Olmix, a French company that specializes in what they call "green chemistry," has announced a prototype vehicle powered with a new type of biofuel. This fuel is a type of biogas obtained from green algae plus a mix of animal and vegetable waste. Animal waste contains a lot of highly pollutant nitrates and green algae proliferation and is actually a problem at the region's beaches.

In order to produce this fuel, Olmix had to develop a new type of "green refinery," which will be installed in the town of Ploërmel, French Bretagne, and will be completed by the end of this year. As a bonus, the new fuel, which uses no heavy chemicals for its production, creates fertilizer as a byproduct.

[Source: Olmix via Agroinformacion]

The city of Monterrey, Mexico, will have its subway system, called Metrorrey, propelled with electricity obtained from biogas. Simeprode, the company that manages the city waste system, is finishing a 5.3 MW power plant that will produce electricity for the two subway lines. This plant will allow Monterrey not only to run its mass transit system with bioenergy but also to expand the subway networks in the near future. The remaining power will be used for public lightning. The technology was imported from Germany, and the total cost of the project was about $6.5 million.

[Source: El Porvenir via Energias Renovables]

While waste products can be used to obtain biogas or ethanol, the Japanese have found some other use for them. The city of Kyoto has announced a research project that uses hydrogen produced from biomass such as food waste and used cooking oil. The plans are far from modest, with a working prototype expected in 2010 and a fuel cell system to generate electricity from hydrogen produced at the biogas plant by 2013.

The source for hydrogen, biogas, will be obtained through fermentation of waste, as most processes, but the project also aims to use glycerin, one of the byproducts of producing biodiesel from used oil. Kyoto has been running garbage collection trucks and city buses on biodiesel since April 2000. The city also burns food waste to obtain electricity, something that produces a lot of polluting byproducts which they expect to cut with the new biogas-to-hydrogen project.

[Source: Japan for Sustainability]

Creating methane gas from waste products in anything but a new concept, with the gas being pumped and burned off from landfills the world over. What is a newer idea, though, is taking care of the problem right from the point of its creation... your own toilet or garbage pile. In emerging countries like India, and even in rural areas in the U.S., there are many households which are not directly connected to a sewage system, and there is no big garbage truck on its way to pick up your trash. Sintex Industries thinks that they can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, with their digester, a tool that is capable of generating methane gas using bacteria to break down human waste, cow manure and other forms of trash. In India, a family-sized unit costs about $425 and can provide all of the gas needed for cooking. Larger units can be installed for use in places like neighborhoods, schools or hospitals. Methane gas could also be used for transportation needs, either by electrical generation or in mass-transit.

[Source: CNN via Engadget]

Stockholm is making a clear step towards the widespread use of CNG (compressed natural gas) in vehicles. The City Councillor for the Environment, Ulla Hamilton, is promoting a policy that will increase the use of CNG vehicles, with biomethane as a primary source for that gas. Gas obtained from fossil sources will only be used in case demand surpasses supply.

Local gas supplier, AGA, is setting up new gas storage facilities and a distribution network because Sweden does not have an existing grid, a move that will eliminate the need for delivery trucks. The grid will be operational by the end of 2009, which will allow houses to have home refueling station and gas(oline) stations to have CNG "pumps" as well.

To support these and other intiatives (local fleets running on CNG, for instance), the city will build a biogas production facility in Käppalaverket (a nearby town). The gas will be obtained from sewage sludge to which the city is going to add restaurant and large kitchens' waste to increase production.

Related:

• Mercedes launches B class running on CNG
• Sixt now rents natural gas powered cars in Germany
• Edmunds Inside Line has a Civic GX in their long-term fleet

[Source: NGV]

Mercedes will soon start selling its B class B 170 NGT, their first compact to run on Natural Gas (the other model being an E 200). The vehicle, which will go on sale in June 2008, has a 112 HP engine that uses 4.9 kg of natural gas to run 100 km, which is equivalent to 7.4 liters of gasoline (about 32 mpg). On that trip, it'll produce CO2 emissions of just 135 grams per kilometer. The B 170 NGT can be equipped with any trim level except Sport.
Erdgas, the largest gas company in Germany, is pushing CNG vehicles by building fuelling stations throughout the country. Another interesting initiative is one that will see CNG have a 10 percent biogas blend, made from landfills and/or manure, in the near future.

Related:

• Ford announces improved range for CNG C-Max
• Driving around Europe with Natural Gas: VW Touran, Fiat Panda and more
• Making a rather clean fuel even cleaner: Natural gas + Biogas

[Source: NGV Global]

At AutoblogGreen we have discussed many times the potential of biogas (usually biomethane) for different industries. The fact is that it's a flammable gas that is produced by the natural fermentation of waste and/or trash. In most of our landfills, this gas is just expelled to the atmosphere. Methane is claimed to be one of the gases that cause the greenhouse effect.

The use of methane in cars is somewhat limited (although it can potentially be mixed with CNG), many are very interested in using it to generate electricity. In 2006, the EU produced 5.3 oil-equivalent tons of this gas, which is 13.6 percent more than in 2005.

The latest efforts, however, seem to prefer extracting biomethane from agricultural waste instead of landfills, because if obtained from a coherent source, the purity of the gas can be better assured. This guarantees it can satisfy the standards that make it usable as a fuel.

According to a recent article in The Lancet, farming is responsible of 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. 30.5 percent of this is gas which is produced by manure (and off the record, 25 percent is direct consequence of the animals' digestion process). There's great interest in capturing that 30.5 percent of currently unused energy.

ProBiogás, a comprehensive R+D European plan that unites 12 research centers and 14 companies, has announced that 2007 is marked as "Biogas year". We'll keep our eyes open.

Related:

• Making a rather clean fuel even cleaner: Natural gas + Biogas
• Biomethane mixed with natural gas or diesel to make heavy vehicles greener
• I don't care what its made of, as long as it works

[Source: Energías Renovables (link is in Spanish)]

The more that you read our site, the more interesting things you'll find that are being used to make biofuels around the world. It's time to add to the list, this time with government seized alcohol. In what sounds like a huge waste of good booze, the confiscated alcohol used to be pored out down the drain. Now, it is being mixed with water and trucked to Swedish Biogas in Linköping, where it is mixed with animal remains from slaughterhouses and human waste. Yummy! The waste "is heated and put into anaerobic digesters. The organic materials are broken down, producing the biogas." Also produced are environmentally-friendly fertilizers for farming. The biogas is used like natural gas, and there is even a train which runs on the fuel. Unfortunately, because Sweden does not have much existing infrastructure for natural gas distribution, additional cost is racked up by transportation costs. Still, it is good that Sweden, which has some of the highest alcohol prices in Europe, has come up with a way to use their confiscated alcohol instead of letting it go to waste.

[Source: National Geographic]

Some cities are powering public transport with Natural Gas. Despite the just slightly lower CO2 emissions than other fuels, natural gas is a very clean energy because no other side pollutants are present - and it avoids the problems of particullates that cause smog and respiratory problems. There's a company that goes a step further and is speaking not only about gas obtained from drilling the earth but biomethane. What's this gas? Well, the gas that is generated at waste landfills by the simple anaerobic bacterial reactions. It's also found in manure (and some farms already use it to produce electricity) and human waste.

The British company Clean Air Power offers a technology which can mix biomethane with commercial natural gas or diesel which is is claimed to reduce by 26 percent CO2 emissions for heavy duty vehicles. As a side effect, this means less cost in fuel, about 17,000 GBP per year (numbers provided by Clean Air Power). They have already installed this system, called Dual-Fuel (TM) in about 1600 vehicles around the world, claiming to have reduced CO2 emissions in 50,000 tons.

This company also affirms that biomethane is fairly more productive than liquid biofuels, yielding more energy per hectare of land. Usually, this gas is just released to the atmosphere as a result of waste fermentation. There's even a Swiss company, called Active Compost, that affirms that the most effective way of generating biogas is with Anaerobic Digestion (read: bacteria) - and besides gas you obtain fertiliser. It seems a win-win idea, don't you think?

Related:

• University of Georgia and Mexico to partner on biofuels from dung
• Driving around Europe with Natural Gas: VW Touran, Fiat Panda and more
• Natural gas vehicles gaining in popularity in Germany

[Source: Clean Air Power]

A professor at Polytechnic University, Dr. Richard Gross, has developed a fuel-latent bioplastic, that is, a plastic made from vegetable oils where the fuel capability remains "hidden" until the plastic is converted into biodiesel. His prize: a $2.34 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Gross is director of Polytechnic University's National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing of Macromolecules (CBBM). The next step, unsurprisingly, is to find a way to make the process cheaper.

Working with DNA 2.0, a biotechnology company specializing in gene synthesis, Dr. Gross helped develop the enzymes that both synthesize and break down the biolastic into biodiesel. Dr. Gross says his bioplastic is "tougher and more durable than typical polyethylenes," and that, "the bioplastic can be placed in a simple container where it is safely broken down to liquid fuel."

Why does the U.S. military care? It's not like they're the armed wing of the EPA or anything. Instead, having a biodiesel source from trash would be a huge benefit while engaged in combat. As Khine Latt, program manager for DARPA's Mobile Integrated Sustainable Energy Recovery program, says in the press release, "Military units generate substantial quantities of packaging waste when engaging in stationary field operations. If we can turn this waste into fuel, we will see a double benefit - we will reduce the amount of waste that we have to remove, and we will reduce the amount of new fuel that we must deliver to the units."

Man, if this works as advertised, we'll be one step closer to a Mr. Fusion-type biodiesel maker. And that's cool any time.

Related:

• Another team set to use Passat TDi for DARPA Urban Challenge
• A short history of the Army's Shadow RST-V
• Big dollars for renewable military jet fuel research

[Source: Polytechnic University]

The University of California - Davis has started up a new renewable energy demonstration facility. They will be trying to capture the energy that diners leave behind on their plates when they eat out at restaurants in the Bay area. The new Biogas Energy Project is the first large scale demonstration of an anaerobic phased solids digester. This concept was developed at UC-Davis by professor Ruihong Zhang specifically to process a wide range of waste products.

Food scraps will be collected from some of the finest restaurants in the area and processed at the new facility. Initially they will digest about eight tons of food a week eventually ramping up to eight tons a day. Leftovers like melon rinds, broccoli spears and fish bones will be turned into both hydrogen and methane, both of which can be used as energy sources. Most other types of digesters can only produce methane. All kinds of organic materials can be processed by this process which has been demonstrated on a small scale in the lab. If this larger demonstration works out, each ton of processed waste could generate enough energy to power ten homes for a day. The biogas could be used directly as a vehicle's power source or in stationary power generator to charge electric vehicles.

Onsite Power Systems is working with the researchers on scaling up this process. If it works out they are planning on developing and selling power production systems to waste-producers such as food processors, farms and dairies, and municipal green-waste collection programs. Click Read to see the full story from UC-Davis.

[Source: University of California - Davis]

Monsters and Critics is reporting that in Stockholm on Wednesday, Volvo announced that it would discontinue its development of biogas and natural gas-fueled vehicles. According to the online version of Goteborgs-Posten, a major daily newspaper in Sweden, Volvo spokesman Christer Gustafsson said that, instead, they would focus on hybrid and ethanol solutions as E85 is more readily available than natural gas at filling stations.

The article isn't clear as to whether this includes both passenger cars as well Volvo's trucks and buses. The V40/50 Bi-Fuel, S60/80 Bi-Fuel and V70 Bi-Fuel are some models that at one point or another were available in natural gas form. Hopefully, we'll see additional reports soon to clarify some of the gaps. I wasn't able to find the Goteborgs-Posten article, though, I did try running this page through an online translator, but it was still illegible so I'm not sure if it's the actual source report. A few searches on my usual news feeds found no one else reporting on the matter. This page on Volvo's website shows that the S60 and V70 are still available in Bi-Fuel versions in Europe.

Monsters and Critics also points out that since 1995 the Swedish car manufacturer has only sold about 10,000 natural gas and biogas vehicles.

[Source: Monsters and Critics]