized from light elements (H,B,C,O) and is the lowest-density crystal ever produced (0.17 g/cm3).

Yaghi and his colleagues believe that because of their functional flexibility and their extremely light weight and high porosity, COFs are uniquely suited to store hydrogen for use as a fuel, to use methane as an alternative fuel, and to capture and store carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks before it reaches the atmosphere.

Geothermal Power not Just for the Western US

Jefferson Tester, the H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT headed an MIT-led study of the potential for ramping up geothermal energy within the United States. Tester was part of the 18-member panel that prepared the 400-plus page study, "The Future of Geothermal Energy," (PDF 14.1MB) for the U.S. Department of Energy.

I have summarized some of the main points from an article (page 3) in MIT TechTalk.

• Geothermal resources are available nationwide, although the highest-grade sites are in western states.
• Geothermal energy using enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technology would greatly increase the fraction of the U.S. geothermal resource that could be recovered commercially.
• The United States, generating 300 megawatts, is already the biggest producer of geothermal.
• If geothermal is going to be anything more than a minor curiosity, it has to reach at least the level of hydro and nuclear power, or 100,000 megawatts out of 1 million--one-tenth of total capacity," he said.
• The study found that geothermal could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.
• The process involves drilling to as deep as 30,000 feet, pumping water under pressure into fractures to break apart underground rock formations and freeing up reservoirs.
• Seismic activity is a risk, he said. "The big challenge is to show you can do it not only in California, but also in the Midwest and ultimately on the East Coast, where you have to go deeper."
• Among geothermal's advantages are its below-ground, out-of-sight nature, making it easier to site, and its high capacity and because, unike solar or wind, it runs a the time.
• Environmental impacts are "markedly lower than conventional fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants."
• Meeting water requirements for geothermal plants may be an issue, particularly in arid regions.

Parabolic Trough Technology

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a new website, "TroughNet." Currently parabolic trough solar technology offers the lowest cost solar electric option for large power plant applications. TroughNet is a technical resource that offers:

• information about the various components of a solar trough,
• the power cycles that can be used with solar troughs,
• the status of thermal energy storage that could be applied to solar trough power plants,
• research and development being conducted and
• a market and economic assessment.

I hope that you find this site useful in pursuing your interests in renewable energy.

EU Could use Biogas to Replace all Imports from Russia by 2020

You may have seen this on the news, but Biopact has a good article on the story.

The biogas sector has ... been scaled up to become an industry that produces quantities large enough to be fed into the main natural gas grid. More and more, dedicated biogas crops (such as specially bred biogas maize, exotic grass species such as Sudan grass and sorghum, or new hybrid grass types) are being utilized as single substrate feedstocks for large digester complexes, and biogas upgrading to natural gas standards is becoming more common. ...

Some studies in fact estimate that by 2020 the EU could replace all gas imports from Russia and produce some 500 billion cubic meters (17.6 trillion cubic feet) of gas equivalent biogas per year.

Malaysian Company Claims it will Produce 1.7 billion gallons per day of Ethanol

Biopact reports fresh news about that 'mysterious' energy crop called Nypa fruticans (also known as 'nipah' or 'mangrove palm'): Pioneer Bio Industries Corp Sdn Bhd (PBIC) claims it will be able to produce a startling 6.48 billion liters (1.7 billion gallons) of nipah palm ethanol per year when its planned refineries in Malaysia's North-Western Perak State begin operations in 2009. This amount is roughly equal to 780,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. ...

Ethanol can be obtained from fermenting the sugar-rich sap that can be tapped continuously from the trees' inflorescence. Nipah has a very high sugar-rich sap yield. According to one study, the palm can produce 6,480-15,600 liters of ethanol per hectare, compared to 3,350-6,700 liters/hectare from sugarcane. ... more

I always thought that tropical and semitropical countries had great potential to produce large quantities of ethanol at low cost and improve their economies at the same time. This is another proof that this is happening.

Peak Oil Will Change You Lifestyle

The Evansville Courier & Press has an editorial on peak oil, "Peak oil crisis will require fundamental cultural change" that deals with the "will change your lifestyle" part of The Energy Blog's motto. It does not deal with the date of peak oil or the technology, but suggests some changes in lifestyle that will help us get through this period.

A congressional report firmly recommends that we "better prepare for a peak in oil." and "clearly states that there is no U.S. policy to deal with global peak oil." The editorial goes on to state the following regarding these issues.

Oil, for all its dirty, nasty attributes, is the best thing since man discovered fire. ...

Humans have for all practical purposes found, drilled, pumped and refined half of the crude oil on the planet — the easiest half: 900 billion barrels — so far this century. What's left are declining fields with hard-to-extract heavy (sour) crude, oil shale and tar sands. These will require ever more energy to extract and will approach a negative net energy result. ...

Conservation is only a feeble start. For a society to survive intact, philosophies have to change. The car mentality has to go, and the sooner the better.

We have to stop urban sprawl and let the land around our cities be used, as it once was, for growing food for its region; use light rail for distance transportation and trolleys, bikes and pedestrian walkways for local transportation.

We must localize communities around centers of food production and local-needs manufacturing. We must learn to live with less.

All of these would use less energy and could allow a world closer to what we know today to continue for a significantly longer time than would doing nothing.

Technology will not fix this. No amount of high-tech know-how, drilling techniques or "Googling" will save us from ourselves.

In reality, we all will have to learn to live a different life under different conditions. It's not going to be easy or fun.

In reality, we all will have to learn to live a different life under different conditions. It's not going to be easy or fun.

Peak oil will be the issue of our generation. There is not going to be a heroic Hollywood ending or Hail Mary pass to save us on this one. This is an issue that should not be seen as a liberal, tree-hugging, doomsdayer's obsession. This is a global geological fact that needs to be considered in every aspect of our lives.

Climate Change Report: Human Generated Warming Already Having Impacts

A report, by the UN Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, titled, "Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," warns that human-generated warming is already making oceans more acidic and parched regions even drier and the risk of massive floods will increase significantly along the coasts because of rising seas and more intense storms.

An international global warming conference approved the report on Friday. The final report is reported to be the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution. All continents and most oceans show that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.

Some Key findings of the report include:

• 75-250 million people across Africa could face water shortages by 2020
• Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1-3°C, but above this it is projected to decrease.
• Crop yields increase could increase by 20% in East and Southeast Asia, but decrease by up to 30% in Central and South Asia
• Agriculture fed by rainfall could drop by 50% in some African countries by 2020
• 20-30% of all plant and animal species at increased risk of extinction if temperatures rise between 1.5-2.5C
• Glaciers and snow cover expected to decline, reducing water availability in countries supplied by melt water
• The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.
• Coasts are projected to be exposed to increasing risks, due to climate change causing sea-level rise; the effect will be exacerbated by increasing human-induced pressures on coastal areas.

Khosla Ventures Investments

VC Ratings blog provides a list of 26 renewable energy startups that Vinod Khosla's - Khosla Ventures' has invested in. He is well known for his investments in biofuel related companies, but the list reveals a much broader scope. Many, if not most, of these companies have a long way to go before they pay off, and some will not make it, but it interesting to see what he is doing. Here are the categories he uses and the specific companies (except for 5 that he labeled as stealth) that he has invested in.

• Cellulosic - Mascoma, Celunol, Range Fuels, 1 stealth startup
• Future Fuels - LS9, Gevo, Amyris Biotechnologies, Coskata Energy
• Efficiency - Transonic Combustion, GroupIV Semiconductor, 1 stealth startup
• Homes - Living Homes, Global Homes
• Natural Gas - Great Point Energy
• Solar - Stion, Ausra
• Tools - Nanostellar, Codon Devices, Praj
• Water - 2 stealth startup
• Plastic - Segetis, 1 stealth startup
• Corn/Sugar Fuels - Altra, Cilion, Hawaii Bio

New Engine Design Increase Mileage at Low Cost

An article in The MIT Technology Review describes a new engine design developed by Daniel Cohn, a senior research scientist and his colleagues at MIT, that could significantly improve fuel efficiency for cars and SUVs, at a fraction of the cost of today's hybrid technology.

The engine combines an engine with a higher compression ratio than normal with a turbocharger and direct injection of a small amount of ethanol the combustion chamber at just the right moment. MIT researchers estimate that an engine equipped with the new technology would have fuel economies that rivals hybrids but would only cost about $1,000 to $1,500 more than a conventional engine rather than the $3,000 to $5,000 additional costs for a hybrid. A vehicle that used an engine of this type would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine. Ethanol would be stored in its own small tank having to be refilled only once every few months.

Good Day Sunshine

One of the largest solar energy plants in the world went on line in Portugal this winter.

By Katherine Bourzac

One of the largest solar power plants in the world went on line this winter in the sunny pastures of Serpa, a town in southern Portugal. The plant is owned by General Electric and operated by PowerLight of Berkeley, CA. At its peak, around noon on a sunny day, the solar park can generate 11 megawatts of electricity--enough to power 8,000 homes.

New Syngas Reactor to be Tested at Pulp Mill

Diversified Energy Corporation and Evergreen Pulp, Inc have announced that they formed a partnership and submitted a proposal to pursue an advanced gasification project based on a molten-metals reactor technology,called HydroMax®. funded by the state of California.

HydroMax is an advanced gasification system that offers significant benefits compared to conventional techniques.The process offers several critical advantages to industrial-scale customers, including a compact size for simple integration, biomass feedstock flexibility, synthetic gas (syngas) output variability, limited emissions output, and attractive economics. By leveraging proven processes from the metals and mining industries, the HydroMax technique intends to break the status-quo paradigm by delivering gasification systems at up to 50% the cost of traditional systems, with 80+% efficiency, and demonstrating high availability.

Utilizing an iron/tin molten metal based reactor, the HydroMax system produces both carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) in separate and distinct streams from the reactor. Using two distinct steps (shown as Step A and Step B), the HydroMax process begins with a molten iron/tin (FeSn) bath heated to 1300° C. In Step A, steam is injected into the bath which is then thermo-chemically split resulting in H2 gas (released) and oxidized iron. After the Fe is oxidized, steam injection ceases and a carbon source (coal, petroleum coke, tires, biomass, etc) is injected into the reactor (Step B). Carbon has a high affinity to oxygen and reduces the oxidation of Fe to its pure form and produces a CO-rich syngas which is released for use.

For applications requiring hydrogen, a traditional gasifier must first produce syngas, then use portions of this syngas to produce hydrogen. For fuels synthesis, the syngas and hydrogen must then be combined in the correct ratio dependent upon the particular fuel desired.

The proposed project would gasify fine wood residue to create a syngas of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which it would burn in place of natural gas.This syngas will be pumped into the burners of a process heating facility, offsetting the natural gas currently being used. The mill already produces about 95 percent of its own electricity and most of its overall energy from sawmill waste. But despite that, the energy-intensive pulp-making process still draws about 300 therms of gas each day through the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. pipeline.

"We would be completely free of fossil fuel,” said Evergreen Senior Resource Manager Rex Bohn.

Evergreen Pulp, Inc is the largest unbleached kraft pulp mill in the U.S. The proposed project for the state of California will place a single demonstration-scale reactor at the mill.

World's Larges Fuel Cell Power Plant to be Built in S Korea

As reported in the Korean Times, POSCO, the worlds 3rd largest steelmaker, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Pohang City and North Kyongsang Province to build a 100 megawatt (MW) per year fuel cell power plant by 2010 in Pohang. The project is part of Kyongsang Province's efforts to make the region an "energy cluster"along the eastern coast, and POSCO to become the adopter of cleaner technology.

In its first phase, POSCO Power, the companies electric power business affiliate, plans to run a 50MW plant by the second half of 2008, and fully operate the 100MW plant in three years.

POSCO Power will be investing a total of 225 billion won by 2011, which includes a 65 billion won ($69 million) investment in the construction of the plant and 120 billion won ($127 million) in research and development.

In February, POSCO signed a license and distribution agreement with FuelCell Energy (Nasdaq:FCEL) to sell DFC® power plants in South Korea. The company will eventually manufacture non-fuel cell stack equipment (the "balance of plant" portion) for plants sold around the globe. Fuel cell stack modules manufactured by FuelCell Energy in Connecticut will be shipped to customers in Asia for installation with POSCO Power balance of plants.

On March 7 FCEL announced that POSCO Power, has purchased a 2.4 megawatt (MW) power plant for installation at a site in South Korea to be announced later.

The two Direct FuelCell(®) (DFC®) units making up the order are slated for delivery to South Korea by the end of 2007, and are scheduled to be commissioned early in 2008. Upon installation, the 2.4 megawatt (MW) power plant will become the world's largest, surpassing, FuelCell Energy's 1.5 MW power plant at the 1,044-room Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina in California.

South Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE) has created significant incentives to promote the use of alternative energy. Fuel cells were among the sources MOCIE most vigorously supported, creating subsidies that currently range from $0.23 to $0.28 per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.

FCEL produces fuel cells, ranging in size from 300 kilowatts (kW) to 2.4 MW. FuelCell Energy’s products are called Direct FuelCells because unlike most other fuel cell technologies, Direct FuelCells can use hydrocarbon fuels without the need to first create hydrogen in an external fuel processor. The fuel cells are molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFC)

In its simplest electrochemical terms, an MCFC forms carbonate (CO3 2–) ions at its cathode by combining oxygen, carbon dioxide and two electrons. The carbonate ions migrate to the anode through a carbonate electrolyte. Arriving at the anode, the carbonate ion reacts with hydrogen to produce water, carbon dioxide and two electrons

Hydrogen is made available to the anode by extracting it from a common fuel (such as by steam-reforming natural gas). This fuel cell can also use CO (present in the reformed gas) as fuel. The oxygen needed in the electrochemical reactions is supplied from air, and carbon dioxide is made available by recycling it through the anode exhaust

The DFC® architecture has the unique ability to generate electricity directly from a hydrocarbon fuel source without the need for external conversion and provision of hydrogen that’s required with other types of fuel-cell technologies. Both the reformation and the fuel-cell anode reactions occur inside the anode compartment. Any hydrocarbon fuel – such as natural gas or biomass gases – is introduced into the anode compartment along with steam. Unused fuel from the fuel cell is oxidized with fresh air and is introduced to the cathode side. The overall fuel-cell reaction is simple natural-gas conversion with air to water and CO2.

MCFCs operate at an optimal temperature that avoids the use of precious-metal electrodes required by lower-temperature fuel cells, such as polymer-electrolyte and phosphoric-acid designs, and the more expensive metals and ceramic materials required by higher-temperature solid-oxide fuel cells.The electrolyte is a mixture of lithium and potassium/sodium carbonate salts that melts between 450 and 510 °C

FuelCell Energy had a goal of reducing the cost of it 2.4 MW power plant to $3,200-3,500/kilowatt (kW) by the end of 2006.

As of January 1 FCEL had 50 MW of installed capacity at 50 installations and 25 MW of backlog. Since then it has been selected for six installations in Connecticut totaling 68 MW of capacity with a value of over $200 million. All but one of these will be CHP projects using the ~ 650 F waste heat from the plants.
These projects would allow them to reduce their costs significantly, due to the scale of manufacturing. Field installations are now running at an average of 93% availability.

Thanks to Marco for the tip.

If this is really a 100 MW per year plant, it is not such a big deal, but that is not the usual terminology. If the Korean plant is the 2.4 MW plant announced on March 7 by FCEL it is still the largest, but I don't understand the conversion factor.

Flexible Batteries That Never Need to Be Recharged

European researchers have built prototypes that combine plastic solar cells with ultrathin, flexible batteries. But don't throw away your battery recharger just yet.

By Tyler Hamilton

Solar battery: European researchers have integrated thin-film organic solar cells with a flexible polymer battery to produce a lightweight and ultrathin solar battery for low-wattage electronic devices, such as smart cards and mobile phones. The battery can recharge itself when exposed to natural or indoor sunlight, meaning that some electronic gadgets would never need a separate charger. Researchers predict that such a device could be commercially available in some products next year.

Mobiles phones, remote controls, and other gadgets are generally convenient--that is, until their batteries go dead. For many consumers, having to routinely recharge or replace batteries remains the weakest link in portable electronics. To solve the problem, a group of European researchers say they've found a way to combine a thin-film organic solar cell with a new type of polymer battery, giving it the capability of recharging itself when exposed to natural or indoor light.

It's not only ultraslim, but also flexible enough to integrate with a wide range of low-wattage electronic devices, including flat but bendable objects like a smart card and, potentially, mobile phones with curves. The results of the research, part of the three-year, five-country European Polymer Solar Battery project, were recently published online in the journal Solar Energy.

"It's the first time that a device combining energy creation and storage shows [such] tremendous properties," says Gilles Dennler, a coauthor of the paper and a researcher at solar startup Konarka Technologies, based in Lowell, MA. Prior to joining Konarka, Dennler was a professor at the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells at Johannes Kepler University, in Austria. "The potential for this type of product is large, given [that] there is a growing demand for portable self-rechargeable power supplies."

Prototypes of the solar battery weigh as little as two grams and are less than one millimeter thick. "The device is meant to ensure that the battery is always charged with optimum voltage, independently of the light intensity seen by the solar cell," according to the paper. Dennler says that a single cell delivers about 0.6 volts. By shaping a module with strips connected in series, "one can add on voltages to fit the requirements of the device."

The organic solar cell used in the prototype is the same technology being developed by Konarka. (See "Solar-Cell Rollout.") It's based on a mix of electrically conducting polymers and fullerenes. The cells can be cut or produced in special shapes and can be printed on a roll-to-roll machine at low temperature, offering the potential of low-cost, high-volume production.

To preserve the life of the cells, which are vulnerable to photodegradation after only a few hours of air exposure, the researchers encapsulated them inside a flexible gas barrier. This extended their life for about 3,000 hours. Project coordinator Denis Fichou, head of the Laboratory of Organic Nanostructures and Semiconductors, near Paris, says that the second important achievement of the European project was the incorporation into the device of an extremely thin and highly flexible lithium-polymer battery developed by German company VARTA-Microbattery, a partner in the research consortium. VARTA's batteries can be as thin as 0.1 millimeter and recharged more than 1,000 times, and they have a relatively high energy density. Already on the market, the battery is being used in Apple's new iPod nano.

Dennler says that the maturity of the battery and the imminent commercial release of Konarka-style organic solar cells mean that the kind of solar-battery device designed in the project could be available as early as next year, although achieving higher performance would be an ongoing pursuit.

The paper's coauthor Toby Meyer, cofounder of Swiss-based Solaronix, says that the prototypes worked well enough under low-light conditions, such as indoor window light, to be considered as a power source for some mobile phones. Artificial light, on the other hand, may impose limitations. "Office light is probably too weak to generate enough power for the given solar-cell surface available on the phone," he says.

Watches, toys, RFID tags, smart cards, remote controls, and a variety of sensors are among the more likely applications, although the opportunity in the area of digital cameras, PDAs, and mobile phones will likely continue to drive research. "The feasibility of a polymer solar battery has been proven," the paper concludes.

Rights to the technology are held by Konarka, though the solar company says it has no plans itself to commercial the battery.

A Better Biofuel

A California biotech company is engineering microbes to produce cheap biofuels that could outcompete ethanol.

By Emily Singer

Sweet solution: Amyris Biotech is engineering bacteria to produce novel biofuels. The new fuels would be fermented from plants used to make ethanol, such as sugarcane, pictured here.

Stroll the streets of San Francisco and you're likely to overhear someone talking about biofuels. It's the latest technology wave to hit the Bay Area, and scientists and investors are swarming toward any startup claiming a better way to make ethanol or biodiesels. Amyris Biotechnologies may actually have found one. Having previously reengineered microbes so that they would produce a malaria drug, the company is now drawing on its expertise at creating efficient bacterial factories to cheaply churn out novel types of biofuels.

Amyris is one of the first companies to spring from the relatively new field of synthetic biology. Unlike the conventional genetic engineering currently used in the manufacture of antibiotics and protein drugs such as insulin, synthetic biology involves hacking the entire metabolic system--changing the structure of some proteins, altering the expression of others, and adding in genes from other organisms--to create an efficient microbial machine. "We think of biological components as parts you assemble and try to get to function as a whole," says Jay Keasling, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of Amyris's cofounders.

Plants and microbes naturally make small quantities of chemicals called terpenoids, which are the precursors of myriad products, including some pharmaceuticals and fuels. Several years ago, after developing new ways to boost bacteria's production of terpenoids, Keasling and three of his postdoctoral students founded Amyris to commercialize their work.

For its first project, the company selected artemisinin, a potent malaria drug derived from the sweet wormwood tree (see TR10 2005). By tinkering with yeast's metabolic processes, Keasling and his colleagues were able to boost its production of an artemisinin precursor a million-fold. After just two years of work, they are close to meeting their final goal for the drug--producing it in industrial quantities at prices affordable to developing nations. Now, having created microbial factories that can cheaply churn out carbon-based molecules, the group has turned its attention to biofuels.

Making fuel is different from making medicine. In most cases, pharmaceutical companies aren't concerned with how efficiently they make their drugs because they know they can charge premium prices for them. New fuels, on the other hand, must compete in price with petroleum. Rather than trying to find better ways to make ethanol--the aim of most new biofuel efforts--the researchers chose to create entirely novel biofuels, guided by their own ideas about what a fuel might look like if designed from scratch. "We looked at the Merck Index and said, If you could pick any molecule to use as fuel, what would you pick?" says Jack Newman, one of Amyris's cofounders and vice president of research.

The researchers selected several candidate compounds based on their energy content (ethanol has only 70 percent the energy of gasoline), their volatility (an ideal fuel shouldn't evaporate too fast), and their solubility in water (unlike ethanol, a water-insoluble fuel could be piped around the country like petroleum). After narrowing the list by determining which fuels could be both produced in the lab and used in today's engines, they were left with a selection of compounds including replacements for both diesel and jet fuel. "We've tested a lot of fuels with fantastic properties," says Neil Renninger, Amyris cofounder and vice president of development.

Amyris scientists are now designing metabolic pathways that yield these compounds and tinkering with them to make production as efficient as possible. "You have to walk down a cost curve of production," says Renninger. "At the bottom, you get a product so cheap you can burn it."

While the company is still a long way from having a practical biofuel, its progress will be under close watch. As ethanol is being used more and more for transportation fuel, biofuels have captured the attention of investors. Indeed, in 2001, when Keasling and colleagues first thought about making biofuels, Amyris found very little investor interest. That has changed. "We went out with the aim of raising $7 million [during a 2006 round of financing] and ended up with $20 million," says Newman. "We had to turn down multiple investors."

Fuel Tech Receives Orders for $3.5 Million

Fuel Tech (NASDAQ: FTEK), a leader in the optimization of combustion systems in utility and industrial applications, today announced multiple air pollution control orders totaling $3.5 million.

In the United States, new business was secured from several customers, including three major electric utilities:

1. a Southeastern alliance partner for which NOxOUT® Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction (SNCR) equipment is to be installed on a small coal-fired boiler.
2. a Midwestern alliance partner for which NOxOUT SNCR equipment is to be installed on two small coal-fired boilers.
3. a Southwestern power generator, which has placed orders for a NOxOUT demonstration on a large lignite-fired boiler and for mapping and modeling on several other such boilers.

Overseas, an order was received in northern Italy for a NOxOUT installation on a municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerator.

Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) has long been a common means of reducing NOx emissions from industrial power generation equipment. However, concerns over the safety and potential liability of anhydrous ammonia used as an SCR reagent are growing. In addition, the costs associated with aqueous ammonia have driven many power generators to look for alternative means of reducing NOx.

Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems must use a nitrogen source like anhydrous ammonia, aqueous ammonia solutions, or high purity urea solutions to cause the NOx reduction reaction at the catalyst surface. Of these reagents, high purity urea solutions are, by far, the safest and easiest to handle. Ammonia, in any form, is a highly regulated material which is listed as “highly dangerous” in the concentrated forms that are typically used by industry. Urea is not listed as a hazardous material by any known government agency.

The NOxOUT SNCR:

• Is a Urea-based Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction (SNCR) system
• Is supplied in complete systems with Catalyst, Reactor Vessel and Urea Injection System
• Causes a 80% - 90% NOx Reduction
• Eliminates anhydrous ammonia and aqueous ammonia handling and storage requirements, along with regulatory requirements
• Has over 400 Installations Worldwide

A simple injection system is designed to ensure "clean" injection with high conversion to ammonia (NH₃). The NOxOUT-SCR process provides high levels of NOx control, similar to conventional SCR.

Typical operation of the NOxOUT-SCR process yields no buildup or fouling of catalyst surfaces. Injectors stay clean and there is often no increase in generator back pressure or decrease in generator performance or efficiency.

The Company’s nitrogen oxide (NOx) reduction technologies have established Fuel Tech as a leader in post-combustion NOx control systems where coal, municipal waste, biomass, and other fuels are utilized.

They also offer a FUEL CHEM® product line which revolves around the unique application of chemicals to improve the efficiency and reliability of combustion/post-combustion that helps reduce slag problems, dramatically reduce SO3 emissions (both in the boiler and across an SCR), and improve plant efficiency thus reducing CO2 emissions in the process. These latter two items have only recently (in the last few years) become important to customers.

Neal Dikeman of Cleantech Blog recently interviewed John Norris CEO of Fuel Tech about Fuel Tech in specific, and his thoughts on emissions technologies, carbon and greenhouse gases, and cleaning up electric utilities.

Solar Installations up 33% in US in 2006, 41% in World, Solar Capacity only Utilized 62%

In an update on the solar industry Solarbuzz reports that the installation of solar photovoltaic (PV) devices in the United States increased by about 33 percent in 2006 over the previous year. Worldwide PV installations totaled 1,744 megawatts (MW) in 2006, a new record and a growth of 19 percent over 2005. The United States contributed just 8 percent of those installations, or about 140 MW, while Germany led the world market with 960 MW of PV installations, comprising 55 percent of the world's total PV installations for 2006. To supply that market, the global production of solar cells reached 2,204 MW in 2006, a growth of 33 percent over PV production in 2005, while the production of polysilicon a critical ingredient for silicon solar cells increased by 16 percent.

The Photovoltaic Service Program at Navigant Consulting has published a “Pre-Release” of its quarterly PV industry newsletter, Solar Outlook. The feature article in the release is an analysis of 2006 PV technology shipments. The PV industry grew by 41%, the same rate as the CAGR from 2000 to 2006. In 2005, thin film technologies were 6% of total shipments. Thin films increased their share of total to 7% in 2006, and are on track to increase by another percentage point, to 8% in 2007. Many more facts are included in the referenced pdf.

Notice that the Solarbuzz numbers are for global production, while the Navigant numbers are for shipments, perhaps explaining the difference in numbers or it may simply be a matter of discrepencies in data collection.

TOP TEN SOLAR MANUFACTURERS

RANKING	2004	2005	2006
1	Sharp Solar	Sharp Solar	Sharp Solar, 22%
2	Kyocera	Kyocera	Q-Cells, 12%
3	BP Solar	Q-Cells	Kyocera, 9%
4	Shell Solar	Shott Solar	Suntech, 8%
5	Q-Cells	BP Solar	Sanyo, 6%
6	Shott Solar	Mitsubishi Electric	Mitsubishi Electric, 6%
7	Sanyo	Sanyo	Shott Solar, 5%
8	Mitsubishi Electric	Shell Solar	Motech, 5%
9	Isofoton	Motech	BP Solar, 4%
10	Motech	Isofoton	SunPower, 3%
Total Shipments	1049.8	1407.7	1982.4

The capacity utilization table on the left, from Navigant, reveals a somewhat suprising fact that production facilities were only used at 62% of capacity in 2006, up 1% from 2005, this happening while reports are that demand is exceeding supplies. This must at least be partially explained by the shortage in silicon.

This year is shaping up to be another banner year for PV installations in the United States. In early February, the Colorado Public Utility Commission (PUC) approved an 8-MW PV installation, which SunE Alamosa1, LLC will construct in Alamosa before year's end to provide solar power to Xcel Energy and its customers. Last week, the Nevada PUC approved a 20-year contract between Nevada Power Company and Solar Star NAFB for the installation of an 18-MW PV installation at Nellis Air Force Base. The Nevada PUC also approved 562 applications for customer-sited PV installations that will qualify for the state's SolarGenerations program. See the press releases from the Colorado PUC and the Nevada PUC.

Of course, California continues to demonstrate its solar power leadership by installing large PV systems throughout the state. Last week, Chevron Energy Solutions began building a 1-MW PV system that will form a parking structure at California State University, Fresno. In mid-March, San California Gas Company (a subsidiary of Sempra Energy) presented a $3.4 million incentive check to Peninsula Packaging for installing a 1-MW PV system at its facility in Exeter. On March 1st, the City of San Diego unveiled a 1-MW PV system at its Alvarado Water Treatment Plant, while SPG Solar, Inc. announced the completion of an 827-kilowatt PV system at Western Wine Services in the Napa Valley. Last week, SPG Solar also completed a 500-kilowatt PV system for the Sonoma County Water Agency. See the press releases from Chevron Energy Solutions, Sempra Energy, and the City of San Diego (PDF 37 KB), as well as the March 1st and March 19th press releases from SPG Solar.

Hell and Hydrogen

No matter how well they're engineered, hydrogen cars offer no real answer to the imminent threats posed by global warming.

By David Talbot

BMW’S Hydrogen 7 sedan burns hydrogen or gas in an internal combustion engine; liquid hydrogen is stored in a heavy trunk-mounted tank.

By the time Klaus Draeger, BMW's manager of research and development, took the microphone at a Berlin hotel last fall, the assembled journalists' bellies were full of mint juleps--and it all started to make sense. Maybe the world's oil crisis and the threat of climate change could be sensibly addressed by using hydrogen as a transportation fuel. Draeger sketched the alluring vision of a future in which high-performance luxury cars burn hydrogen and emit mostly water vapor. The hydrogen could someday be provided by renewable sources of energy, he said, and nobody would have to make any sacrifices. And we journalists would get to drive the first such cars the following day.

"You'll be pioneers! You will be sitting at the wheel of the Hydrogen 7, driving through Berlin and the country­side. And for the first time, you will drive this hydrogen-powered luxury saloon," Draeger exclaimed, using the Britishism for "sedan." BMW will lend 100 of these cars to yet-unnamed public figures as part of its global clean-energy promotional campaign. In some ways, the campaign resembles GM's effort to tout its own hydrogen-car program. GM's focus is on a futuristic fuel-cell car. The BMW version uses internal combustion: it burns hydrogen rather than skimming off its electrons. Same message, though: hydrogen is the answer.

"Experts will tell you that hydrogen has the biggest possibility to replace fossil fuels," Draeger explained, as the wine flowed. "Please see the Hydrogen 7 as an offer. We can only make this car a reality with our partners in political science, the world of business, the energy industry." He concluded with an appeal to "politicians the world over" to make the production, delivery, and storage of clean hydrogen affordable.

The next day, I got a look at the Hydrogen 7. From the outside it looked like a normal BMW four-door luxury sedan. I opened the trunk and marveled at the heavy steel tank that held liquid hydrogen at -253 ºC. While driving, I touched a button on the steering wheel to switch from gasoline to ­hydrogen; I noted no hiccup, just a higher-pitched engine noise. The car is very nice. But does it make environmental sense?

The simple answer is no. In the context of the overall energy economy, a car like the Hydrogen 7 would proba­bly produce far more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars available today. And changing this calculation would take multiple breakthroughs--which study after study has predicted will take decades, if they arrive at all. In fact, the Hydrogen 7 and its hydrogen-fuel-cell cousins are, in many ways, simply flashy distractions produced by automakers who should be taking stronger immediate action to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of their cars. As of 2003, transportation emissions accounted for one-third of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

Nobody has made this point more clearly than Joseph Romm does in Hell and High Water. Romm is an MIT-trained physicist who managed energy-efficiency programs in the U.S. Department of Energy during President Clinton's administration and now runs a consultancy called the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions. His book provides an accurate summary of what is known about global warming and climate change, a sensible agenda for technology and policy, and a primer on how political disinformation has undermined climate science. In his view, the rhetoric of "technology breakthroughs"--including the emphasis by President Bush and some in the auto industry on a future hydrogen economy--provides little more than official cover for near-term inaction.

$23 Million to Develop Fermentation Organisms

Five projects will receive $23 million over the next four years from DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), to develop highly efficient fermentative organisms that convert cellulosic biomass into ethanol.

Organisms that can ferment these cellulosic biomass materials into ethanol are crucial to the success of commercial-scale integrated biorefineries and cellulosic ethanol refining. Such organisms must be able to survive a wide range of environmental conditions while resisting mutations that would hinder their effectiveness.

Cargill Incorporated, Celunol Corporation, DuPont, Mascoma Corporation, and Purdue University were selected for the five projects. Combined with the industry cost share, more than $37 million could be invested in these projects.

These contracts are part of EERE's Biofuels Initiative (BFI), which has the goal of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil by meeting the following targets:

• To make cellulosic ethanol (or ethanol from non-grain biomass resources) cost competitive with gasoline by 2012.
• To replace 30 percent of current levels of gasoline consumption with biofuels by 2030 (or 30x30).