We all want to live in a clean and green world and breathe pollution free air. For this kind of environment we desperately need a fossil fuel free world. Scientists are toiling hard to come up with alternative fuels which can replace conventional fuels. One such study was presented at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. This study throws interesting light on the first economical, eco-friendly process to transform algae oil into biodiesel fuel. The scientists are quite hopeful that one day America will become independent of fossil fuels. Ben Wen is the lead researcher and vice president of United Environment and Energy LLC, Horseheads, N.Y. According to him, �This is the first economical way to produce biodiesel from algae oil. It costs much less than conventional processes because you would need a much smaller factory, there are no water disposal costs, and the process is considerably faster.�
Processing cost is a great hurdle for manufacturing biodiesel from algae. But New York researchers claim that their pioneer method is at least forty percent cheaper than the current manufacturing processes. We already have necessary infrastructure for supply of biodiesel fuel. Amount of algae is also not a problem. We have abundance of algae growing in the major water bodies of the world, be it ocean, lakes or rivers. The research team calls this method �continuously flowing fixed-bed.� According to the team members, this process will not produce wastewater which causes pollution. Ben Wen also explains that algae has an �oil-per-acre production rate 100-300 times the amount of soybeans, and offers the highest yield feedstock for biodiesel and the most promising source for mass biodiesel production to replace transportation fuel in the United States.�
They are also using a proprietary solid catalyst developed in their laboratory. Other biodiesel producing firms are using liquid catalysts. Liquid catalysts cannot be used again and again but solid catalysts can be utilized repeatedly. The second key advantage of having a solid catalyst is that a continuous flowing production of biodiesel can be maintained. The same is not true with liquid catalysts. Using liquid catalyst is time consuming too. Workers have to take extra half hour after producing each batch to create more biodiesel. Liquid catalyst is present in the biodiesel. So to get rid of the liquid catalyst workers need to purify the biodiesel by neutralizing the base catalyst by adding acid. But by using solid catalyst no such action is needed.
Ben Wen is trying to test the new waters. He is thinking big. According to him, his firm is currently conducting a pilot program for the process with a production capacity of nearly 1 million gallons of algae biodiesel per year. Depending upon the size of the machinery and the plant, he said it is possible that a company can produce up to 50 million gallons of algae biodiesel every year.
But this is not all. There is icing on the cake. Wen explains further that the solid catalyst continuous flow method can be tailored into mobile units so that smaller companies wouldn�t have to construct plants and the military could use the process in the field.
Source : http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/economical-biodiesel-fuel-from-algae/
Wind can be used to do work. The kinetic energy of the wind can be changed into other forms of energy, either mechanical energy or electrical energy.
When a boat lifts a sail, it is using wind energy to push it through the water. This is one form of work.
Farmers have been using wind energy for many years to pump water from wells using windmills like the one on the right.
In Holland, windmills have been used for centuries to pump water from low-lying areas.
Wind is also used to turn large grinding stones to grind wheat or corn, just like a water wheel is turned by water power.
Today, the wind is also used to make electricity.
Blowing wind spins the blades on a wind turbine � just like a large toy pinwheel. This device is called a wind turbine and not a windmill. A windmill grinds or mills grain, or is used to pump water.
The blades of the turbine are attached to a hub that is mounted on a turning shaft. The shaft goes through a gear transmission box where the turning speed is increased. The transmission is attached to a high speed shaft which turns a generator that makes electricity.
If the wind gets too high, the turbine has a brake that will keep the blades from turning too fast and being damaged.
You can use a single smaller wind turbine to power a home or a school. A small turbine makes enough energy for a house. In the picture on the left, the children at this Iowa school are playing beneath a wind turbine that makes enough electricity to power their entire school.
We have many windy areas in California. And wind is blowing in many places all over the earth. The only problem with wind is that it is not windy all the time. In California, it is usually windier during the summer months when wind rushes inland from cooler areas, like the ocean to replace hot rising air in California's warm central valleys and deserts.
In order for a wind turbine to work efficiently, wind speeds usually must be above 12 to 14 miles per hour. Wind has to be this speed to turn the turbines fast enough to generate electricity. The turbines usually produce about 50 to 300 kilowatts of electricity each. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts (kilo means 1,000). You can light ten 100 watt light bulbs with 1,000 watts. So, a 300 kilowatt (300,000 watts) wind turbine could light up 3,000 light bulbs that use 100 watts!
As of 1999, there were 11,368 wind turbines in California. These turbines are grouped together in what are called wind "farms," like those in Palm Springs in the picture on the right. These wind farms are located mostly in the three windiest areas of the state:
- Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco
- San Gorgonio Pass, near Palm Springs
- Tehachapi, south of Bakersfield
Together these three places in California make enough electricity to supply an entire city the size of San Francisco! About 11 percent of the entire world's wind-generated electricity is found in California. Other countries that use a lot of wind energy are Denmark and Germany.
Once electricity is made by the turbine, the electricity from the entire wind farm is collected together and sent through a transformer. There the voltage is increase to send it long distances over high power lines.
Source : http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter16.html
Algae fix the sunlight and carbon dioxide into energy and that too very fast. Scientists want to utilize this quality for alternative fuels. And when it comes to greener alternatives to fossil fuel what could be greener than pond scum? Why algae are more suitable over other bio-fuels? Algae can grow anywhere, practically anywhere. They can grow in sea-water or salty water or adulterated water or even in sewage. They can bear extreme temperature. They can grow on waste-land. Another good thing about algae is they multiply very fast. They can double their weight many times in a single day. Algae produce oil as a byproduct of photosynthesis. They can produce fifteen times more oil per acre than other plants such as corn and switchgrass.
If we want to single out the biggest two advantages of algae as bio-fuels, the first one can be these plants grow well where carbon dioxide is in excess and another is these plants can grow in sewages.
�We have to prove these two things to show that we really are getting a free lunch,� said Lisa Colosi, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who is part of an interdisciplinary University of Virginia research team, recently funded by a new U.Va. Collaborative Sustainable Energy Seed Grant worth about $30,000.
If we let the algae grow naturally then the oil yield will be low, around one percent by the weight of the algae. The U.Va. team theorizes that if more carbon dioxide and organic material would be available to the algae, oil yield can be increased to as much as 40 percent by weight.
Keeping in mind the quality of algae that it grows well on industrial solids and where carbon dioxide is available in excess, it can be helpful in dealing with industrial solids. Cleaning industrial solids is very expensive otherwise. Algae can also be used to minimize the emissions of carbon dioxide of coal plants.
Research partner Mark White, a professor at the McIntire School of Commerce, will help the team quantify the big-picture environmental and economic benefits of algae biofuel compared to soy-based biodiesel, under different sets of assumptions.
The third team member, Andres Clarens, a professor of civil and environmental engineering has expertise in separating the oil produced by the algae. They will try to extract oil from algae on a very small scale. Later on they will tackle the basic issues like whether it makes a difference to grind up the organic material before feeding it to the algae.
Source : http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/algae-biofuels-future/
A biofuel is tricky to define because the usual fossil fuel we use, is in a way biofuel too. But we can safely say that most of the biofuels don�t add up their quota of carbon dioxide to the environment. The biofuels are therefore considered to be �CO2 neutral.� Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a new method to increase the quantity of oil in tobacco leaves. So that oil in tobacco leaves can be utilized as biofuels in future. Their paper was published in Plant Biotechnology Journal which is an online journal.
Vyacheslav Andrianov is a Ph.D. and assistant professor of Cancer Biology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. According to him tobacco can produce biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops. But there is a hitch. When we try to extract oil, most of it is available in tobacco seeds. Statistics say that tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil per dry weight. Another snag is tobacco plants don�t produce seeds in copious amounts. It is about 600 kg of seeds per acre. Dr. Andrianov and his colleagues aim to find ways so that the tobacco leaves produce more oil.
A usual tobacco plant leave has 1.7 percent to 4 percent of oil per dry weight. The researchers modified two genes of the plant. They are the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The plants were engineered to over express one of the two genes. The alteration of DGAT gene resulted in about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves. It is around twice the amount of oil produced by and large. When the researcher went for the LEC2 gene modification it yielded around 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.
According to Dr. Andrianov, �Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren�t used in food production. We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves.�
Dr. Andrianov opines, �Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising �energy plant� platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production.�
Source : http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/biofuels-engineered-tobacco-plants/
We all want to live in a clean and green world and breathe pollution free air. For this kind of environment we desperately need a fossil fuel free world. Scientists are toiling hard to come up with alternative fuels which can replace conventional fuels. One such study was presented at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. This study throws interesting light on the first economical, eco-friendly process to transform algae oil into biodiesel fuel. The scientists are quite hopeful that one day America will become independent of fossil fuels. Ben Wen is the lead researcher and vice president of United Environment and Energy LLC, Horseheads, N.Y. According to him, �This is the first economical way to produce biodiesel from algae oil. It costs much less than conventional processes because you would need a much smaller factory, there are no water disposal costs, and the process is considerably faster.� 
