Gas 2.0

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Yesterday the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog put up an excited post about a Los Alamos National Laboratory plan to convert CO₂ into truly greenhouse-neutral synthetic gasoline and ethanol via “an electrochemical process.” Two hours later the blog had to temper its enthusiasm, having noticed that it would take huge amounts of energy, probably from nuclear power, to make it work.

This sort of thoughtless enthusiasm is way too common. At least no investors lost money this time, or, rather, yet.

I don’t want to insult anyone, but I think the real problem is that people don’t understand the chemistry — not even at a freshman level — that’s involved in thinking about what it would take to turn CO₂ into fuel on an industrial scale.

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With all the writing we’ve done recently about the Coskata partnership with GM, and the unique process the company’s created to make ethanol from almost any material containing carbon, you might think we’re getting paid to cover this. That’s not the case, of course; rather, this news points to some really exciting new directions in ethanol development. We’ve got some more posts up on Coskata… but not here at Gas 2.0…

Today, we rolled out the newest member of the Green Options Media blog network, CleanTechnica. Both lead writer Sarah Lozanova, and our publisher, David Anderson, “baptized” our new clean technology blog by sharing what they learned on a tour of Coskata’s facility in the Chicago suburbs. Team member Michelle Bennett also dug into a topic we’ll cover frequently there: solar panels (specifically, cheap and free ones).

While there may be a little bit of topical overlap between these two blogs, we’ll tend to keep alternative fuels developments here at Gas 2.0, while other clean tech stories will appear at CleanTechnica. We hope you’ll make both blogs a part of your daily reading, and that you’ll let us know how we’re doing on both.

Coskata, the ethanol technology company who made a major announcement about their biofuel technology at the North American International Auto Show earlier this year, has announced that they have established an alliance with ICM, Inc., a major producer of ethanol, to design and construct the first plant that will produce ethanol using Coskata’s bio-process. The plant is expected to open late in 2010, reflecting Coskata’s intentions to bring their technology rapidly to market. No location was announced for the site where this plant will be built.

Previous Coskata news on Gas 2.0:
GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap Green Ethanol
More About the Coskata Process

The guy in the picture is JP Patten, entrepreneur and computer expert, shown with his newly outfitted biodiesel lawn mowers. Now, I think this guy’s got a great idea, he buys lawnmower motors from China, takes them apart, rebuilds them so they burn waste grease from deep fryers.

So far, so good. He says the engines are more powerful and more efficient than their gas counterparts, and they cause much less pollution. Ok, I’m sold, but how much are they? Read the rest of this entry »

High soybean and palm oil prices are sending biodiesel producers looking for a less expensive feedstock for their product. The poster child these days appears to be algae, pond scum with dignity.

Several companies are now researching and beginning to produce oil derived from algae, that would replace food crops as a feedstock for biodiesel production. They claim higher oil yields for less water and acreage needed for food crops.

The National Algae Association informed Green Options it has opened its new headquarters in The Woodlands, TX. An article in Biodiesel Magazine quoted the association founder, Barry Cohen of Biofuel Capital Partners, as saying “We’ve got biodiesel producers that are contacting us every single day because they know they’ve got a problem”, referring to high soybean and vegetable oil biofuel feedstock costs. Read the rest of this entry »

As you’ve almost certainly already heard by now, General Motors has announced a partnership with Coskata, Inc. to produce ethanol less expensively and without using food materials as feedstock for the process. This is exciting for a number of reasons. First of all, Coskata is close to completing a continuous demonstration stream at their laboratory. They also expect to have a pilot demonstration plant in place by the end of the year that will produce 40,000 gallons of ethanol. And later this year, they expect to announce the site for their first full-scale plant which will be capable of annual production of 100 million gallons of ethanol. The process also consumes less water resources (less than one gallon of water per gallon of ethanol produced) and delivers 7.7 units of energy per unit of energy used in the process.

The process relies on using anaerobic microbes that consume carbon monoxide and hydrogen and produce ethanol. Because the process uses specially bred strains of microbes, they produce ethanol exclusively, unlike other fermentation processes, which often produce a range of alcohols and which require further distillation. Furthermore, the flexibility of the Coskata process allows for other microbes to be used in the same process setup (or even a parallel setup). Other strains of microbes that produce other useful alcohols, including some used as precursors for plastic production, so that the same technology could be used in other applications to provide a petroleum replacement.

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LIVE FROM DETROIT AUTO SHOW: GM ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH BIO-BASED ETHANOL PRODUCER COSKATA BIOFUELS TO RAPIDLY COMMERCIALIZE AND DISTRIBUTE ETHANOL FOR FLEXFUEL VEHICLES.

At noon today, General Motors announced an undisclosed equity share in Coskata, Inc., a renewable energy company with the means to produce low-cost ethanol from virtually any carbon-containing feedstock including biomass, municipal solid waste—even used car tires. GM believes Coskata has the premier technology for rapidly implementing ethanol production technology worldwide. Click here for a video of the announcement.

GM already has a vested interested in ethanol, with 2.5 million FlexFuel model vehicles already on the road (15 models planned for 2009), and plans to make half their fleet ethanol-ready by 2012. The partnership is a win-win situation as Bill Roe, President and CEO of Coskata puts it: “GM is enabling Coskata to produce the next generation of biofuels - without using a food source - making it economically viable and commercially available.”

GM will test Coskata’s ethanol at the Milford Proving Grounds by late 2008, followed by completion of a 40,000 gallon per year commercial demonstration facility by the end of the year. A larger, 100 million gallon per year facility is currently being sited for construction in the U.S.

Coskata claims it can produce ethanol for under $1.00 per gallon from almost any carbon-containing feedstock, while reducing greenhouse gas emission by 84% compared to gasoline, using only 1 gallon of water for each gallon ethanol produced, and returning 7.7 times as much energy as is used in the production process.

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What do they do with chocolate products they can’t sell? Off to the landfill to decompose and create methane. Wish they could just send it to me. Two young Britons, Andy Pag and John Grimshaw, have traveled more than 4,000 miles across the Sahara using such chocolate as fuel.

The two decided to prove the viability of different kinds of feedstock to produce biofuels, especially biodiesel and ethanol. They’ve done that, traveling from Poole, England to Timbuktu, Mali, 4,473 miles, using 396 gallons of fuel made from three tons of discarded chocolate.

The truck was salvaged from a scrap yard, repaired and fitted for the long trip. It will remain in Timbuktu, a donation to a local charity. The crew will also set up a small processing unit to convert waste oil products into fuel. Read the rest of this entry »

All that green pond scum I used to avoid could well produce enough fuel to satisfy all the energy needs in the United States. That’s a pretty far out statement, but Glen Kertz, CEO of Valcent Products made it very clear that a process of growing algae vertically is capable of producing huge amounts of alternative fuels. It’s being proven today in Texas.

This is one fascinating story, with a link below showing the process and an explanation by Mr. Kertz.

Valcent has partnered with Global Green Solutions to develop a production test project in El Paso, TX. After 90 days of continual production, algae was being harvested at an average of one gram per liter from the Vertigro Bio-Reactor System. Based on those results, the joint venture partners believe their system would deliver about 33,000 gallons of algae oil per acre per year. By comparison, soybean oil produces about 49 gallons of oil per acre each year, and palm oil would yield about 630 acres of oil a year. Read the rest of this entry »

The highly touted “closed loop” ethanol plant in Nebraska shut its doors last week and filed for bankruptcy. E3 BioFuels used biogas generated from cattle manure, provided by a nearby feedlot containing 25,000 head of feeder cattle. Distillers grain, a byproduct of ethanol production, was fed to the cattle and the process started all over again. As a result, the plant used almost no fossil fuels and carbon emissions from the manure were minimized. Mechanical problems are blamed for the shutdown. Plant officials said they couldn’t reach full production and lost money. There’s no word on whether the plant will open again. In the meantime, E3 BioFuels is expected to file lawsuits against construction contractors.

Source:  Domesticfuel