Sapphire Energy, a San Diego based company that launched in May of 2007, says that it’s goal “is to be the world’s leading producer of renewable petrochemical products.” The companies website goes on to say “Critically important, there is no ‘food vs. fuel’ tradeoff. The process is not dependent on crops or valuable farmland. It is highly water efficient, delivering 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuels.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Sapphire is working towards a 10,000-barrel-a-day algae-based oil facility, and can now concentrate on production and engineering problems. Meanwhile, Gates’s involvement may signal a broader interest in alternative biofuels.”
Thank goodness for over eager car buffs and Transformer fans - this morning, our friends at Jalopnik posted some great “spy” pics of the yet-to-be-released 2010 Chevy Volt and got some great video of it in it’s break out role in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
GM is set to unveil fuel efficient models of all of its biggest gas guzzlers in 2009. The Chevy Tahoe, Chevy Silverado, GMC Sierra, GMC Yukon, and even the Cadillac Escalade will be equipped with gas saving technology. Can innovations like this help clean up GM’s archaic image?
As a basic principle of fuel economy, smaller cars get better gas mileage. Engineering trends keep pushing the limits of the term ‘compact’ car while somehow keeping the interiors large enough to carry people. Unfortunately, the Prius won’t suffice for all drivers, and rightfully so. There are people in the United States who require space shuttle sized SUV’s and Titantic trucks, and nothing is going to change that in the immediate future. America runs on progress, and progress cannot happen without construction and high a high towing capacity. The next generation of GM trucks is attempting to bridge the gap between brute force, and environmental friendliness.
Under a new research directive at Ames National Laboratory, scientists are honing in on a way to perfect a process called gasification to create cheap ethanol from almost any carbon source without fermentation.
If they’re successful, crops, agricultural waste, lawn clippings, raked leaves, sewage sludge and garbage could all be turned into ethanol using the same efficient process, in the same facility, under one roof.
Earlier this week, I wrote about my experience at Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. Specifically, I discussed the Ford Escape Hybrid. While I was in Dearborn, I also had the chance to check out some of the “green” materials that Ford is currently using/plans to use in their vehicles.
One of these materials is soy-based foam, which is present in the 2008 Mustang, the F-150, the Expedition, the Navigator, and the Focus. The foam is made by crushing soybeans to get oil, which is then turned into soy polyol. According to Ford, the foam reduces CO2 emissions by 5 million pounds annually. Soy proteins are also eventually going to be used in rubber parts. Read the rest of this entry »
Scientists from Australia’s Monash University have made what one professor is calling the most important development in fuel cell technology in the last 20 years. The scientists have managed to redesign fuel cells, so that in the future, they will make hybrid cars more reliable and cheaper to build.
And the breakthrough component in their design comes from Goretex, a popular outdoor and sporting clothing brand.
Applied to the layer of breathable fabric that Monash University’s Dr Bjorn Winther-Jensen says has revolutionized the outdoor clothing industry, is a newly designed and tested air-electrode that acts as both the fuel cell electrode, and catalyst. The layer is applied at just 0.4 of a micron in thickness, which measures out to be about 100 times thinner than a human hair.
Ceres, Inc. supports the prediction that we could grow more than 30% of US transportation fuel with dedicated energy crops. This is no pipe dream: planting starts next spring.
Ceres, Inc., the self-described “energy crop company,” is engineering plants that could play a big role in the future of sustainable biofuels. In stark contrast to food crops, what Ceres is in the business of creating are “dedicated energy crops”—like switchgrass, sorghum, and miscanthus—that are ideally suited for fuel production.
While the global “food vs. fuel” debate rages on, a few companies like Ceres are quietly moving forward with next generation technology that challenges many of the current assumptions about growing fuel. In their view, it’s time to move the conversation on from corn-based controversy to second-generation, non-food based sources of ethanol. Read the rest of this entry »
Now that you know when it is and what it’s called, I’ll tell you a bit about what it is. Firstly, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Hybrid Fest isn’t really all about hybrids. I know this because my website is a sponsor this year, and we’re definitely not all about hybrids.
So what is HF really? It’s a get together with tons of green car enthusiasts, including hybrid owners, biodiesel producers, ecomodders, and everyone else. The show will be kicked off early on Friday with a fuel economy competition and then get down and dirty on Saturday and Sunday with speeches, discussions, hybrid test drives, and a whole host of other goodies you can find out about on the website. HF will also be a time for companies to show off new green tech, including some of the big guns like GM and Toyota, but also many smaller companies working on things like plug-in hybrid conversions. Read the rest of this entry »
Today, twenty of the fastest cars on Earth will line up at the start of round 7 of the Formula 1 World Championship at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, to do battle for the biggest prize in world motor sport.
Capable of accelerating to 200 mph, and coming back to a complete standstill 12 seconds flat, a modern F1 car represents the pinnacle of automotive technology, precisely the reason that big name Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda have entered the sport as constructors in recent years.
Formula 1 has never been cheap - even the smallest teams have annual budgets in excess of $100 million to field two cars - but considering the resources available to the new Japanese teams, who are rumoured to have spent almost $2 billion between them on F1 in the past four years, one might expect a good chance of the Japanese national anthem being played when the constructors trophy is handed out this afternoon.
Here’s an interesting idea: instead of putting the airbag in the car, put the car in the airbag.
Sure it sounds silly, but XP vehicles, a start-up in California, is doing just that with their upcoming electric car, the Whisper™. Apparently, XP has taken the same sort of airbag technology developed to safely land recent NASA missions on Mars and used it to create an inflatable polymer car frame in which they pack all the essentials for it to actually be considered an automobile.
The Cafe Racer Truck Runs on 100% Recycled Coffee Grounds
A commenter on Ben’s wood-powered truck post pointed us to a similar car hack. The truck above is also powered by a wood gas generator, except this one runs on coffee grounds. The Cafe Racer is a 1975 GMC pickup that essentially burns up used coffee to create a combustible gas. The gas is filtered on its way to the engine and, Viola, a caffeine-powered truck. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve heard of making fuel from wood before, but rarely does using wood as fuel come up. However, just today I was pointed to this site, hosted by a local radio station, with a real-life example of someone burning wood as a fuel in his truck.
I can’t say for sure how the system works, whether it’s dual fuel or the wood-burning supplies all the fuel the engine needs, but it doesn’t appear to be a hoax and is certainly interesting. Evidently, during WWII, there was some experimenting with alternative fuels (due to shortages caused by the war), and one of the results was the wood burning automobile. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this year, headlines were made on the announcement of biotech start-up Coskata promising to revolutionize the production of ethanol with a process that could use a variety of feedstocks, ranging from wood chips and switchgrass, to old tires, and even directly from municipal waste. Most importantly, it did not rely on corn or other food stocks in order to produce fuel. At the time, Coskata was predicting an aggressive timeline, with a pilot demonstration plant to begin operation in 2009, and a first full-scale plant to be underway by 2011.
Last week Coskata announced the location for their pilot demonstration plant, a facility that will begin producing 40,000 gallons of ethanol per year, starting in 2009. While that is only a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket, it’s another step along the path to having a full-scale plant in operation and producing 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol per year. Read the rest of this entry »
As has happened before, with gas prices continuing to climb, the demand for improved fuel economy will increase as well, and all manner of improvements and upgrades that promise to help get better mileage will be touted. Some offer real benefits; others are pure snake oil.
An improvement that offers both improved mileage and increased horsepower seems counterintuitive at first. After all, the tradeoff that hybrids and other economy vehicles offer seem to be one of reduced horsepower and acceleration in exchange for improved fuel economy. So how can you have both? Read the rest of this entry »
I happened across this video on algae biofuel today: a company I’ve never heard of, Valcent Products, claims they can grow algae to produce oil yields of 100,000 gallons per acre. That’s the upper range of estimates I’ve seen for algae production—an absolutely phenomenal amount of oil—which Valcent attributes to their ‘high density vertical bioreactor’ system. Check it out (more video after the jump):
Gas 2.0 digs into the viscous world of biofuels and the fast-paced transit arena, exploring the technologies and substances that are the future of transportation.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution from Adam Shake.
Under a new research directive at 
Earlier this year, headlines were made on the 
