Wacky Forms of Alternative Energy

Reprocessing Coffee Grounds into Biodiesel

 

That morning cup of Joe that helps fuel us for the day ahead could soon also help propel trucks as well. In 2009, University of Nevada-Reno engineering professor Mano Misra, known around the lab for his coffee consumption, noticed the sheen of oil floating on top of a cup of brew that had cooled. A light bulb went off in Misra's caffeinated brain, and he asked a couple of students to work on a project to investigate whether coffee oil could be a feedstock for biodiesel.

The students determined that, depending on the particular bean used in the brew, coffee grounds can contain as much as 20 percent oil, and that it has an unusually high oxidative stability (which means it won't break down when exposed to oxygen and therefore gunk up fuel lines). They subsequently developed a method to remove the sulfur found in coffee biodiesel, which comes from the volcanic soils in the mountainous regions where coffee generally is grown. The resulting fuel was sufficient to meet the standards set by ASTM International, an international testing organization, for biodiesel.

The researchers estimate that if all the waste grounds generated by the world's coffee drinkers were gathered and reprocessed, the yield would amount to 2.9 million gallons of diesel fuel each year. Alternatively, the coffee grounds could be converted to fuel pellets. If all of the leftover grounds from Starbucks were reprocessed, they would produce 89,000 tons of such fuel pellets annually, enough to generate millions of dollars in revenue for the coffee-shop chain, as well as help counter rising fuel costs for trucking companies [source: Schill].

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Inside China's Energy Machine

Opening the Shale Gas Valve

Photograph from Reuters

A  worker checks valves on a natural gas appraisal well at a China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation facility in Langzhong, Sichuan Province. The province holds some of China's largest stores of natural gas.

Also known as Sinopec, China Petroleum is one of the largest state-owned energy companies in China, and its gas pipelines span more than 2,825 miles (4,545 kilometers) across the country.

Last year, Sinopec reportedly produced nearly 17 percent more natural gas, and discovered more than 80 percent more natural gas reserves, than it did in 2010. But it's looking for growth beyond China. Sinopec bought a one-third stake in five exploratory shale gas fields in the United States last month as part of a $2.2 billion deal with Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy. Devon pioneered the horizontal drilling technology, combined with hydraulic fracturing, that has unlocked vast unanticipated stores of natural gas from shale formations across the United States. Such a deal gives Sinopec the opportunity to import the made-in-the-USA shale gas technology.

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Floating Wind Farms in the Middle of the Ocean

There's been plenty of talk of developing offshore wind farms to supply electricity, but as the chronically-delayed effort to build the CapeWind project in Nantucket Sound demonstrates, it's not that easy to convince people in coastal areas that wind turbines won't mar the natural beauty of their surroundings or damage delicate marine ecosystems [source: Lindsay]. That's why the ultimate solution may be to put wind farms hundreds of miles from coastlines, conveniently out of view, and to have them float on the surface of the water, tethered rather than attached to a structure to the ocean floor.

In addition to being less obtrusive, floating wind turbines have a much greater potential to generate power. They can capture the energy of winds in the open ocean, which can reach speeds at least twice as fast as winds near land [source: Economist]. Some reports suggest that wind farms could provide up to 15 percent of the world's future energy needs [source: Jacquot].

In late 2011, the first such offshore floating wind farm, a $30 million prototype called WindFloat, was put in place 217 miles (349 kilometers) off the coast of Portugal [source: Scientific American]. It uses a 2-megawatt turbine manufactured by a Danish company, Vestas, which is bolted onto a triangular floating platform made by Seattle-based Principle Power. The platform is moored with four lines, two of which are connected to the column stabilizing the turbine, which helps to reduce excess motion. As the wind shifts direction and places loads on the turbine and foundation, pumps will shift ballast water between chambers in the platform, enabling the installation to cope with more powerful offshore weather. As Antonio Vidigal, CEO of EDP Inovacao, one of the partners in the project, told Scientific American: "The deep ocean is the next big energy frontier" [source: Scientific American].

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Energy Trends: Growing investment in smart grid and grid infrastructure

Charlie Riedel  /  AP file
 
The electricity grid brings energy from wherever and however it is generated to the people who use it. Lots of technologies have emerged in recent years that promise to make use of this electricity more efficiently, such as sensors that shut off unnecessary appliances when demand spikes, and meters that let people know when rates are lowest for energy-intensive activities such as washing dirty clothes.

Investment in these types of smart grid technologies is destined to grow, according to Pernick, whose firm recently launched an index to track the sector. In addition, the grid itself is bound to grow in coming years as utilities shuttle new sources of generation, such wind energy from rural, windy locales, to people in big cities on the coasts. 


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Inside China's Energy Machine

Capturing the Gobi’s Solar Power

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

In Gansu Province, two people walk amid an array of solar panels designed to soak up the Gobi Desert's abundant sunshine.

China is only sixth or seventh among nations in solar capacity, but its installations are growing at breakneck pace, especially after a new feed-in tariff to encourage development. Installations doubled last year, and this year the country plans to add three gigawatts—double its current solar capacity.

By 2015, China aims to have installed solar generating capacity of at least 15 gigawatts. That goal, announced in December, ratcheted up the nation's previous solar target by 50 percent.

China already is the world leader in the manufacture of solar panels, with 51 percent of the market. The nation that developed solar technology in the 1950s, the United States, has about 6 percent of the market. And U.S. photovoltaic manufacturers are under pressure as their Chinese competitors drive down the price of the product.

President Barack Obama's administration is to weigh in next month on whether to take up the cause of a coalition of seven U.S. solar manufacturers that charge the Chinese producers of dumping large volumes of unfairly subsidized photovoltaic cells at undercut prices in an attempt to dominate the American market.

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Solar Chimneys Can Convert Hot Air to Energy

A test solar updraft tower in Manzanares, Spain, ran successfully for several years in the 1980s before toppling in a windstorm.  PHOTOGRAPH BY SCHLAICH BERGERMANN SOLAR 

Chile's Atacama Desert is as eerily beautiful as it is barren, hot, and dry. Yet this seemingly inhospitable patch of Earth might be the perfect host for a different kind of solar energy, one that has nothing to do with photovoltaic panels.

Solar updraft technology is attracting interest in desert regions worldwide in Chile, the Southwest United States, Australia, China, and the Middle East. Fueled by hot air, rather than direct sunlight, solar chimneys present a compelling prospect for producing clean, renewable energy. They also offer significant advantages over conventional photovoltaic (PV) panels—but at the moment, they face even more significant financing hurdles. 


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Inside China's Energy Machine

Paper Bound for Recycling

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

Outside a paper mill in Boxing, Shandong Province, stacks of bailed waste paper are stockpiled for recycling. A nearby biomass cogeneration plant supplies energy for the facility.

Also known as combined heat and power or CHP, cogeneration involves producing electricity and heat from a single fuel source—in this case, mostly agricultural waste from cotton fields.

China has international support for this type of project. In June 2011, the World Bank approved a $150 million loan to China to improve energy efficiency in Shandong. In particular, the loan is meant to go toward greater use of biomass for power and heat generation and energy-efficiency leasing arrangements.

Turning turkey poop into power

By Ken Ronnan |

With around 49 million turkeys raised each year, Minnesota is No. 1 in the country for turkey production. And with that many gobblers comes a lot of you know what. One company has figured out how to turn all that poop into clean, profitable power.

Fibrowatt operates a plant in Benson, Minn., that burns all that turkey poo to make electricity. Plant Manager Greg Langmo explains how 100 daily truckloads of this turkey litter are producing enough energy to power 44,000 homes, as well as the plant itself.

The Minnesota Department of Energy "Fields of Energy" series explores how agricultural advances can lead to renewable energy.

Reposted from MinnPost

Inside China's Energy Machine

Cotton Husks for Fuel

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

A cotton-picker works an industrial scale plantation in Boxing, Shandong Province. The cotton bud must be picked and separated from the dry husk. The stalks, which would otherwise be considered waste, are dried and sold as feedstock for biofuel and electricity production.



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Solar Prospecting

Solar power is measured by insolation. The insolation rating of a particular area is the amount of solar radiation to hit the ground in a specific time period. This is usually figured in terms of kilowatt-hours per square meter per day (kWh/m2/day). A high insolation rating is a good indicator of a town"s potential for supplementing traditional power plants with solar energy.




Reposted from Curiosity.com

Can renewable forms of energy replace fossil fuels?

Well, remember, efficiency comes first. So we quit the waste. As soon as you quit the waste, then your energy demand drops in the rich countries and flatlines in the developing countries. That's a manageable problem. If you have dropping energy demand, you can make carbon drop even faster by a steady substitution of renewable fuels.

If you have flat energy demand, which they would in China, for example, then you can start chewing away at that with new renewables. But you've bought yourself the time to introduce those renewable on a mass scale. It's no longer a panic situation.

Reposted from Curiosity.com

 

As Jet Fuel Prices Soar, a Green Option Nears the Runway

Aviation is making an important step in breaking free of its petroleum dependence through biofuel.

In March 2011, a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor powered by a 50-50 blend of renewable and petroleum jet fuel flew at supersonic speed from Edwards Air Force Base in California. The important test helped prove the fuel's viability.

Photograph courtesy Kevin North, US Air Force

The ethanol that is typically used in cars—fuel alcohol refined from grain or sugar cane—would not work in aviation, at least with today's jet engines, because its energy density (the power it packs per gallon or liter) is too low. But numerous start-up companies around the world have been working with a very different fuel derived from oils that have been extracted from plants, animal fat, or grease. The oils are treated with hydrogen to produce HRJ, synthetic kerosene that is chemically the same as jet fuel. Only carbon dating would reveal that it is not made from fossil fuel.


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Flying Wind Turbines Reach for High-Altitude Power: Circling to Get Ahead

Photograph courtesy Doug Selsam

The KiteGen power kite is designed to fly in figure-eight patterns, according to illustrations on the company website.

Another pioneering system that has garnered some attention has been under development since 2005 by Kanata, Canada-based Magenn Power. Its 100-kW device, the Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS), is a helium-filled mini blimp designed to float up to 1,000 feet (305 meters).  (A land-based wind turbine of that capacity would be considered among the largest of small wind turbines.)

Wind makes the blimp's cylindrical core rotate around a horizontal axis, which generates electricity. The juice is then sent down the tether, according to the company.

Magenn claims the helium keeps the device especially stable in high-altitude winds, and says it has met U.S. Federal Aviation Administration guidelines for safety. Company marketing materials promote the product as ideal for remote applications like oil rigs and wilderness cabins, although it has not been released yet.

Some are skeptical of the company's claims. Alternative wind turbine designer Doug Selsam says the MARS system "takes the least efficient turbine type known and makes it more expensive and less efficient, by taking it into the air, with the balloon vastly increasing swept area without increasing power."

Magenn did not respond to a request for comment left on the company's Canadian headquarters answering system. The U.S. phone number listed on the company's website is disconnected.

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Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

Evergreen... Sweden will develop biofuels from its forests. 

Photograph: Mattias Klum/Getty Images

Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.

The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.

The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.

"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."

According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.

Ms Sahlin has described oil dependency as one of the greatest problems facing the world. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would give us enormous advantages, not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices," she said. "The price of oil has tripled since 1996."

A government official said: "We want to be both mentally and technically prepared for a world without oil. The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."

Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised.

The decision to abandon oil puts Sweden at the top of the world green league table. Iceland hopes by 2050 to power all its cars and boats with hydrogen made from electricity drawn from renewable resources, and Brazil intends to power 80% of its transport fleet with ethanol derived mainly from sugar cane within five years.

Last week George Bush surprised analysts by saying that the US was addicted to oil and should greatly reduce imports from the Middle East. The US now plans a large increase in nuclear power.

The British government, which is committed to generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2012, last month launched an energy review which has a specific remit to consider a large increase in nuclear power. But a report by accountants Ernst & Young yesterday said that the UK was falling behind in its attempt to meet its renewables target.

"The UK has Europe's best wind, wave and tidal resources yet it continues to miss out on its economic potential," said Jonathan Johns, head of renewable energy at Ernst & Young.

Energy ministry officials in Sweden said they expected the oil committee to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its massive forests, and by expanding other renewable energies such as wind and wave power.

Sweden has a head start over most countries. In 2003, 26% of all the energy consumed came from renewable sources - the EU average is 6%. Only 32% of the energy came from oil - down from 77% in 1970.

The Swedish government is working with carmakers Saab and Volvo to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. Last year the Swedish energy agency said it planned to get the public sector to move out of oil. Its health and library services are being given grants to convert from oil use and homeowners are being encouraged with green taxes. The paper and pulp industries use bark to produce energy, and sawmills burn wood chips and sawdust to generate power.

Reposted from The Guardian

Spinach power has just gotten a big boost.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Vanderbilt University have developed a way to combine the photosynthetic protein that converts light into electrochemical energy in spinach with silicon, the material used in solar cells, in a fashion that produces substantially more electrical current than has been reported by previous "biohybrid" solar cells.

Flying Wind Turbines Reach for High-Altitude Power: The Wild Windy Yonder

Photograph courtesy Makani Power

The landscape appears to pitch beneath the Makani Airborne Wind Turbine  during a test flight near the start-up company's headquarters in Alameda, California.

Moving a wind turbine from a 328-foot (100-meter) tower to 1,640 feet (500 meters) above the ground would tend to double the available wind speeds, and increase the available power eightfold, says Cristina L. Archer, a University of Delaware engineering professor and one of Caldeira's former post-docs.

"Above 2,000 meters [6,562 feet] you get rapid gradients of winds, with the jet streams [at 30,000 feet (9,144) meters] being [the] Mecca of winds," Archer said.

Even though airborne wind pioneers are currently aiming at altitudes far below the jet stream, they face significant technological challenges as they try to bring wind power down to the ground. Long runs of wire can be expensive and prone to tangling. The devices could pose a risk to air traffic or the environment. They would also have to be protected from bad weather.

Joe Faust, editor of the website Upper Windpower, said in an email that research is under way on alternative transmission methods, including beaming power via lasers or microwaves, although such solutions are far off. More immediately viable, perhaps, has been the work on nonconductive tethers that transmit power by applying their motion to generators or fluid pumps, or by operating saws or moving carts.


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Flying Wind Turbines Reach for High-Altitude Power

Turbines Ready for Takeoff

Photograph courtesy Makani Power

Like the wing of a propeller plane without a cockpit, a Makani Airborne Wind Turbine stirs the air in a California field where it is being tested to capture high-altitude wind power.

Anyone who has climbed a mountain, a tower, or even a tall tree knows that winds get stronger at greater heights. There's less drag resistance from objects on the ground. That's why wind energy prospectors typically weld their expensive turbines to high towers, because the most important factor in power production is how fast the wind blows past the blades.

But what if turbines could reel in the power whirling above the reach of those tall towers?

Airborne wind energy pioneers, from North America to Italy and Australia, aim to find out. The technology is still in its infancy, although Makani's system—pictured above—has received notable backing from Google's philanthropic arm and the U.S. government. The concept also gained support in a new study published September 9 in the journal Nature Climate Change, which focused on the steady, fast high-altitude currents, and concluded that there's enough power in Earth's winds to be a primary source of near-zero-emission electric power as the global economy continues to grow through the 21st century.

The study found that wind turbines placed on Earth's surface could extract kinetic energy of at least 400 terawatts (trillion watts), while high-altitude wind power could extract more than 1,800 terawatts. The latter is about 100 times greater than the world's current power demand, the authors noted.

"The upshot is that airborne wind starts to look a lot like solar power," said study co-author Ken Caldeira, a senior climate researcher at Stanford University's Carnegie Institution for Science. "It's a resource that is large relative to human demand, and harvesting it has to do with economics and engineering, not fundamental limitations of the resource." (Of course, wind power ultimately can be called a form of solar power, too, because it's uneven heating by the sun that drives the winds.)

Caldeira and his colleagues, however, had the luxury in their theoretical study of not worrying about the practical challenges of deploying airborne wind turbines. Research and development being done by Makani Power and others is aimed at developing a cost-effective system to bring that high-flying energy down to Earth.

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Toxic Land Generates Solar Energy

New Jersey is turning eyesores into solar farms. The U.S. state has become a leader in solar energy capacity. Energy from the sun now comes from contaminated land not suitable for development.

Panda Poop Might Help Turn Plants Into Fuel

 

The same organisms that make pandas effective at digesting bamboo may help turn plant waste into biofuels, according to researchers.

Photograph by Keren Su, Corbis

Can panda poop help power the greener vehicles of tomorrow? It just might, scientists say, by yielding microbes that efficiently turn plant waste into biofuel—and the research just might help protect pandas at the same time. 

"We have discovered microbes in panda feces might actually be a solution to the search for sustainable new sources of energy," Mississippi State University biochemist Ashli Brown, who led the study, told attendees at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Tuesday. "It's amazing that here we have an endangered species that's almost gone from the planet, yet there's still so much we have yet to learn from it. That underscores the importance of saving endangered and threatened animals."

Biofuels made from corn, soybeans, and other edible crops cause concerns over their potential impact on food supply and prices. Some even argue that such biofuels ultimately may produce even more carbon emissions than petroleum. 

Waste plant material, such as corn cobs and discarded stalks, long has been eyed as a rich, renewable source of biofuel feedstock. But in order for cellulosic biofuel to truly go mainstream, it must be transformed into ethanol efficiently and economically. That's where panda stomachs could give producers a valuable head start.
"These microbes may be very well suited to break down this biomass," said co-researcher Candace Williams, who originally developed the study several years ago while working on her Master's degree. "That's what they are doing in the gut of the panda with all of the bamboo the animal eats."

The Panda's Powerful Gut

Currently, plant waste biofuel processors must break down the tough composition of stalks or stems by cooking them with heat and/or pressure, or by treating them with substances like acids, to produce the simple sugars that they ferment into a final product—processes that can be difficult to scale economically.

Microbes could help make this process faster and cheaper, and the bacteria that dwell within pandas might be especially effective. After all, the tiny organisms can handle the 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo an adult panda eats each day. Pandas eat bamboo almost exclusively, munching for 12 hours out of every 24 each day.

Thanks to fecal contributions from Ya Ya and Le Le, giant pandas at Tennessee's Memphis Zoo, Brown and Williams have identified more than 40 different panda gut microbe species so far.

"We started out with the pandas because of their diet," Williams said. "They are really unique animals in that they are physiologically like a carnivore, but they eat a herbivorous diet. If you're studying these microorganisms that allow the panda to use this cellulose in bamboo for nutrition, you can see how they might be useful for investigating one of the main problems for biofuels—breaking down those lignocellulosic materials to produce sugars."

Pandas also have short digestive tracts for such large animals, and just a single stomach chamber, Williams added. (Cows, in comparison, use four different stomach regions to gradually remove the energy from grass.) "This means their bacteria have to be even more potent at breaking down the material quickly," she said, "making them very efficient and perhaps even more promising for biofuel production."

Pandas eat both the tough stalks and more tender leaves of the bamboo plant, and their many species of gut microbes wax and wane in number with these dietary changes, Williams said. In addition to producing sugars, some microbes in the lab were even able to accumulate lipids, which can produce the fatty acids needed for biofuel production.

Either the gut bacteria themselves, or the enzymes they use to do the work, possibly could be co-opted for cheaper, easier industrial biofuel production processes, the study's authors said. Yeasts, for example, could be genetically engineered to produce the beneficial enzymes and then grown on a large scale.

Panda poop is just one promising avenue of research into how waste can be transformed more easily into greener energy.

Some projects are already producing fuel from plant waste materials. Earlier this year, Mississippi-based KiOR shipped what it says is the world's first commercial volume of cellulosic diesel fuel, made from pine wood chips. (See related story: "Beyond Ethanol: Drop-In Biofuels Squeeze Gasoline From Plants.") In August, Florida's Indian River BioEnergy Center also began shipping cellulosic ethanol (sourced from wastes, woodchips, cornstalks and grasses) at commercial scale. The plant's operator, INEOS Bio, said the facility will produce some eight million gallons of ethanol from yard clippings and wood scraps, using hybrid gasification-fermentation technology.

"Electrofuels" researchers are using microorganisms to produce biofuels in the lab without any plants at all by genetically engineering microorganisms to "poop out" chemicals that can burn right in the gas tank. The U.S. Department of Energy helps fund this and similar initiatives out of its Bioenergy Technologies Office.

Some scientists believe algae can help power the future. Animal fat is another potentially enormous resource: Dynamic Fuels, a joint venture between Tyson Foods and synthetic fuel producer Syntroleum Corporation, is turning it into energy that can be burned in the tank.

For the next phase of panda poop research, droppings from another pair of giant pandas, the Toronto Zoo's Er Shun and Da Mao, may soon be added to the microbe investigation.

Brown explained at her ACS presentation that charismatic and endangered pandas like them may benefit from the research as well as biofuel producers. Detailed analysis of their gut microbes could reveal better ways to keep them healthy, because most of the diseases that affect pandas occur in the gut, Brown said.

"Understanding the relationships between the microbes and the pandas, as well as how they get their energy and nutrition, is extremely important from a conservation standpoint," she said, "as fewer than 2,500 giant pandas are left in the wild, and only 200 are in captivity."

Reposted from National Geographics

Alternative Energy Sources That Are Cheaper Than Solar

 Hydroelectric

Electricity generated by running water through a dam's turbines costs about 9 cents a kwh generated. That's less than half the cost of electricity generated from "ordinary" solar panels. More than three times less than solar thermal power. And hydropower may be even cheaper than what the EIA says it is.

The Hoover Dam, for example, is said to wholesale the electricity it generates for as little as 1.6 cents a kwh -- about a penny-and-a-half.



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