How Should We Approach Saving the Environment?

An interesting commentary on environmentalism appeared today on Eco World discussing the differences between supply side and demand side environmentalism.

At a time like this, where the momentum to do anything to achieve energy independence dovetails fitfully with the momentum to do anything to reduce CO2 emissions, policymakers pressured by environmentalists may enact sweeping legislation that could completely change our way of life. But there are two ways environmentalists can go to pursue their core values in the 21st century, and they represent very, very different choices. One of the most fundamental areas where these two choices diverge concerns energy and water policy.

A “supply side” environmentalist - for lack of a better term - would argue that the priority should be to achieve energy and water abundance. To do this, for example, they would advocate construction of nuclear powered desalinization plants, as well as pumping stations and aqueducts. They would advocate increased production of fresh water from seawater, and they would advocate distributing this water to restore every depleted aquifer on earth.

A “demand side” environmentalist, by contrast, would argue that conservation of energy and water is the only approach that could possibly make sense. They would argue that it isn’t possible to produce enough energy for everyone at current levels of consumption. They would fight for energy and water rationing, with punitive fines and even criminal penalties for overuse of these resources.

Read the whole article and express your opinions.

Israeli Discovery Converts Radioactive Waste into Safe Inert Vitrified "Rock" and Clean Energy

This post is adapted from an item in ISRAEL 21c that describes an Israeli discovery that converts dangerous radioactive waste into clean energy:

The problem of radioactive waste is a global one, and getting increasingly worse. All countries in the industrialized world are waking up to the need for safer hazardous waste disposal methods.

An Israeli firm, Environmental Energy Resources (EER), has developed a reactor that converts radioactive, hazardous and municipal waste into inert byproducts; vitrified slag and clean energy.

Shown above, a chunk of black, lava-like rock that is the result of the PGM process invented by EER.

Using a system called plasma gasification melting technology (PGM) developed by scientists from Russia's Kurchatov Institute research center, the Radon Institute in Russia, and Israel's Technion Institute - EER combines high temperatures and low-radioactive energy to transform waste into vitrified slag and syngas which is used to make electricity.

"We go up to 7,000 degrees centigrade and end at 1,400 centigrade," says Moshe Stern, founder and president of the Ramat Gan-based company.

Shrem adds that EER's waste disposal reactor does not harm the environment and leaves no surface water, groundwater, or soil pollution in its wake. The EER reactor combines three processes into one solution: it takes plasma torches to break down the waste; carbon leftovers are gasified and inorganic components are converted to solid waste. The remaining vitrified material is inert and can be cast into molds to produce tiles, blocks or plates for the construction industry.

EER then purifies the gas and with it operates turbines to generate electricity. EER produces energy - 70% of which goes back to power the reactor with a 30% excess which can be sold.

"It [the vitrified slag] also makes a good recyclable material for building and paving roads," Shrem said. Earlier, he told ISRAEL21c that EER can take low-radioactive, medical and municipal solid waste and produce from it clean energy that "can be used for just about anything."

The cost for treating and burying low-radioactive nuclear waste currently stands at about $30,000 per ton. The EER process will cost $3,000 per ton and produce only a 1% per volume solid byproduct.

In 2004, the Ukrainian government put out a tender searching for a solution that would provide safer hazardous waste disposal methods. EER sent in their proposal, and their technology won the bid.

EER's Karmiel facility and its installation in the Ukraine have a capacity to convert 500 to 1,000 kilograms of waste per hour. Other industry solutions, the company claims, can only treat 50 kilograms per hour and are much more costly.

"We are not burning. This is the key word," Shrem said. "When you burn you produce dioxin. Instead, we vacuum out the oxygen to prevent combustion."

In the US, EER is working to treat low-radioactive liquid waste and recently contracted with Energy Solutions, the largest American company in the field with 75% of the US market.

The company brochure gives the following advantages for the process.

• Low capital investment. The efforts of an expert engineering team and more than a decade of operating experience result in optimal and significantly smaller plant design that translates to a reduction in capital investment and long-term operating costs.
• Enhanced environmental performance. Proven environmental benefits enable a smoother and easier permitting phase to manufacturers and operators.
• Elimination of landfill costs. There is no residual ash to dispose of. In addition, the completely molten, vitrified slag can replace quarried materials for the road construction and building industries.
• Lower operating and treatment costs. PGM’s operating and treatment costs are approximately 15% lower than conventional incinerators. Savings are substantially higher when the elimination of ash disposal costs is factored in — an estimated additional $35 million over the course of a 150,000 tpa typical facility’s lifespan.

BP's Bet on Butanol

Forget ethanol: it's hard to transport and gives bad mileage per gallon. Another alcohol, butanol, is a much better renewable fuel, says the president of BP Biofuels.

By Kevin Bullis

Beet fuel: BP Biofuels is developing a process for converting some crops into butanol, an alcohol fuel that's superior to ethanol in several ways. The first batch will likely come from a crop of sugar beets like the one featured here.

Alternative fuels such as ethanol could help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and decrease oil imports, but so far these biofuels only make up a small fraction of fuel use. One of the biggest challenges to ramping up ethanol use is distributing it. That's because ethanol can't be transported in the same pipelines used to distribute gasoline. What's more, ethanol delivers far less energy than gasoline does on a gallon-for-gallon basis.

Philip New, president of BP Biofuels, a recently created company within the giant British oil producer, thinks it has a solution: butanol. While butanol, like ethanol, can be made from corn starch or sugar beets, its properties are a lot more like gasoline than like ethanol. That means it can be shipped in existing gasoline pipelines. And it contains more energy than ethanol does, which will improve mileage per gallon.

Last month BP announced that it will be working with the University of California, Berkeley, on a $500 million, 10-year program, part of which will be devoted to research on improving biofuels such as butanol. And last year BP announced a partnership with DuPont to develop new technology for making butanol. DuPont will provide expertise in biotechnology. Technology Review spoke with New about the company's plans at a recent energy conference at MIT.

Technology Review: Why is BP interested in biofuels, which would seemingly be a direct competitor to your main business?

Philip New: It is possible--if the world now is really serious about climate change, and if people continue to be concerned about energy security--that given the breakthroughs in technology that now seem plausible, biofuels could represent a significant amount of the transport fuel mix in the future.

I think you have a choice. Either you can try to deny it and resist it and hold it back, or you can embrace it and welcome it and make it a part of your business. And clearly BP has chosen to do the latter.

TR: BP is focusing on a relatively obscure fuel: butanol. Why focus on butanol rather than on ethanol?

PN: Ethanol is a good start. But ethanol was not designed to be a fuel. No one sat down and said, "Let's create a biomolecule that will operate in engines." What happened was, people said ethanol can work in engines. As a lot of people are becoming aware, it's good, but it has some drawbacks. Butanol is, we think, an innovation that overcomes many of the drawbacks.

You shouldn't view butanol as being a competitor to ethanol. An ethanol plant can evolve into a butanol plant. And you can mix ethanol and butanol together, and it can actually help you use more ethanol.

TR: So how is butanol better?

PN: The key way is higher energy density. Whereas ethanol is around about two-thirds the energy density [of gasoline], with butanol we're in the high eighties [in terms of percent].

It's less volatile [than ethanol]. It isn't as corrosive, so we don't have issues with it at higher concentrations beginning to eat at aluminum or polymer components in fuel systems and dispensing systems. And it's not as hydroscopic--it doesn't pick up water, which is what ethanol can do if you put it in relatively low concentrations. So we can put it through pipelines.

The Incredible Shrinking Engine

A new engine design could significantly improve fuel efficiency for cars and SUVs, at a fraction of the cost of today's hybrid technology.

By Kevin Bullis

At MIT's Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Daniel Cohn (pictured above) stands behind an engine equipped with test instruments (in yellow) and an injection system that sprays fuel directly into the engine's combustion chambers.

For Daniel Cohn, a senior research scientist at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the ­century-­old internal-combustion engine is still a source of inspiration. As he strides past the machinery and test equipment in the MIT Sloan Automotive Laboratory, his usually reserved demeanor drops away. "An engine this size," he says, pointing out an ordinary-looking 2.4-liter midsize gasoline engine, "would be a rocket with our technology."

By way of explaining that technology, he shows off a turbocharger that could be bolted to the 2.4-liter engine; the engine, he adds, uses direct fuel injection rather than the port injection currently found in most cars. Both turbocharging and direct injection are preëxisting technologies, and neither looks particularly impressive. Indeed, used separately, they would lead to only marginal improvements in the performance of an internal-­combustion engine. But by combining them, and augmenting them with a novel way to use a small amount of ethanol, Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine, an advance that could allow automakers to convert small engines designed for economy cars into muscular engines with more than enough power for SUVs or sports cars. By extracting better performance from smaller, more efficient engines, the technology could lead to vehicles whose fuel economy rivals that of hybrids, which use both an electric motor and a gasoline engine. And that fuel efficiency could come at a fraction of the cost.

Cohn says that his colleagues--­Leslie Bromberg, a principal research scientist at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and John Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Sloan Auto Lab--­considered many ways to make ­internal-­combustion engines more efficient. "And then, after a lot of discussion, it just sort of hit us one day," Cohn recalls. The key to the MIT researchers' system, he explains, was overcoming a problem called "knock," which has severely limited efforts to increase engine torque and power.

In gas engines, a piston moves into a cylinder, compressing a mixture of air and fuel that is then ignited by a spark. The explosion forces the piston out again. One way to get more power out of an engine is to design the piston to travel farther with each stroke. The farther it travels, the more it compresses the air-fuel mixture, and the more mechanical energy it harvests from the explosion as it retreats. Overall, higher compression will lead to a more efficient engine and more power per stroke. But increasing the pressure too much causes the fuel to heat up and explode independently of the spark, leading to poorly timed ignition. That's knock, and it can damage the engine.

To avoid knock, engine designers must limit the extent to which the piston compresses the fuel and air in the cylinder. They also have to limit the use of turbo­charging, in which an exhaust-driven turbine compresses the air before it enters the combustion chamber, increasing the amount of oxygen in the chamber so that more fuel can be burned per stroke. Turning on a car's turbocharger will provide an added boost when the car is accelerating or climbing hills. But too much turbocharging, like too much compression, leads to knock.

Is 2025 the Year for Fuel Cell Cars?

Reuters -- Hydrogen is being touted as an environmentally friendly fuel of the future, but the road to hydrogen-powered vehicles will not be easy, industry experts said at the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) Annual Hydrogen Conference this week.

BMW, Toyota, Honda, GM, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen had hydrogen-powered vehicles on display at the conference, some costing up to a million dollars a piece and having limited range on a hydrogen fill-up.

Topics raised include the cost of the cars themselves, the cars' limited ranges, hydrogen storage and difficulties of establishing hydrogen refuelling stations.

BMW vice president of clean technology Frank Ochmann predicted that fuel cell-powered cars would be commonly sold and produced by 2025.

He also revealed that the German manufacturer was working on an insulated tank to keep hydrogen in its liquid state. He claimed: "If you put in this tank a snowman, it would take about thirteen years to melt down."

Venture Capitalist and Business Analyst Predict Rapid Expansion of Biofuels Industry, Dramatic Reductions in Carbon Emissions

Vinod Khosla, Jens Riese Deliver Keynotes at BIO’s World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing

Busness Wire News Release -- A top venture capitalist and a prominent biotechnology industry business consultant today both said that the biofuels industry is poised for exceptional growth and that ethanol from cellulose appears to be the most promising alternative fuel over the long-term. During keynote speeches at the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures and Dr. Jens Riese of McKinsey & Co. also highlighted the significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achievable with ethanol from cellulose. The fourth annual World Congress runs March 21-24 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Fla.

In a speech titled “The Role of Venture Capital in Developing Cellulosic Ethanol,” Khosla outlined the range of technologies currently being commercialized to convert cellulosic biomass to transportation fuels. Khosla said that the U.S. Department of Energy’s recent grants to cooperatively fund biorefineries that produce ethanol from cellulose is an acknowledgment that the technology is moving faster than expected. He said that a 100 percent replacement of petroleum transportation fuels with biofuels is achievable, and predicted that ethanol from cellulose technology will be cost competitive with current ethanol production by 2009.

Khosla also stated that ethanol from cellulose can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, even achieving a net gain in greenhouse gas reduction. Khosla is the head of Khosla Ventures, a company that actively invests in breakthrough scientific work in clean technology areas, such as biorefineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, and other environmentally friendly technologies.

Dr. Jens Riese of McKinsey & Co. also addressed the World Congress plenary session with a speech titled “Beyond the Hype: Global Growth in the Biofuels Industry.” Riese predicted that global annual biofuel capacity would double to 25 billion gallons over the next five years and could reach 80 billion gallons – meeting 10 percent of world transportation fuel demand, enough to replace the annual oil production for fuel of Saudi Arabia – by 2020. According to McKinsey & Company’s model, biofuels can economically replace 25 percent of transportation fuel with crude oil above $50 per barrel. He concluded that the race is on to build a biofuels industry and that companies should invest now.

Further, Riese pointed out that ethanol from cellulose is the most cost-effective way of achieving greenhouse gas reductions, following measure to reduce demand for energy. Riese is a partner at McKinsey & Co., a leading global management consulting firm and is a top expert in industrial biotechnology.

“We are excited to see industry leaders echo our long-held enthusiasm and optimism about the exciting opportunities presented by ethanol from cellulose,” said BIO’s Brent Erickson. “Indeed, we are optimistic about the opportunities presented from multiple sources of ethanol as a means to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and our environmental footprint.” BIO supports the production of ethanol from all feedstocks. Agricultural biotechnology is helping to increase corn yields, while industrial biotechnology is helping to convert corn starch and crop residues into ethanol more efficiently. With ongoing advances in biotechnology, biofuels can help America meet nearly half its transportation-fuel needs by the middle of this century.

The World Congress is hosted by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the American Chemical Society, the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council, the European Federation of Biotechnology, BIOTECanada and EuropaBIO.

About BIO

BIO represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and 31 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of healthcare, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products. BIO also produces the annual BIO International Convention, the world’s largest biotechnology conference and exhibition

Novozymes Introduces Five-Step Strategy to Achieve Economically Viable Cellulosic Ethanol

At the 4^th Annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Orlando, Fla., Novozymes (Other OTC:NVZMY.PK) yesterday introduced a five-step strategy to achieve economically viable cellulosic ethanol.

“As the biotech-based world leader in enzymes and microorganisms, Novozymes understands how biotechnology can exponentially increase benefits to society,” said Per Falholt, Novozymes chief scientific officer. “Cellulosic ethanol fuel is poised to create a multidimensional positive impact on the world’s economy, resources, environment and political situation. Novozymes’ five-step strategy is designed to foster not only the scientific progress of cellulosic ethanol, but also the commercial viability of this critical energy source.”

The strategy comprises:

1. Continued funding of research and development (specifically in the areas of biomass conversion and the development of a commercial process technology).

2. Establishment of flexible configuration testing and development centers, geographically distributed to address multiple types of biomass feedstock and integrate processes (pretreatment, hydrolysis and fermentation).

3. Scientific advancement to increase cost efficiency by improving underlying agricultural practices (collection and harvest of biomass) and pre-treatment methods.

4. Scientific advancement in biotechnology (including enzyme technology, metabolic engineering and novel separation methods).

5. Continued bi-partisan support of a national infrastructure to support practical implementation (including funding, incentives and tax credits.

According to Maria Rapoza, vice president for Science and Technology, “Because these new enzymatic technologies have the potential to be used on many different crops to produce biofuels from cellulose, it is important to ensure coordination at a number of different levels, including in university research programs, commercial development and agricultural production, and the identification of suitable crops.”

Novozymes is the biotech-based world leader in enzymes and microorganisms. Using nature's own technologies, they continuously expand the frontiers of biological solutions to improve industrial performance in all areas. Novozymes' more than 600 products are a key player in the production of thousands of products you use in your everyday life - from the textiles in your clothes to the food you eat. Their enzymes are used in the transformation of starch (corn, cellulosic feedstock) into different kinds of sugars in the starch and fuel industries.

Their website gives this description of how enzymes are used in ethanol production.

Today, enzymes are able to work at lower calcium ion and pH levels, making them much more robust. This allows them to work efficiently under the conditions found in dry-milling, making them more profitable in fuel ethanol production.

During liquefaction, the starch slurry is gelatinized, and starch is broken down to dextrins and small amounts of oligosaccharides. To effectively process the starch in dry-milled grains for the production of ethanol, alpha-amylases are needed to reduce dextrin chain-length and mash viscosity prior to saccharification and fermentation with yeast.

BP Solar Announces Two Mega Cell Plants

BP Solar today announced that it has begun constructing two mega cell plants, one at its European headquarters in Tres Cantos, Madrid and the second at its joint venture facility, Tata BP Solar, in Bangalore, India.

For phase 1 of the Madrid expansion, BP Solar is aiming to expand its annual cell capacity from 55 MW to around 300 MW. The Bangalore expansion could add another 300 MW to BP Solar's total capacity.

The new cell lines use state-of-the-art screen printing technology,much of it proprietary to BP Solar. By fully automating wafer handling,the lines will be able to handle the very thinnest of wafers available and ensuring the highest possible quality.

"The announcement of the two mega cell plants cements BP Solar's commitment to maintain a market leadership position in PV" said Lee Edwards, BP Solar's CEO. "The new cell technologies we are using, our intellectual property in casting with Mono2 and the contracts we have signed to secure preferential access to metallurgical grade silicon are all important steps towards our goal of offering customers PV generated electricity on a par with the cost of conventional grid supplied electricity."

This announcement brings BP's total announced capacity to 690 MW, second behind Sharp.

Sharp currently has three expansions underway which will bring their capacity to 820 MW per year.

These plants will bring us closer to being able to produce PV power at costs nearer that of conventional electricity. Several pundits have said that when production capacity reaches 1 GW at a single facility solar PV will be competitive with conventional electricity. Between the proprietary processes of several producers and the experience and expertise that AMAT is bringing to the field, reaching this goal is approaching faster than I had expected.

Bush seeks to scrap current ethanol standard

Reuters, March 20, 2007 -- The Bush administration has proposed scrapping the current U.S. renewable fuels standard that requires ethanol ...

Under the legislative proposal sent to Congress on Monday, the new standard would require U.S. ethanol and alternative fuel consumption to reach 10 billion gallons in 2010.

The alternative fuels standard would then slowly rise through 2014, and ramp up the following three years to reach 35 billion gallons annually in 2017. ...

In addition to ethanol, alternative fuels under the bill would include biodiesel and motor fuel made from municipal solid waste, natural gas, hydrogen, coal-derived liquid fuels, electricity and other fuels to be determined by the Energy Department. ... more

The change in definition of renewable fuel requirements from only ethanol to the other listed fuels makes attainment of the 35 billion gallons annually goal by 2017 more achievable, as I have stated previously. Combined with greater emphasis on PHEVs and BEVs our greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil can be greatly reduced. The coal liquids should be required to be produced from coal mined in an environmentally consious manner and the CTL process be required to sequester all emissions.

Cheaper, More Efficient Solar Cells

A new type of material could allow solar cells to harvest far more light.

By Kevin Bullis

Better solar: In conventional solar cells (a), light (dashed line) enters an antireflective layer (yellow) and then a layer of silicon (green) in which much of the light is converted into electricity. But some of the light (solid arrows) reflects off an aluminum backing, returns through the silicon, and exits without generating electricity. A new material (represented by the dots in [b]) makes it possible to convert more of this light into electricity. Instead of reflecting back out of the solar cell, the light is diffracted by one layer of the material (larger dots). This causes the light to reenter the silicon at a low angle, at which point it bounces around until it is absorbed. The light that makes it through the first layer is reflected by the second layer of material (smaller dots) before being diffracted into the silicon.

The effort uses a type of material called a photonic crystal that makes it possible to "do things with light that have never been done before," says John Joannopoulos, a professor of physics at MIT who heads the lab where the new designs for solar applications were developed. Photonic crystals, which can be engineered to reflect and diffract all the photons in specific wavelengths of light, have long been attractive for optical communications, in which the materials can be used to direct and sort light-borne data. Now new manufacturing processes could make the photonic crystals practical for much-larger-scale applications such as photovoltaics.

StarSolar's approach addresses a long-standing challenge in photovoltaics. Silicon, the active material that is used in most solar cells today, has to do double duty. It both absorbs incoming light and converts it into electricity. Solar cells could be cheaper if they used less silicon. If the silicon is made thinner than it is now, it may still retain its ability to convert the photons it absorbs into electricity. But fewer photons will be absorbed, decreasing the efficiency of the cell.

MIT researchers developed sophisticated computer simulations to understand how thin layers of photonic crystal could be engineered to capture and recycle the photons that slip through thin layers of silicon. Silicon easily absorbs blue light, but not red and infrared light. The researchers found that by creating a specific pattern of microscopic spheres of glass within a precisely designed photonic crystal, and then applying this pattern in a thin layer at the back of a solar cell, they could redirect unabsorbed photons back into the silicon.

Today's solar cells already reflect some of the light that passes through the silicon. But the photonic crystal has distinct advantages. Conventional solar cells are backed with a sheet of aluminum. The photonic crystal reflects more light than the aluminum does, especially once the aluminum oxidizes. And the photonic crystal diffracts the light so that it reenters the silicon at a low angle. The low angle prevents the light from escaping the silicon. Instead, it bounces around inside; this increases the chances of the light being absorbed and converted into electricity.

As a result, the photonic crystal can increase the efficiency of solar cells by up to 37 percent, says Peter Bermel, CTO and a cofounder of StarSolar. This makes it possible to use many times less silicon, he says, cutting costs enough to compete with electricity from the grid in many markets. The savings would be especially large now, since a current shortage in refined silicon is keeping solar-cell prices high and slowing the growth of solar-cell production.

Global Warming Causes Losses in Food Production

Over a span of two decades, warming temperatures have caused annual losses of roughly $5 billion for major food crops, according to a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

From 1981-2002, warming reduced the combined production of wheat, corn, and barley—cereal grains that form the foundation of much of the world’s diet—by 40 million metric tons per year. The study, which was published March 16 in the online journal Environmental Research Letters, demonstrates that this decline is due to human-caused increases in global temperatures.

"Most people tend to think of climate change as something that will impact the future,” said Christopher Field, co-author on the study and director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, Calif. “But this study shows that warming over the past two decades has already had real effects on global food supply."

Continue reading here.

Canada to End Oil Sands Aid, Add Green-Car Rebates

Reuters via Planet Ark, March 21, 2007 - Canada's minority Conservative government, pressured to do more on the environment, will phase out some oil sands tax incentives, introduce rebates for hybrid vehicles, tax gas guzzlers and subsidize renewable fuels.

The provision allowing accelerated write-off of oil sands investments will be phased out gradually so projects that had counted on them can proceed.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced a rebate of C$1,000-C$2,000 (US$850-$1,700) for purchases of new fuel-efficient vehicles.

The government is also slapping on a new "Green Levy", or gas-guzzler tax, of C$1,000-C$4,000 on the sale of new passenger vehicles that are not fuel-efficient.

Read more here

Hydrogen injection could boost biofuel production

The "hybrid hydrogen-carbon process," or H2CAR has been proposed by engineers from Purdue University for the production of iquid fuels from biomass or coal. The process adds hydrogen from a "carbon-free" energy source, such as solar, wind or nuclear power, during gasification of the biomass, supressing the formation of carbon dioxide and increasing the efficiency of the process, making it possibe to produce three times the volume of biofuels rom the same quantity of same quantity of biomass. However, the new method hinges on having a cheap source of hydrogen – something which is not yet readily available.

When conventional methods are used to convert biomass or coal to liquid fuels, 60 percent to 70 percent of the carbon atoms in the starting materials are lost in the process as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, whereas no carbon atoms would be lost using H2CAR, said Rakesh Agrawal, Purdue's Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering.

"This waste is due to the fact that you are using energy contained in the biomass to drive the entire process," he said. "I'm saying, treat biomass predominantly as a supplier of carbon atoms, not as an energy source."

The process, which would make possible the dawning of a "hydrogen-carbon economy," is detailed in a research paper appearing online in the March 6 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Other researchers have estimated that the United States has a sustainable supply of about 1.4 billion tons of biomass each year that could be used specifically for the production of liquid fuels. With conventional methods, that quantity of biomass would provide 30 percent of the fuel required for the nation's annual transportation needs. But the same quantity of biomass would provide enough fuel to meet all transportation needs using the new H2CAR method, Agrawal said.

To grow enough biomass for the entire nation's transportation needs using the conventional method for producing biofuels would require a land area 25 percent to 55 percent the size of the United States, compared with about 6 percent to 10 percent for the H2CAR process.

A major reason less land would be needed is because of the overall higher efficiency of generating hydrogen by splitting water molecules using solar energy to drive the electrolysis. Usually, the hydrogen in liquid fuels made from biomass comes from the plant matter itself. But it typically takes more than 10 times the solar energy to grow crops than it does to produce the equivalent quantity of hydrogen possessing the same energy content by using the solar-power electrolysis method, he said.

"So providing hydrogen derived from water through solar electrolysis reduces the amount of biomass needed," Agrawal said. "The average energy efficiency of growing crops is typically less than 1 percent, whereas the energy efficiency of photovoltaic cells to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is about 8-10 percent. I am getting hydrogen at a higher efficiency than I get biomass, meaning I need less land."

Advantages cited in the paper for the process are:

1. The estimated land areas for both the conventional processes are too large. Even with the anticipated advancements, the land area for the conventional–II case is 27.5% of the total United States land area. This land area is greater than the current United States cropland area.
2. The land area requirements for the proposed processes, especially for the H2CAR–II case, are substantially lower and have a potential to be manageable.
3. The carbon efficiency for the conventional biomass process is quite low. Nearly two-thirds of the carbon contained in the biomass is lost as CO2.
4. The addition of H2 in the H2CAR process improved the overall efficiency of the process.
5. Another associated benefit of H2CAR process is that diversity of crops can be maintained because any type of biomass can be gasified. It has been shown that plant diversity enhances the biomass yield by 180% over monocultures. Also, a diverse biomass growth has a better chance of survival in droughts.
6. The ability to use diverse biomass also provides an additional degree of freedom to tailor biomass growth for the maximization of carbon pickup from the atmosphere without the constraints of relative quantities of lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose, starch, oil, sugar, etc. in a plant.
7. Land area radius decreases to support a given size of plant.
8. Less space is required for storage of biomass.
9. Less fertilizers and pesticides would be required for the same quantity of liquid fuel production, if any.
10. There would be less wear and tear to the land.
11. Less biomass demand to produce same quantity of transportation fuel implies less energy and water input to grow the required amount of biomass.

The researchers suggest in the paper the chemical processing steps needed to make the new approach practical. But making the concept economically competitive with gasoline and diesel fuel would require research in two areas: finding ways to produce cheap hydrogen from carbon-free sources and developing a new type of gasifier needed for the process.

"Having said that, this is the first concept for creating a sustainable system that derives all of our transportation fuels from biomass," Agrawal said.

The process, which would make possible the dawning of a "hydrogen-carbon economy," is detailed in a research paper appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Picking a Winner in Clean-Coal Technology

A new MIT study says that no single technology is the solution to economically cutting carbon-dioxide emissions from coal.

By Kevin Bullis



Coal's crystal ball: Ernie Moniz, professor of physics at MIT, announces a new road map for reducing carbon emissions from coal.

Technologies for cleaning up one of the cheapest and dirtiest sources of electricity--coal--are promising. But an MIT study released last week suggests that no single technology will do the trick. (See "The Precarious Future of Coal.")

According to the MIT report (available here), a clean-coal solution will likely lie in a combination of several new technologies for capturing carbon dioxide and storing it to keep it out of the atmosphere. "The world is going to have to do something to adopt serious constraints on the emission of greenhouse gases, and carbon dioxide in particular," says John Deutch, professor of chemistry at MIT and one of the authors of the study. "All of these approaches are promising. All these technologies are amenable, at some cost, to carbon capture and sequestration. We do not see that there is any reason to pick a technology winner today. There are several different avenues that should be pursued."

Indeed, the MIT report reached the surprising conclusion that an acclaimed new type of coal-fired power plant, called integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), may not provide the best solution for reducing carbon emissions. So far no commercial-scale coal plants have been designed to capture carbon dioxide--and without a price on the greenhouse gas, there has been no economic reason to do so. But IGCC has long been lauded as a type of plant that would make it less expensive to capture carbon dioxide in the future because it produces more concentrated carbon dioxide than is emitted from conventional coal plants.

Capturing carbon dioxide from an IGCC could be, in theory, relatively cheap and easy to implement. IGCC plants use a process called gasification, in which coal is heated to produce syngas, a combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The carbon monoxide can be converted into carbon dioxide using high-pressure steam. Because the carbon dioxide is highly concentrated, it's possible to separate it from the hydrogen using weakly binding solvent. The hydrogen can then be burned to turn a turbine, or it can be run through a fuel cell to generate electricity. The carbon dioxide would be released from the solvent when engineers allowed the pressure to drop.

These and other advantages, including easier capture of pollutants such as sulfates, have led many environmentalists and policy makers to favor IGCC. But the MIT researchers say that things aren't so simple. The key issue is that not all coal is the same. "There are many different types of coal, not only in the United States, but around the world," Deutch says. "Different coals will suggest different carbon-capture schemes and different technologies."

Coal from certain areas of the United States, for example, might contain twice the amount of energy as coal in parts of India. The amount of water, ash, carbon, and sulfur varies markedly, and all have an impact on the efficiency and economics of coal plants. And the impact of different coals can be significantly greater for IGCC than for more-conventional types of coal plants.

AEP Signs Two MOUs for Technologies to Reduce CO2 Emissions

American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) announced two significant memorandums of understanding (MOU) regarding technologies that would reduce CO2 emissions from coal powered electric power plants.

The first MOU is with Babcock and Wilcox Company, a unit of McDermott International, Inc.(NYSE: MDR) to pursue the viability of retrofitting power plants with oxy-coal combustion (oxycombustion) to existing power plants to reduce CO2 and other emissions. Under the terms of the MOU the companies will assess the application of oxy-coal combustion as a retrofit to an existing AEP plant, and work toward the development of the first oxy-coal commercial validation project in the United States.

The second MOU is with Alstom (Paris: ALS) to bring Alstom’s chilled ammonia process for CO2 capture to full commercial scale of up to 200 MW by 2011. The technology has the great advantage versus other technologies of being fully applicable not only for new power plants, but also for the retrofit of existing coal-fired power plants.

B&W Oxy-Coal Combustion

Oxy-coal combustion uses pure oxygen for the combustion of coal in electricity generating plants. In this system, nitrogen that comes in with the air for the combustion process is eliminated. As a result, the exhaust gas is a relatively pure stream of CO2 that is ready for capture and sequestration or alternate uses such as enhanced oil recovery. Use of this technology is expected to result in near-zero emissions from coal-fired electric-generating facilities. B&W has established a collaboration agreement with American Air Liquide, Inc. for the continued development of the technology.

During the summer of 2007, B&W will complete a pilot demonstration of the oxy-coal combustion technology at its 30MWth Clean Environment Development Facility (CEDF) in Alliance, Ohio.

In addition, as part of the MOU, B&W and AEP will evaluate and select the most suitable existing AEP plant location for the commercial application of the oxy-coal combustion technology. B&W will provide unit performance and design approximations for potential carbon capture uses, perform preliminary site equipment layouts, prepare a detailed scope of work, and develop schedule- and budget-price estimates.

The feasibility study is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2008.

In addition to the work under the MOU with AEP, B&W’s Canadian subsidiary, B&W Canada, is working with a major Canadian utility to develop a supercritical pressure, pulverized coal-fired boiler and to assess the feasibility of proceeding to the construction phase on a new, near-zero-emissions, 300MW power station using the oxy-coal combustion technology. In that unit, recovered CO2 would be sold for enhanced oil recovery operations and eventually sequestrated underground in stable geologic formations.

A detailed description of tests conducted in a 5 million BTU/hr B&W pilot combustor are described in this paper. In these tests NOx emissions were significantly lower by nearly 65% when compared to air-blown combustion, and the CO2 content in flue gas was increased from 15% to 80% in O2-fired mode. The flue gas volume exiting the boiler was reduced by nearly 70%, thereby improving the economics of efficient capture, reuse, and sequestration of carbon dioxide. Because relative air infiltration was higher than would be expected in a commercial sized units even better results would be expected in commercial plants.

Swedish energy giant Vattenfall is building the first CO2-free coal-fired power plant, a 30 MW Oxyfuel pilot plant.

Alstom’s Chilled Ammonia Process

Alstom’s post-combustion process uses chilled ammonia to capture CO2. This process dramatically reduces the energy required to capture carbon dioxide and isolates it in a highly concentrated, high-pressure form. In laboratory testing sponsored by EPRI and others, Alstom’s process has demonstrated the potential to capture over 90% of CO2 at a cost that is far less expensive than other carbon capture technologies. The isolated CO2, once captured, can be used commercially or stored in suitable underground geological sites.

The project will be implemented in two phases. In phase one, Alstom and AEP will jointly develop a 30 MWth product validation plant that will capture CO2 from flue gas emitted from AEP’s 1300 MW Mountaineer Plant located in New Haven, West Virginia. It is targeted to capture up to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. The captured CO2 will be designated for geological storage in deep saline aquifers at the site. This pilot is scheduled for start-up at the end of 2008 and will operate for approximately 12-18 months.

In phase two, Alstom will design, construct and commission a commercial scale of up to 200 MW CO2 capture system on one of the 450 MW coal-fired units at its Northeastern Station in Oologah, Oklahoma. The system is scheduled for start-up in late 2011. It is expected to capture about 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, commercially validating this promising technology. The CO2 captured at Northeastern Station will be used for enhanced oil recovery.

A Powerspan process, that uses an amonia based solutions to capture SOx, NOx,CO2, Hg and particulates from power plant flue gas have or will be demonstrated at FirstEnergy's R.E. Burger Plant in Shadyside, Ohio. Powerspan has conducted initial laboratory testing of the CO2 absorption process, which demonstrated 90 percent CO2 removal under conditions comparable to a commercial-scale absorber. Initial cost estimates indicate that the ammonia-based process could cost less than half of the next lowest-cost CO2 capture technology currently under investigation.

The Alstrom process uses chilled ammonia, which was not mentioned in descriptions of the Powerspan process, so this may be an improvement over that process. One could speculate that a heat pump could be used to chill the ammonia, which absorbs the CO2, and then the heat from condensation of the refrigerant could be used to regenerate the ammonia, releasing the CO2 for sequestration.

Both of these technologies fit in with the goals of MIT's Future of Coal report, in fact oxycombustion was mentioned specifically as a potential technology that could reduce CO2 emissions.

The Future of Coal

An interdisciplinary MIT faculty group examined the role of coal in a world where constraints on carbon dioxide emissions are adopted to mitigate global climate change. Their report, The Future of Coal, examines how the world can continue to use coal, an abundant and inexpensive fuel, in a way that mitigates, instead of worsens, the global warming crisis.

The report is extremely comprehensive and in my view very objective and should play an important role in determining government policy regarding coal fired power plants.

They are especially critical of the government picking a technology "winner." Although IGCC is the lowest cost solution at the present they contend that super critical pulverized coal plants or oxycombustion plants could be competitive and deserve more funding. They also conclude that a significant reduction of carbon emissions is possible only when a significant price is placed on CO2 emissions.

The remainder of this post is composed of excerpts of key parts of the report.

This report evaluates the technologies and costs associated with the generation of electricity from coal along with those associated with the capture and sequestration of the carbon dioxide produced coal-based power generation. Growing electricity demand in the U.S. and in the world will require increases in all generation options (renewables, coal, and nuclear) in addition to increased efficiency and conservation in its use. Coal is likely to remain an important source of energy in any conceivable future energy scenario.

The report concludes that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the critical enabling technology to help reduce CO2 emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world's pressing energy needs.

According to Dr. Deutch, Institute Professor, Department of Chemistry "As the world's leading energy user and greenhouse gas emitter, the U.S. must take the lead in showing the world CCS can work. Demonstration of technical, economic, and institutional features of CCS at commercial scale coal combustion and conversion plants will give policymakers and the public confidence that a practical carbon mitigation control option exists, will reduce cost of CCS should carbon emission controls be adopted, and will maintain the low-cost coal option in an environmentally acceptable manner."

The central message of the report is:

Demonstration of technical, economic, and institutional features of carbon capture and sequestration at commercial scale coal combustion and conversion plants will

1. give policymakers and the public confidence that this carbon mitigation control option is practical for broad application,
2. shorten the deployment time and reduce the cost for carbon capture and sequestration should a carbon emission control policy be adopted, and
3. maintain opportunities for the use of coal in a carbon constrained world in an environmentally acceptable manner.

Key findings in this study:

• Coal is a low-cost, per BTU, mainstay of both the developed and developing world, and its use is projected to increase. Because of coal's high carbon content, increasing use will exacerbate the problem of climate change unless coal plants are deployed with very high efficiency and large scale CCS is implemented.

• CCS is the critical enabling technology because it allows significant reduction in CO2 emissions while allowing coal to meet future energy needs.

• A significant charge on carbon emissions is needed in the relatively near term to increase the economic attractiveness of new technologies that avoid carbon emissions and specifically to lead to large-scale CCS in the coming decades. We need large-scale demonstration projects of the technical, economic and environmental performance of an integrated CCS system. We should proceed with carbon sequestration projects as soon as possible. Several integrated large-scale demonstrations with appropriate measurement, monitoring and verification are needed in the United States over the next decade with government support. This is important for establishing public confidence for the very large-scale sequestration program anticipated in the future. The regulatory regime for large-scale commercial sequestration should be developed with a greater sense of urgency, with the Executive Office of the President leading an inter agency process.

• The U.S. government should provide assistance only to coal projects with CO2 capture in order to demonstrate technical, economic and environmental performance.

• Today, IGCC appears to be the economic choice for new coal plants with CCS. However, this could change with further RD&D, so it is not appropriate to pick a single technology winner at this time, especially in light of the variability in coal type, access to sequestration sites, and other factors. The government should provide assistance to several "first of a kind" coal utilization demonstration plants, but only with carbon capture.

• Congress should remove any expectation that construction of new coal plants without CO2 capture will be "grandfathered" and granted emission allowances in the event of future regulation. This is a perverse incentive to build coal plants without CO2 capture today.

• Emissions will be stabilized only through global adherence to CO2 emission constraints. China and India are unlikely to adopt carbon constraints unless the U.S. does so and leads the way in the development of CCS technology.

• Key changes must be made to the current Department of Energy RD&D program to successfully promote CCS technologies. The program must provide for demonstration of CCS at scale; a wider range of technologies should be explored; and modeling and simulation of the comparative performance of integrated technology systems should be greatly enhanced.

[Their findings are elaborated in chapter 8 of the report. The complete text of their finding on the relative merits of coal power plants is as follows]

It is premature to select one coal conversion technology as the preferred route for cost-effective electricity generation combined with CCS. With present technologies and higher quality coals, the cost of electricity generated with CCS is cheaper for IGCC than for air or oxygen driven SCPC. For sub-bituminous coals and lignite, the cost difference is significantly less and could even be reversed by future technical advances. Since commercialization of clean coal technology requires advances in R&D as well as technology demonstration, other conversion/combustion technologies should not be ruled out today and deserve R&D support at the process development unit (PDU) scale.

[The complete text of their finding regarding the need for a significant charge on carbon emissions is as follows]

A global carbon charge starting at $25 per ton of CO2 emitted (or nearly $100 per tonne of carbon), imposed initially in 2015 and rising at a real rate of 4% per year, will likely cause adjustments to energy demand, supply technologies and fuel choice sufficient to stabilize mid-century global CO2 emissions from all industrial and energy sources at a level of 26 to 28 gigatons of CO2 per year. Depending on the expansion of nuclear power, the use of coal increases from 20% to 60% above today’s level, while CO2 emissions from coal are reduced to half or a third of what they are today. This level of carbon charge implies an increase in the bus bar cost of U.S. electricity on average of about 40%, or about 20% of the retail cost. A significant contributor to the emissions reduction from coal is the introduction of CCS, which is utilized as an economical response to carbon charges at these levels. In the EPPA model simulations, approximately 60% of coal use employs CCS by 2050 with this carbon charge.

The Precarious Future of Coal

A new MIT report says that much more effort is needed to develop and test technology that will make clean-coal power plants economical and practical.

By Kevin Bullis

John Deutch, professor of chemistry at MIT, announces a new road map for reducing carbon emissions from coal.

Energy experts from MIT have released a long-awaited report on the future of coal. The report recommends that much more be done to develop technology for decreasing the impact of burning coal on global warming. The report also challenges some conventional thinking about the best way forward. It criticizes current efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) and calls for an approximately $5 billion, 10-year program to demonstrate technology for capturing and storing carbon dioxide released by coal-fired power plants.

The report, based on a study by 13 MIT faculty members, comes at a time when growing concerns about global warming are making it increasingly likely that governments worldwide will impose a price on carbon-dioxide emissions to force a cut in the release of this important greenhouse gas. Nevertheless, coal, the leading source of carbon-dioxide emissions from electricity generation, will continue to be a major source of electricity, say the authors of the report. That's because even with a high price on carbon, coal is abundant and probably necessary to meet fast-growing demand for energy worldwide.

Reducing the impact of continued coal use on global warming will require a massive effort to collect carbon dioxide from power plants and bury it underground, the experts say. The volume of compressed carbon dioxide that will need to be captured and transported is similar in scale to the amount of oil consumed in the United States, the report says.

Doing so is "not simply a matter of bolting on a box to capture carbon dioxide," says John Deutch, a professor of chemistry at MIT. Indeed, retrofitting existing plants will require wholesale restructuring, even for advanced coal plants, he says. And although there are a few carbon-sequestration projects going on around the world, none of these has been put together with the sort of careful monitoring required to assure the public and energy investors that long-term, extremely high-volume carbon-dioxide storage is possible.

The report challenged the idea, argued by some energy experts, that a new type of coal plant--one that converts coal into a gas before burning it--will make it easier and cheaper to capture carbon dioxide, compared with collecting it from the smokestacks of conventional power plants. The MIT experts say that several factors make the picture more complicated. Such coal gasification doesn't work well with low-grade coal, for example, and both the new and the conventional plants will require major changes to capture carbon dioxide, according to the MIT report.

Gasoline Prices Rising to New High Levels?

The chart below shows the average retail prices of gasoline over the last 5 years during the first 5 months of the year. Apparently an increase in seasonal demand during this period generally causes retail gasoline prices to increase during the first part of the year, but this year there may be some additional factors including: 1) Increased prices of crude due to cold weather arriving late and OPEC production cuts, 2) Demand is running high relative to seasonal norms, 3) Refinery maintenance and some unplanned refinery refinery outages have reduced gasoline production in recent weeks and 4) Gasoline imports have declined due to a higher demand in Europe.

At 255.9 cents per gallon as of March 12, 2007 prices are now 19.3 cents per gallon higher than at this time last year. In California prices are now at 306.8 cents per gallon, 53.6 cents per gallon above last year’s price. How high will prices go this year?

Chart and comments adapted from This Week In Petroleum, March 14, 2007. See this reference for more detailed analysis.

Oil Supply Analysis by Bill Butler

Bill Butler moderates The Suncor Energy and Canadian Oil Sands Resources Group on Yahoo. The group is primarily composed of members that probably should be classified as peak oilers, which I know will turn many of you off. I hope you will read his analysis and take it for what its worth. This week he presented his analysis of our oil supply. It is very simplistic, but probably as accurate as most of the more analytical studies. There certainly will be projects added and perhaps a few not included in the database, but it takes an average 7 years from the announcement of a project until it is brought online. Oil companies are becoming more active in exploration, but that also takes a lot of time. It certainly should give you pause for thought.

Chris Skrebowski's Megaprojects report (and here), a tabulation of new oil production projects includes everything from 40,000 bbl/day on up. ...

The 3.5 to 5 million bbl/day per year of new oil production coming online sounds encouraging until you take depletion of old fields into account. For the purpose of the following calculations we will assume that everything goes according to Skrebowski's tables - everything comes online on time, there will be no hurricanes, no political/military problems, etc. (If we are going to get into trouble with everything going right, then having things go wrong certainly isn't going to help things - and Murphy's Law is still very much alive.)

Historically, oil production from existing fields has decreased at about 4% per year due to depletion. If we take 4% of current world oil production of 84.5 million barrels per year (current EIA data - presumably all liquids), then we would need 3.38 million barrels of new production per year just for total production to stay constant. If we assume world population is increasing at 1% per year then we would need 5% of 84.5 = 4.23 million barrels of new production per year just to keep oil production per capita even. On this basis, if you use Skrebowski's everything-goes-right numbers, the peak in oil production per capita is in 2009, and it's downhill after that.

A123Systems Li-ion Battery in Prius

An A123Systems employee shows off a plug-in hybrid Toyota Prius with the company's battery inside it at MIT's Energy 2.0 Conference, which took place March 9 and 10. Combined with the Prius' existing battery, a person can drive about 30 miles to 35 miles per day and recharge at night.

A123Systems is looking to take its lithium-ion batteries to hybrid trucks and buses. The company showed off its 4-foot-long battery, which could be used for large vehicles, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy 2.0 Conference.

Nevada Solar One Pictures

An aerial view of Nevada Solar One. The site takes up about 300 acres and contains 760 mirror arrays measuring about 100 meters each. Roughly 184,000 mirrors are installed at Solar One, a [64-megawatt] solar thermal plant that will go live next month in Boulder City, Nev. The mirrors direct sunlight on an oil-filled tube. The oil is then used to create steam, which turns a turbine.

People standing under one of the mirror arrays.

LS9: Biofuels that Resemble Petroleum

Biofuel company LS9 Inc., the Renewable Petroleum Company(TM), is using synthetic biology to produce proprietary biofuels that resemble petroleum — but which are designed to be “renewable, clean, domestically produced, and cost competitive.” The company said today that it raised $5 million in its first round of venture funding from Flagship Ventures and Khosla Ventures, two early-stage investment firms.

The San Carlos, California company was founded in 2005 by Khosla Ventures, Flagship Ventures, along with two scientists, Chris Somerville, Director of the Carnegie Institution and Professor of Plant Biology at Stanford University, and George Church, Director of the MIT-Harvard US-Dept. of Energy GTL Center and Professor of Genetics at Harvard.

The companies products, currently under development, are designed to closely resemble petroleum derived fuels. Derived from diverse agricultural feedstocks, these high energy liquid fuels are renewable and compatible with current distribution and consumer infrastructure.

LS9 combines core competencies in industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology to design, develop, and commercialize industrial bioprocesses. Industrial biotechnology is the application of biocatalysis for the large scale production of chemical products. Synthetic biology is the state of the art of bioenegineering, and refers to the design, construction, and improvement of biological machines at the molecular genetic level. They have identified the key components of a cost effective process and defined which components are best controlled physically, chemically, and biologically. Bringing experience in industrial biotechnology from Cargill, Codexis, Kosan, Cubist, and Diversa and synthetic biology from Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford, the LS9 team is uniquely suited to design, develop, and commercialize the next generation of biofuels.

"Thanks to rapid advances in industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology along with the strength and talent of our scientific team, LS9 is uniquely suited to design, develop, and commercialize the next generation of biofuels," said Dr. Somerville.

"We have looked to nature to identify the required biological tools, redesigned them to function under industrial conditions, and are optimizing their performance to meet our economic objectives," added Dr. Church.

Doug Cameron, former head of biotechnology research at Cargill and acting Chief Executive Officer of LS9 Inc., said the advances stand to change the dynamics of the fuel market.

"LS9 is pursuing a disruptive technology in a large established market," Dr. Cameron said. "Our rate of scientific progress is a testament to the quality of the team we have assembled at LS9."

Not much real information about their technology -- If Kholsa and Flagship are backing them they must have something. Seems to me they could give DuPont a run for their money in competition with biobutanol.

Nanocharging Solar

Arthur Nozik believes quantum-dot solar power could boost output in cheap photovoltaics.



Arthur Nozik hopes quantum dots will enable the production of more efficient and less expensive solar cells, finally making solar power competitive with other sources of electricty.

No renewable power source has as much theoretical potential as solar energy. But the promise of cheap and abundant solar power remains unmet, largely because today's solar cells are so costly to make.

Photovoltaic cells use semiconductors to convert light energy into electrical current. The workhorse photo­voltaic material, silicon, performs this conversion fairly efficiently, but silicon cells are relatively expensive to manufacture. Some other semiconductors, which can be deposited as thin films, have reached market, but although they're cheaper, their efficiency doesn't compare to that of silicon. A new solution may be in the offing: some chemists think that quantum dots--tiny crystals of semi­conductors just a few nanometers wide--could at last make solar power cost-competitive with electricity from fossil fuels.

By dint of their size, quantum dots have unique abilities to interact with light. In silicon, one photon of light frees one electron from its atomic orbit. In the late 1990s, Arthur Nozik, a senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, postulated that quantum dots of certain semiconductor materials­ could release two or more electrons when struck by high-energy photons, such as those found toward the blue and ultraviolet end of the spectrum.

In 2004, Victor Klimov of Los Alamos­ National Laboratory in New Mexico provided the first experimental proof that Nozik was right; last year he showed that quantum dots of lead selenide could produce up to seven electrons per photon when exposed to high-energy ultraviolet light. Nozik's team soon demonstrated the effect in dots made of other semiconductors, such as lead sulfide and lead telluride.

These experiments have not yet produced a material suitable for commercialization, but they do suggest that quantum dots could someday increase the efficiency of converting sunlight into electricity. And since quantum dots can be made using simple chemical reactions, they could also make solar cells far less expensive. Researchers in Nozik's lab, whose results have not been published, recently demonstrated the extra-electron effect in quantum dots made of silicon; these dots would be far less costly to incorporate into solar cells than the large crystalline sheets of silicon used today.

To date, the extra-electron effect has been seen only in isolated quantum dots; it was not evident in the first proto­type photovoltaic devices to use the dots. The trouble is that in a working solar cell, electrons must travel out of the semiconductor and into an external electrical circuit. Some of the electrons freed in any photovoltaic cell are inevitably "lost," recaptured by positive "holes" in the semiconductor. In quantum dots, this recapture happens far faster than it does in larger pieces of a semiconductor; many of the freed electrons are immediately swallowed up.

The Nozik team's best quantum­-dot solar cells have managed only about 2 percent efficiency, far less than is needed for a practical device. However, the group hopes to boost the efficiency by modifying the surfaces of the quantum dots or improving electron transport between dots.

The project is a gamble, and Nozik readily admits that it might not pay off. Still, the enormous potential of the nanocrystals keeps him going. Nozik calculates that a photovoltaic device based on quantum dots could have a maximum efficiency of 42 percent, far better than silicon's maximum efficiency of 31 percent. The quantum dots themselves would be cheap to manufacture, and they could do their work in combination with materials like conducting polymers that could also be produced inexpensively. A working quantum dot-polymer cell could eventually place solar electricity on a nearly even economic footing with electricity from coal. "If you could [do this], you would be in Stockholm--it would be revolutionary," says Nozik.

A commercial quantum-dot solar cell is many years away, assuming it's even possible. But if it is, it could help put our fossil-fuel days behind us.

Digitated Energy Storage Devices (DESDs)

The desirability of storing energy in a low cost device with a high energy density, a low weight, long life and that have the ability to absorb and discharge this energy quickly, such as is required in hybrid vehicles for the absorption of the energy wasted in braking and discharging energy quickly as needed for spurts of acceleration, has been the subject of much R& D over the past couple of decades. These are tasks that lead acid batteries do not do well, advanced batteries, NIH and lithium batteries, do better do much better in terms of weight, energy density, and lifetime, but they are much more expensive than the heavy and bulky lead acid batteries that they would replace. Costs of advanced batteries will come down as the scale of production is increased, but not as low as Pb-acid batteries because of the cost of materials. Capacitors charge and discharge rapidly but to date they have not been able to handle the energy needs of automobiles in a reasonable size or cost.

The newest technology being developed to fill this need, that I have heard of, is that being done by Researchers at The University of Arizona who are developing an ultracapacitor technology based on DESDs (Dictated Energy Storage Devices) built on Nani-scale structures that could be used in hybrid vehicles to improve their performance.

DESDs have a very high capacitance-to-volume ratio that's more than 10,000 times larger than a conventional parallel-plate capacitor of the same size. This makes for a device with large capacitance in a small package.

The UA researchers construct DESD capacitors by using commercially available porous membranes as template platforms. The membranes have a pore diameter ranging from 15 nanometers to 1 micron and a hole density of 10 million to 100 trillion pores per square centimeter.

To form the capacitors, the membrane pores are filled with copper to create a large copper surface area in a small space.

This is important because the ability to store electric charge is proportional to the surface area of a capacitor's plates. The honeycomb of conductors formed in the nano-meter-sized membrane pores has a much larger surface area and ability to store electricity than a conductor with just the surface area of the membrane alone.

In addition to making hybrid vehicles more efficient, DESDs also could make them more environmentally friendly because DESDs don't wear out like batteries and would last for the life of the vehicle and beyond.

Limitations

"The limiting factor right now is the low voltage (less than 5 volts) that can be imposed on the DESDs," Professor Olgierd Palusinski, who is leading the effort, said. The voltage limit is caused by the small space between conductors in the membrane. At higher voltages, electricity will spark between the conductors, causing loss of charge in the same way that the static charge on your body will discharge to a doorknob during dry weather.

This voltage limitation can be bypassed by connecting the DESDs in series, with the voltage capacity increasing in direct proportion to their number. Unfortunately, connecting them in series lowers the overall capacitance of the array, lowering the amount of electricity it can store. "But this reduction in capacitance can be compensated by connecting several DESD arrays in parallel," Palusinski explained. The capacitance of devices adds when they are connected in parallel.

Palusinski added. "We are getting close to the commercial development stage, but still need to do additional studies."

Other Technologies

There are at least three other technologies, other than advanced batteries, being developed to meet some of the shortcomings of the lead-acid battery:

Firefly Energy is developing carbon-graphite foam-based a lead-acid battery technology that it claims can deliver a unique combination of high performance, extremely low weight and low cost, all in a battery which utilizes the best aspects of lead acid chemistry while overcoming the corrosive drawbacks of this same chemistry. This product technology delivers to battery markets a performance associated with advanced battery chemistries, but for one-fifth the cost, and can be both manufactured as well as recycled within the existing lead acid battery industry’s vast infrastructure.They claim to be on a pace to see the initial manufacturing of its batteries by late 2007 for use in 2008 Husqvarna lawn and garden equipment.

Axion Battery is developing a lead-acid battery-supercapacitor hybrid that uses negative electrodes made of microporous activated carbon with very high surface area. The result is a battery-supercapacitor hybrid, the e3 Supercell, that is claimed to use at least 70% less lead, offers faster recharge rates, higher power output and longer cycle-life; and can be manufactured in thousands of existing plants around the world. Axion is now producing prototype e3 Supercells in small quantities, although no plans for commercial production have been announced. Their batteries, though relatively inexpensive, and have a higher life than standard Pb-acid batteries, they do not offer the high energy density and are not as low weight as advanced batteries.

EEStore is the developer of the capacitor based electrical energy storage unit (EESU). The EESU is projected to offer up to 10x the energy density (volumetric and gravimetric) of lead-acid batteries at the same cost. In addition, the EESU is projected to store up to 1.5 to 2.5 times the energy of Li-Ion batteries at 12 to 25% of the cost. It claims to remain on track to begin shipping production 15 kilowatt-hour EESU to ZENN Motor Company in 2007 for use in their electric vehicles.

Thanks to jcwinnie at After Gutenberg for the tip on DESDs

DOE Selects 13 Projects for Solar Technology Development

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman on February 8 announced the selection of 13 industry-led solar technology development projects for negotiation for up to $168 million (FY’07-’09) in funding, subject to appropriation from Congress. These projects will help significantly reduce the cost of producing and distributing solar energy. As part of the cost-shared agreements, the industry-led teams will contribute more than 50 percent of the funding for these projects for a total value of up to $357 million over three years. These cooperative agreements, to be negotiated, will be the first made available as part of President Bush’s Solar America Initiative (SAI), a component of his Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI), announced in his 2006 State of the Union Address.

These projects enable the projected expansion of the annual U.S. manufacturing capacity of PV systems from 240 MW in 2005 to as much as 2,850 MW by 2010, representing more than a ten-fold increase. Such capacity would also put the U.S. industry on track to reduce the cost of electricity produced by PV from current levels of $0.18-$0.23 per kWh to $0.05 - $0.10 per kWh by 2015 – a price that is competitive in markets nationwide.

Teams Selected For Negotiations under the Solar America Initiative

Amonix - A low-cost, high-concentration PV system for utility markets. This project will focus on manufacturing technology for high-concentrating PV and on low-cost production using multi-bandgap cells. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $3,200,000, with approximately $14,800,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Boeing - High-efficiency concentrating photovoltaic power system. This project will focus on cell fabrication research that is expected to yield very high efficiency systems. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be approximately $5,900,000, with approximately $13,300,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

BP Solar - Low-cost approach to grid parity using crystalline silicon. This project’s research will focus on reducing wafer thickness while improving yield of multi-crystalline silicon PV for commercial and residential markets. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be approximately $7,500,000, with approximately $19,100,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Dow Chemical - PV-integrated residential and commercial building solutions. This project will employ Dow’s expertise in encapsulates, adhesives, and high volume production to develop integrated PV-powered technologies for roofing products. Subject to negotiations, funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $3,300,000, with approximately $9,400,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

General Electric - A value chain partnership to accelerate U.S. PV growth. This project will develop various cell technologies – including a new bifacial, high-efficiency silicon cell that could be incorporated into systems solutions that can be demonstrated across the industry. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $8,100,000, with approximately $18,600,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Greenray - Development of an AC module system. This team will design and develop a high-powered, ultra-high-efficiency solar module that contains an inverter, eliminating the need to install a separate inverter and facilitating installation by homeowners. Research will focus on increasing the lifetime of the inverter. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $400,000, with approximately $2,300,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Konarka - Building-integrated organic photovoltaics. This project will focus on manufacturing research and product reliability assurance for extremely low-cost photovoltaic cells using organic dyes that convert sunlight to electricity. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be $1,200,000, with approximately $3,600,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Miasole - Low-cost, scalable, flexible PV systems with integrated electronics. This project will develop high-volume manufacturing technologies and PV component technologies. Research will focus on new types of flexible thin-film modules with integrated electronics and advances in technologies used for installation and maintenance. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be $5,800,000, with approximately $20,000,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Nanosolar - Low-cost, scaleable PV systems for commercial rooftops. This project will work on improved low-cost systems and components using thin-film PV cells for commercial buildings. Research will focus on large-area module deposition, inverters, and mounting. Subject to negotiations, DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $1,100,000, with approximately $20,000,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Powerlight - PV cell-independent effort to improve automated manufacturing systems. This project will focus on reducing non-cell costs by making innovations with automated design tools and with modules that include mounting hardware. Subject to negotiations, first-budget period funding for this project is expected to be approximately $2,800,000, with approximately $6,000,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Practical Instruments - Low-concentration CPV systems for rooftop applications. This project will explore a novel concept for low-concentration optics to increase the output of rooftop PV systems. The project will also explore designs using multi-junction cells to allow for very high efficiency modules. Subject to negotiations, funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $2,200,000, with approximately $4,000,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

SunPower - Grid-competitive residential solar power generating systems. This project will research lower-cost ingot and wafer fabrication technologies, automated manufacture of back-contact cells, and new module designs, to lower costs. Subject to negotiations, first-budget period funding for this project is expected to be approximately $7,700,000, with approximately $17,900,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

United Solar Ovonic - Low-cost thin-film building-integrated PV systems. This project will focus on increasing the efficiency and deposition rate of multi-bandgap, flexible, thin-film photovoltaic cells and reducing the cost of inverters and balance-of-system components. Subject to negotiations, funding for the first year of the project is expected to be roughly $2,400,000, with approximately $19,300,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals.

Names of the partners on these projects, comprised of more than 50 companies, 14 universities, 3 non-profit organizations, and 2 national laboratories, which were not included in this post for the sake of brevity, can be found in the full press release referenced at the the begining of this post.

For more information on the solicitation and facts about the Solar America Initiative, visit: http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/solar_america/.

These awards include many of the leading suppliers of solar equipment, with projects given to companies representing the equipment, silicon, thin film and CSP segments of the market. Most of these companies are quite far along in their development cycle and may be running into cost barriers that could limit their growth. This sort of aid is helpful if it will really help these companies solve their problems. It has been my experience that most companies do not want to divulge what they consider proprietary information, as may be required under terms of their contracts, so the projects may not be as beneficial to the industry as they appear on face value. None-the-less the government is allotting considerable funding which may help, in a more general way, to help the solar industry to achieve lower costs and make solar energy more competitive. I think this funding is independent of funding for more basic research which is still needed to provide what could be disruptive technology for solar energy. Another way to look at this is that several companies have already claimed that they can produce solar energy at less than $1 watt at reasonable efficiencies and that not more government funding is required.

Dupont Provides Update on its Biofuels Activities

A DuPont (NYSE: DD) executive says his company's cellulosic technology delivers more energy output for energy input than conventional grain ethanol... or even gasoline.

Speaking as one of the keynote speakers at the World Biofuels Markets, DuPont Biofuels Vice President & General Manager John Ranieri provided an update on the company's initiatives to deliver technologies to produce biofuels.

DuPont has a three-part biofuels strategy that includes:

1. Discovering new technologies to make advanced biofuels, such as bibutanol
2. Developing technologies to convert agricultural feedstocks and energy crops into biofuels
3. Improving the yield of grain ethanol production through by increasing yield per acre of energy crops

Biobutanol Partnership with BP and Advanced Biofuels Pipeline: DuPont's partnership with BP to develop biobutanol is based on its strategy to bring advanced biofuels to market to expand the use of biofuels in gasoline. Biobutanol will be the first advanced performance product available from this partnership. It resolves fuel stability issues in that biobutanol-gasoline blends can potentially be distributed via the existing fuel supply infrastructure; it improves blend flexibility allowing higher biofuels blends with gasoline; it improves fuel efficiency (better miles per gallon) compared to incumbent biofuels; 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.

Technology to Produce Cellulosic Biofuels: DuPont and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are jointly funding a research program to develop technology to convert non-food agricultural feedstocks into ethanol. This program is focused on corn stover - the leaves, stalks and cobs that are left in the field after harvest. The technology was licensed to Broin, the largest dry- grind ethanol producer in the United States. Last week, the DOE awarded up to $80 million in funding to Broin Companies to accelerate the construction of a commercial-scale bio-refinery at Broin's Emmetsburg, Iowa, facility. Ranieri outlined how the energy ratio - energy delivered to a customer divided by the energy used to create cellulosic biofuels -is greater than both the energy ratio for grain ethanol and gasoline.

Improve Existing Ethanol Production: Through its subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred International, the first part of DuPont's strategy is increasing yield per acre and enhancing ethanol yield of corn grain through biotechnology, enhanced and traditional breeding techniques, and ethanol yield prediction analysis of its corn hybrids.

Thanks to tip from inside greentech

Ethanol from Whey

Red Herring reports that startup Earthanol of Newport Beach, CA has raised $7.1 million in venture funding to make ethanol from waste.

Unlike typical ethanol producers, Earthanol is trying to utilize a cheese industry waste called whey permeate, an acidic by-product that is generally considered environmentally harmful. Earthanol will also try to utilize forestry biomass and municipal waste containing high energy content.

The $7.1 million is being earmarked for development work. The company will decide within two years whether to build an ethanol manufacturing facility.

The Alarm:Clock adds: The Company sees its total market opportunity as approximately ten whey permeate projects totaling 100M gallons of ethanol per year.

The more feedstocks that are developed, the more ethanol we can make. Whey will not produce much volume, but since whey is normally disposed of it makes an excellent feedstock requiring no land use to produce the feedstock.