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Saturday 27 June 2009
Biofuels could clean up Chernobyl 'badlands'
http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/4f90221/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cmg20A2271440B50A0A0Ebiofuels0Ecould0Eclean0Eup0Echernobyl0Ebadlands0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm27 June 2009 by Fred Pearce
CONTAMINATED lands, blighted by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, could be cleaned up in a clever way: by growing biofuels. Belarus, the country affected by much of the fallout, is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years.
A 40,000 square kilometre area of south-east Belarus is so stuffed with radioactive isotopes that rained down from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 that it won't be fit for growing food for hundreds of years, as the isotopes won't have decayed sufficiently. But this week a team of Irish biofuels technologists is in the capital, Minsk, hoping to do a deal with state agencies to buy radioactive sugar beet and other crops grown on the contaminated land to make biofuels for sale across Europe.
The company, Greenfield Project Management, insists no radioactive material will get into the biofuel as only ethanol is distilled out. "In distillation, only the most volatile compounds rise up the tube. Everything else is left behind," says Basil Miller of Greenfield. The heavy radioactive residues will be burned in a power station, producing a concentrated "radioactive ash". This can be disposed of at existing treatment works for nuclear waste, he says.
The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency is not so sure, however. Its head of waste, Didier Louvat, told New Scientist that, while the biofuels process should be safe, neither Belarus nor Ireland has an adequate way of disposing of the radioactive residues at present. "The disposal facilities Belarus set up after the Chernobyl accident are not acceptable, so they will need safe storage until they have something better."
Belarus has been tight-lipped about the project, though it is clearly keen to tackle the problem. Last September Andrei Savinkh, Belarus representative at the UN in Geneva, called decontamination of the soil "the number one priority for the Belarus government".
Chernobyl is in Ukraine, close to the Belarus border. But prevailing winds meant 80 per cent of the fallout from the burning reactor fell in Belarus. Both were then part of the Soviet Union. The accident left vegetation and soils heavily contaminated with strontium-90, caesium-137, plutonium and americium. The most heavily polluted areas remain evacuated but 8 million people live in a much wider contaminated zone.
Farmers grow some grain crops here. The radioactive material concentrates in roots and stalks, which they plough back into the soil after harvesting. So the soil is almost as contaminated now as it was after the accident. The Belarus government hopes that by growing biofuels and using the whole plant, it can cleanse the soil. "Instead of centuries of natural decay [of the radionuclides] this process will cut the time to 20 to 40 years," Savinkh says.
Greenfield plans to build the first biofuels distillery next year at Mozyr, close to one of the most contaminated areas (see map). The €500 million plant will turn half a million cubic metres of crops a year into 700 million litres of biofuels, starting in 2011. As many as 10 more plants will follow provided funding can be raised, says Miller. The European Union reckons it will need about 25 billion litres of bioethanol by 2020 to meet green fuel targets.
One of Greenfield's partners will be Belbiopharm, a state biotech company that wants to develop genetically modified crops able to clean the soil more quickly.
The hope is that in the long run these measures will make life safer for local people. A study in 1999 by Nick Beresford of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, UK, found that tens of thousands of people in the contaminated region are consuming dangerous levels of radioactivity in their food.
[Submitted by KEVswr]
Saturday 27 June 2009 - 19:37:51 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Biofuels - Alcohol / Ethanol / Methanol | Comments: 0 |
Thursday 04 June 2009
Xinhua - Lao Gov't to Promote Biofuel Production
2009-0604 - Xinhua - Lao Gov't to Promote Biofuel ProductionLao Gov't to Promote Biofuel Production
2009-06-04 16:28:43 Xinhua Web Editor: Hu Weiwei
The Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines said that the government will promote the production of biofuel in the wake of imported fossil fuel price fluctuations over the past year, the Lao newspaper Vientiane Times reported Thursday.
The Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines said that the government will promote the production of biofuel in the wake of imported fossil fuel price fluctuations over the past year, the Lao newspaper Vientiane Times reported Thursday.
Electricity Department Acting Director General Hatsady Sisoulath said the department was now establishing a draft of national strategy on biofuel development, as an important reference for promoting biofuel production in Laos.
The draft is expected to be submitted to the government for approval at the end of this year, said Hatsady at a workshop on " Future Resource Economy and Policies in Laos until 2020" held in Vientiane on Wednesday.
Hatsady said Laos had the potential to produce biofuel because of the abundance of agricultural land and a climate that was conducive to biofuel crop cultivation for supply to processing plants.
The country's biofuel development strategy must be drawn up in cooperation with the various sectors involved, such as the Ministry of Energy, Mines and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, banks when considering loans for investors in this field, and even private sectors if they want to involve in this business, said Hatsady.
If the production of biofuels comes into reality in Laos, this form of energy will constitute about 30 percent of total fuel consumption by 2020 and help the country reduce fossil fuel imports, said Hatsady.
Copyright by CRIENGLISH.com, 1998-2009. Email:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archive-laonews/message/15802
[Submitted by Hemp4Fuel]
Thursday 04 June 2009 - 10:05:32 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Biofuels - Alcohol / Ethanol / Methanol | Comments: 0 |
Tuesday 02 June 2009
Methanol challenges hydrogen to be fuel of the future
Methanol challenges hydrogen to be fuel of the future* 18:03 02 June 2009 by Colin Barras
Could methanol be at the center of a cleaner, greener future infrastructure? (Image: Rex Features)
For years many companies, governments and researchers have predicted that our energy future must lie with the universe's simplest element. The mooted hydrogen economy would use the gas to store and transport renewable or low-carbon energy, and power fuel cells in the transport sector or in portable electronics.
But creating the necessary society-wide infrastructure has proved difficult and expensive to get off the ground. And now a rival idea, first suggested in 2006 by Nobel chemistry laureate George Olah at the University of Southern California, has received a boost.
The methanol economy, say its supporters, could be with us much sooner than the hydrogen one.
Hydrogen dangers
Olah's rationale is that modifying our existing oil and petrol-focused infrastructure to run on methanol will be much easier than refitting the world's liquid-fuel-based economy to deal with an explosive gas.
Methanol has already been used to power portable gadgets and could potentially power vehicles and other devices. Now US chemists have worked out the conditions needed to make the feedstock for methanol production using renewable energy.
The research is significant because just as the lack of an efficient way to generate and store hydrogen is a major barrier to the idea of running civilisation on it, sourcing methanol on a vast scale is a similarly major hurdle.
Clean solution
The best way to make methanol is by steam reforming methane, produced from syngas - a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide - which can be made via the Fischer-Tropsch process.
This uses catalysts to convert the syngas into liquid hydrocarbons. The process is used today to make diesel and other liquid fuels from coal, and kept South African cars going during the country's international isolation in the 1980s and 90s.
However, the whole point of the methanol economy would be to create a greener society, so any syngas must come from an environmentally friendly source, not fossil fuels.
Now chemist Scott Barnett at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and colleagues have shown that a solid oxide electrolysis cell, more normally used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, could be that source.
Viable brew
Using a mix of one part CO2, one part hydrogen and two parts water in the device generates syngas at a rate which compares favourably with the processes used to make it from natural gas, says Barnett. At peak conditions of 800 °C and 1.3 volts, the system can produce 7 standard cubic centimetres of syngas per minute for every square centimetre of the electrolysis cell's surface.
The next stage, turning the syngas into methanol, is a standard industrial reaction that is well understood.
Barnett's method requires a steady stream of water vapour and CO2, but both gases are released when the methanol is used in fuel cells, and could be captured and re-used, he says.
That would add to the costs involved, but a hydrogen economy would require similar gas-capture technology, says Barnett, because hydrogen production requires a plentiful source of fresh water, which is heavy to cart about.
Olah thinks Barnett's study is a useful one. "This [methanol economy] approach is now starting to be implemented around the world," he says. "New methanol plants are being built in China, South Korea, Japan and Iceland."
Limited scope
But others remain sceptical that methanol will ever occupy more than a small niche. There are several well-known problems with the use of methanol. Like hydrogen, and unlike petrol, methanol is not a source of energy, but simply an energy store, points out Ulf Bossel at the European Fuel Cell Forum in Oberrohrdorf, Switzerland. "The energy carried by methanol is less than was needed to make it," he adds.
Barnett agrees that methanol is a poor substitute for using the power from a renewable generator like a wind turbine directly. But he says that in cases where direct use is not possible, liquid methanol beats the efficiency of hydrogen for storage and transportation.
Methanol could be used to store energy from renewable sources that often produce more electricity than is needed at a particular time, he says, and could also be useful at off-grid sites.
In these situations, Bossel agrees a modest methanol economy makes sense. "The hydrogen idea is gradually fading," he says. "Methanol could be a better solution because it is easier to handle."
Journal reference: Energy and Fuels (DOI: 10.1021/ef900111f)
[Submitted by Hemp4Fuel]
Tuesday 02 June 2009 - 21:03:35 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Biofuels - Alcohol / Ethanol / Methanol | Comments: 0 |
Monday 25 May 2009
Hemp as a Fuel / Energy Source
By Jeremy Briggs - Radio Free Exile BlogBiodiesel fuel from Hemp Seed Oil
Hemp seed oil can be used as is in bio-diesel engines. Methyl esters, or bio-diesel, can be made from any oil or fat including hemp seed oil. The reaction requires the oil, an alcohol (usually methanol), and a catalyst, which produces bio-diesel and small amount of glycerol or glycerin. When co-fired with 15% methanol, bio-diesel fuel produces energy less than 1/3 as pollution as petroleum diesel.Energy and Fuel from Hemp Stalks through Pyrolysis
Pyrolysis is the technique of applying high heat to biomass, or organic plants and tree matter, with little or no air. Reduced emissions from coal-fired power plants and automobiles can be accomplished by converting biomass to fuel utilizing pyrolysis technology. The process can produce, from lingo-cellulosic material (like the stalks of hemp), charcoal, gasoline, ethanol, non-condensable gasses, acetic acid, acetone, methane, and methanol. Process adjustments can be done to favor charcoal, pyrolytic oil, gas, or methanol, with 95.5% fuel-to-feed ratios. Around 68% of the energy of the raw biomass will be contained in the charcoal and fuel oils -- renewable energy generated here at home, instead of overpaying for foreign petroleum.
Pyrolysis facilities can run 3 shifts a day, and since pyrolysis facilities need to be within 50 miles of the energy crop to be cost effective, many new local and rural jobs will be created, not to mention the employment opportunities in trucking and transportation.
Hemp vs. Fossil Fuels
Pyrolysis facilities can use the same technology used now to process fossil fuel oil and coal. Petroleum coal and oil conversion is more efficient in terms of fuel-to-feed ratio, but there are many advantages to conversion by pyrolysis.
1) Biomass has a heating value of 5000-8000 BTU/lb, with virtually no ash or sulfur emissions.
2) Ethanol, methanol, methane gas, and gasoline can be derived from biomass at a fraction of the cost of the current cost of oil, coal, or nuclear energy, especially when environmental costs are factored in. Each acre of hemp could yield about 1000 gallons of methanol.
3) When an energy crop is growing, it takes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, and releases an equal amount when it is burned, creating a balanced system, unlike petroleum fuels, which only release CO2. When an energy crop like hemp is grown on a massive scale, it will initially lower the CO2 in the air, and then stabilize it at a level lower than before the planting of the energy crop.
4) Use of biomass would end acid rain, end sulfer-based smog, and reverse the greenhouse effect.
Coal
Unlike petroleum reserves, America has enough coal to last 100-300 years, but burning it for electricity puts sulfur (toxic to every membrane in which it comes in contact, especially the simplest life forms - into the air, which leads to acid rain, which lills 50,000 Americans, and 5,000 - 10,000 Canadians, annually, and destroys the forests, river, and animals.
Charcoal can be created from biomass through pyrolysis (charcoaling), which has nearly the same heating value in BTU as coal, virtually without sulfur. Biomass can also be co-fired with coal to reduce emissions.
Ethanol and Methanol
Ethanol is a water-free, high-octane alcohol which can be used as fuel to drive cars. Under current conditions, use of ethanol-blended fuels such as E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) can reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases by as much as 37.1%. Ethanol-powered vehicles do suffer in performance (barely), but ethanol is effective as a fuel additive because it helps engines burn cleaner.
Once pyrolysis facilities are up and running, converting biomass into charcoal for electrical power plants, it will be more feasible to build the complex gasifying systems to produce ethanol and/or methanol from the cubed biomass, or to make high-octane lead-free gasoline from the methanol using a catalytic process developed by Georgia Tech University in conjunction with Mobil Oil Corporation.
Ethanol is currently being used as a fuel additive, replacing toxic methyl tertiary ether (MTBE). Ethanol producers are currently providing only 1% of America's liquid fuel. Soon though, as new development processes are researched, and with the use of hemp, the plant worlds number one producer of biomass, the cost of this alternative fuel will give petroleum vigorous competition.
Hydrolysis: A process whereby cellulose is converted to fermentable glucose, which holds the greatest promise for production and feedstock, because it could produce 100 gallons/ton. Tim Castleman and the Fuel and Fiber Company are researching this technology. Their method extracts the high-value bast fiber as first step. Then the remaining core material (mostly hurd) is converted to alcohol (methanol, ethanol), and then to glucose. Hydrolysis could produce 300,000 to 600,000 tons of biomass per year per facility, if each facility could process input from 60,000 to 170,000 acres.
Gasification: A form of pyrolysis which converts biomass into synthetic gas, such as ethanol, and low grade fuel oil with an energy content of about 40% that of petroleum diesel. This process is good for community power-corporation and people seeking self-sufficient energy needs. A small modular bio-powered system is in place in the village of Alaminos in the Philippines, using gasification techniques for energy.
Anaerobic Digestion: A process of capturing methane from green waste material (biomass). This process is toxic, but well suited for distributed power generation when co-located with electrical generation equipment.
Boiler: Biomass can also be burned in a boiler, but this energy has a value of $30-50 ton, which makes it impractical due to the higher value of hemp fiber, unless used on a local small scale, and in remote rural applications.
Hemp Produces the Most Biomass of Any Plant on Earth.
Hemp is at least four times richer in biomass/cellulose potential than its nearest rivals: cornstalks, sugarcane, kenaf, trees, etc.
Hemp produces the most biomass of any crop, which is why it is the natural choice for an energy crop. Hemp converts the sun's energy into cellulose faster than any other plant, through photosynthesis. Hemp can produce 10 tons of biomass per acre every four months. Enough energy could be produced on 6% of the land in the U.S. to provide enough energy for our entire country (cars, heat homes, electricity, industry) -- and we use 25% of the world's energy.
To put which in perspective, right now we pay farmers not to grow on 6% (around 90 million acres) of the farming land, while another 500 million acres of marginal farmland lies fallow. This land could be used to grow hemp as an energy crop.
Conclusion
The most important aspect of industrial hemp farming, the most compelling thing hemp offers us, is fuel. Right now we are depleting our reserves of petroleum and buying it up from our Arab enemies. It would be nice if we could have a fuel source which was reusable and which we could grow right here, making us completely energy independent.
Petroleum fuel increases carbon monoxide in the atmosphere and contributes heavily to global warming and the greenhouse effect, which, the EPA has warned, will lead to global catastrophe in the next 50 years if these trends continue. Do you want to find out if they are right, or do you want to grow the most cost effective and environmentally safe fuel source on the planet?
Using hemp as an energy and rotation crop would be a great step in the right direction.
Hemp Seed Oil
Hemp seed oil has historically been used as lamp oil. It is said to shine the brightest of all lamp oils. Hemp seed oil lit the lamps of Abraham Lincoln, Abraham the prophet, and was used in the legendary lamps of Aladdin.
Anything which can be made from fossil fuels can be made from an organic substance like hemp. Toxic petrochemicals can be replaced with hemp oil.
Hemp oil can be made into anything with an oil base, including paint, varnish, detergent, solvent, and lubricating oil. The advantage of these product is that they are earth friendly and biodegradable, and do not destroy ecosystems around them like petrochemicals do.
Until the 1930s most paint and varnishes were made with non-toxic hemp oil. Hemp paint provides superior coating because hemp oil soaks into and preserves wood, due to its high resistance to water.
Hemp oil is a good base for non-toxic printing inks. Soy is currently made into inks, but soy ink requires more processing and takes longer to dry than hemp oil based inks.
Original Article on Radio Free Exile
[Submitted by dlenef]
Monday 25 May 2009 - 13:10:25 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Hemp for Fuel | Comments: 0 |
Monday 18 May 2009
New battery is fueled by the air
New battery is fueled by the airMay 18, 2009
A new type of air-fuelled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available.
This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.
The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.
The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.
Improved capacity is thanks to the addition of a component that uses oxygen drawn from the air during discharge, replacing one chemical constituent used in rechargeable batteries today. Not having to carry the chemicals around in the battery offers more energy for the same size battery. Reducing the size and weight of batteries with the necessary charge capacity has been a long-running battle for developers of electric cars.
The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today's rechargeables too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.
This four-year research project, which reaches its halfway mark in July, builds on the discovery at the university that the carbon component's interaction with air can be repeated, creating a cycle of charge and discharge. Subsequent work has more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR cell.
Principal investigator on the project, Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, says: "Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries. Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations."
"The key is to use oxygen in the air as a reagent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery," says Bruce.
The oxygen, which will be drawn in through a surface of the battery exposed to air, reacts within the pores of the carbon to discharge the battery. "Not only is this part of the process free, the carbon component is much cheaper than current technology," says Bruce. He estimates that it will be at least five years before the STAIR cell is commercially available.
The project is focused on understanding more about how the chemical reaction of the battery works and investigating how to improve it. The research team is also working towards making a STAIR cell prototype suited, in the first instance, for small applications, such as mobile phones or MP3 players.
[Submitted by Hemp4Fuel]
Monday 18 May 2009 - 18:32:08 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Electric | Comments: 0 |
Wednesday 13 May 2009
Catalyst breakthrough: one-pot bio-oil to alkane reaction
http://rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000101~ISSUE~0905~RELTYPE~MS~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~FQ.htmlCatalyst breakthrough: one-pot bio-oil to alkane reaction
May 13, 2009
For the protection of the environment, and because of the limited amount of fossil fuels available, renewable resources, such as specially cultivated plants, wood scraps, and other plant waste, are becoming the focus of considerable attention. Processes such as pyrolysis or liquefaction allow the conversion of biomass into bio-oil, a highly promising renewable source of energy. A team of German and Chinese scientists led by Johannes A. Lercher at the Technical University of Munich has now developed a new catalytic process to convert components of bio-oil directly into alkanes and methanol. As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the process is based on a "one-pot" reaction catalyzed by a precious metal on a carbon support combined with an inorganic acid.
Bio-oil is an aqueous, acidic, highly oxidized mixture. However, its high oxygen content and instability turn out to have a negative impact: bio-oil cannot be used directly as a liquid fuel. It would, however, be highly interesting as a source of basic raw materials if it were possible to convert it to alkanes. Alkanes, which are also commonly called paraffins, are saturated hydrocarbons; they are among the most important raw materials for chemical industry, and in particular as starting materials for the production of plastics. Furthermore, they are among the primary fuels in the world's economy.
Bio-oil contains a phenolic fraction consisting of compounds with the main framework being an aromatic ring made of six carbon atoms with some hydroxy (-OH) groups attached. With the new process, the phenolic components of bio-oil can be converted with high selectivity to cycloalkanes (ring-shaped alkanes) and methanol. The researchers were able to demonstrate this with various model substances. As catalyst, they used palladium metal on a carbon support, with phosphoric acid as the proton source for the reaction.
The reaction is a "one-pot" reaction, meaning a one-step reaction whose partial reactions (hydrogenation, hydrolysis, and dehydration) occur in the same reactor, with no intermediate work-up. The secret is in the catalyst, which works on all of these different reactions. The end result is a mixture of various alkanes that separates into a second phase, making it easy to separate from the aqueous bio-oil phase. The new process is a practical approach for the direct use of bio-oil for the production of alkanes.
Abstract
SOURCE: Wiley-Blackwell
R&D Daily
Advantage Business Media
Rockaway, NJ, 07866
[Submitted by Hemp4Fuel]
Wednesday 13 May 2009 - 02:56:24 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Biofuels - Alcohol / Ethanol / Methanol | Comments: 0 |
Friday 08 May 2009
Bioelectricity promises more 'miles per acre' than ethanol
Bioelectricity promises more 'miles per acre' than ethanolMay 8, 2009
Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our “miles per acre” from biomass? Researchers writing in the online edition of the May 7 Science magazine say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. They calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change.
“It’s a relatively obvious question once you ask it, but nobody had really asked it before,” says study co-author Chris Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. “The kinds of motivations that have driven people to think about developing ethanol as a vehicle fuel have been somewhat different from those that have been motivating people to think about battery electric vehicles, but the overlap is in the area of maximizing efficiency and minimizing adverse impacts on climate.”
Field, who is also a professor of biology at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment, is part of a research team that includes lead author Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, and David Lobell of Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment. The researchers performed a life-cycle analysis of both bioelectricity and ethanol technologies, taking into account not only the energy produced by each technology, but also the energy consumed in producing the vehicles and fuels. For the analysis, they used publicly available data on vehicle efficiencies from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations.
Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based energy crop. For example, a small SUV powered by bioelectricity could travel nearly 14,000 highway miles on the net energy produced from an acre of switchgrass, while a comparable internal combustion vehicle could only travel about 9,000 miles on the highway. (Average mileage for both city and highway driving would be 15,000 miles for a biolelectric SUV and 8,000 miles for an internal combustion vehicle.)
"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles,” says Campbell. “Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."
The researchers found that bioelectricity and ethanol also differed in their potential impact on climate change. “Some approaches to bioenergy can make climate change worse, but other limited approaches can help fight climate change,” says Campbell. “For these beneficial approaches, we could do more to fight climate change by making electricity than making ethanol.”
The energy from an acre of switchgrass used to power an electric vehicle would prevent or offset the release of up to 10 tons of CO2 per acre, relative to a similar-sized gasoline-powered car. Across vehicle types and different crops, this offset averages more than 100% larger for the bioelectricity than for the ethanol pathway. Bioelectricity also offers more possibilities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through measures such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could be implemented at biomass power stations but not individual internal combustion vehicles.
While the results of the study clearly favor bioelectricity over ethanol, the researchers caution that the issues facing society in choosing an energy strategy are complex. “We found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues: transportation and climate,” says Lobell. “But we also need to compare these options for other issues like water consumption, air pollution, and economic costs.”
"There is a big strategic decision our country and others are making: whether to encourage development of vehicles that run on ethanol or electricity,” says Campbell. “Studies like ours could be used to ensure that the alternative energy pathways we chose will provide the most transportation energy and the least climate change impacts."
This research was funded through a grant from the Stanford University Global Climate and Energy Project, with additional support from the Stanford University Food Security and the Environment Program, The University of California at Merced, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and a NASA New Investigator Grant.
Original Release
Abstract
Audio Interview with Chris Field
Coverage at Scientific American
SOURCE: Carnegie Institution for Science
[Submitted by Hemp4Fuel]
Friday 08 May 2009 - 13:16:36 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Biofuels - Alcohol / Ethanol / Methanol | Comments: 0 |
Friday 01 May 2009
The Caitlin County Hemp Wars
Hemp, the musical? An original play, showing one night only, May 5, in Boston.Background
Three generations of an extended farm family don’t always get along (“Family”). The farm is going under, and there is disagreement about how to keep it going. Shelly, a college student, wants to live her own life and loves Michael, Uncle Ray’s farm hand against the will of her parents ("Want to be me"). One night she has a dream which she shares with her grandmother Cora. Maybe her family can save the farm by growing Industrial Hemp? Cora shares Shelly’s ideas with her devoted husband Henry who serenades her with a song of eternal love (“Love is Forever”). Tom, Shelly’s brother and third generation of this extended farm family, expresses jealousies toward his sibling, antipathy towards Michael, and commiserates with his cousins about the plight of the farm (“Kids Know Best"”).At Shelly’s Invitation, the grandparents attend a Hempfest where they listen to a local band (“Grass”) and learn about the useful applications of Industrial Hemp. After fighting with her parents, Shelly visits Michael who asks her to marry him ("Take a Stand"). At a family meeting, there is general agreement that because of their desperate situation they are willing to experiment with a Hemp crop. Shelly and Michael announce their engagement, and Michael is accepted into the fold. All is right with the world (“Peace Now”), except for Uncle Ray who thinks the family should sell the farm. Next morning, the family elders, in an east-meets-west experience, show Shelly’s Goth clad friends how to sow the Hemp ("Planting the Seeds" – a combination of Traditional and Rap music).
Ray, wanting “out” of the farm ("Caitlin County Blues"), exposes his family to the corporate executives who want to buy the farm for a considerable sum (“Compromised Individuals”). The family meets with some neighboring farmers who agree to help with the Harvesting of the crop (“Hangin’ Together”). They create a “crop-circle” to divert the Feds who in all likelihood will be snooping around (“Diversionary Tactics”). Cora creates her own diversion (“The Chase”) until they are all caught. At the Caitlin County Courthouse, the family is ably represented by their attorney ("Courtroom Cowboy"), and they get off with a light sentence. Ray leaves town, Shelly and Michael become husband and wife, and, in a rousing finale, the family and community realize the importance of being there for each other (“One People”).
The Caitlin County Hemp Wars Website
A couple of video samples on Vimeo
[Submitted by dlenef]
Friday 01 May 2009 - 21:12:36 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Misc | Comments: 0 |
Thursday 23 April 2009
Researchers find weaknesses in a plant's cellulosic defense
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000101&ISSUE=0904&RELTYPE=MS&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=DB&CommonCount=0Researchers find weaknesses in a plant's cellulosic defense
April 23, 2009
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have discovered a potential chink in the armor of fibers that make the cell walls of certain inedible plant materials so tough. The insight could lead to a cost-effective and energy-efficient strategy for turning biomass into alternative fuels.
In separate papers published in Biophysical Journal and Biomacromolecules, Los Alamos researchers identify potential weaknesses among sheets of cellulose molecules comprising lignocellulosic biomass, the inedible fibrous material derived from plant cell walls. The material is a potentially abundant source of sugar that can be used to brew batches of methanol or butanol, which show potential as biofuels.
Cellulose is biosynthesized in plant cells when molecules of glucose—a simple sugar—join into long chains through a process called polymerization. The plant then assembles these chains of cellulose into sheets. The sheets are held together by hydrogen bonds—an electrostatic attraction of a positive portion of a molecule to a negative portion of the same or neighboring molecule. Finally, the sheets stack atop one another, sticking to themselves by other types of attractions that are weaker than hydrogen bonds. The plant then spins these sheets into high-tensile-strength fibers of material.
Not only are the fibers incredibly strong, but they are incredibly resistant to the action of enzymes called cellulases that can crack the fibers back into their simple-sugar components. The ability to economically and easily break cellulose into sugars is desirable because the sugars can be used to create fuel alternatives. However, due to the tenacity of cellulose fibers, the United States currently lacks an energy-efficient and cost-effective method for turning inedible biomass such as switch grass or corn husks into a sweet source of biofuels.
Working with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolécules Végétales in France, Los Alamos researcher Paul Langan used neutrons to probe the crystalline structure of highly crystalline cellulose, much like an x-ray is used to probe the hidden structures of the body. Langan and his colleagues found that although cellulose generally has a well-ordered network of hydrogen bonds holding it together, the material also displays significant amounts of disorder, creating a different type of hydrogen bond network at certain surfaces. These differences make the molecule potentially vulnerable to an attack by cellulase enzymes.
Moreover, in this month’s Biophysical Journal, Los Alamos researchers Tongye Shen and Gnana Gnanakaran describe a new lattice-based model of crystalline cellulose. The model predicts how hydrogen bonds in cellulose can shift to remain stable under a wide range of temperatures. This plasticity allows the material to swap different types of hydrogen bonds but also constrains the molecules so that they must form bonds in the weaker configuration described by Langan and his colleagues. Most important, Shen and Gnanakaran’s model identifies hydrogen bonds that can be manipulated via temperature differences to potentially make the material more susceptible to attack by enzymes that can crack the fibers into sugars for biofuel production.
“We have been able to identify a chink in the armor of a very tough and worthy adversary—the cellulose fiber,” said Gnanakaran, who leads the theoretical portion of a large, multidisciplinary biofuels project at Los Alamos.
“These results are some of the first to come from this team, and eventually could point us toward an economical and viable process for making biofuels from cellulosic biomass,” adds Langan, director of the biofuels project.
Original article
Study abstract for “The Stability of Cellulose: A Statistical Perspective from a Coarse-Grained Model of Hydrogen-Bond Networks”
SOURCE: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Thursday 23 April 2009 - 08:04:10 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Biofuels - Alcohol / Ethanol / Methanol | Comments: 0 |
Thursday 09 April 2009
Hemp could be key to zero-carbon houses
08 April 2009 - University of Bath, UKHemp, a plant from the cannabis family, could be used to build carbon-neutral homes of the future to help combat climate change and boost the rural economy, say researchers at the University of Bath.
A consortium, led by the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials based at the University, has embarked on a unique housing project to develop the use of hemp-lime construction materials in the UK.
Hemp-lime is a lightweight composite building material made of fibres from the fast growing plant, bound together using a lime-based adhesive. The hemp plant stores carbon during its growth and this, combined with the low carbon footprint of lime and its very efficient insulating properties, gives the material a 'better than zero carbon' footprint.
Professor Pete Walker, Director of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, explained: “We will be looking at the feasibility of using hemp-lime in place of traditional materials, so that they can be used widely in the building industry.
"We will be measuring the properties of lime-hemp materials, such as their strength and durability, as well as the energy efficiency of buildings made of these materials.
"Using renewable crops to make building materials makes real sense - it only takes an area the size of a rugby pitch four months to grow enough hemp to build a typical three bedroom house.
"Growing crops such as hemp can also provide economic and social benefits to rural economies through new agricultural markets for farmers and associated industries."
The three year project, worth almost £750,000, will collect vital scientific and engineering data about this new material so that it can be more widely used in the UK for building homes.
The project brings together a team of nine partners, comprising BRE Ltd, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio architects, Hanson Cement, Hemcore, Lhoist UK, Lime Technology, National Non-Food Crops Centre, University of Bath and Wates Living Space. As part of the project the University of Bath received a research grant of £391,000 from the Renewable Materials LINK programme run by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2009/04/08/hemp-houses/
[Submitted by dlenef]
Thursday 09 April 2009 - 12:57:10 by Hemp4Fuel
Posted in Misc | Comments: 0 |
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