The U.S. Department of Defense has selected two companies, Diversified Energy and Velocys, to design a mobile biofuel manufacturing plant that would process organic waste from military installations. The plans are to use pyrolysis to create syngas to be used as biofuel for military vehicles and planes. The specifications also require these mobile plants to be able to produce the equivalent of 500 oil barrels per day.

The press release mentions that the Dept. of Defense is the U.S. largest fuel consumer in the country, with a $9 billion budget for fuel per year. Shaving off as much money (and the burden of transportation) from such a huge amount of fuel seems a good idea. Just think of the weight from armor, ammunition and the guns a regular vehicle has to carry and multiply by ... a lot.

The project is in a design phase, which would lead to a prototype in a not too distant future.

Related:

• Altair Nanotechnologies nets $7 million in Defense Appropriations Bill
• Just how much of a difference could efficiency gains make on oil imports? A lot
• Polaris MV800 ATV with Patriot engine uses multiple fuels

[Source: Velocys via Econoticias]

Quick! Get that child away from this ticking-time-bomb of a coal gas-powered bus! Seriously, this particular bus was modified with a huge balloon on the roof to hold a manufactured fuel from coal gasification. Thar she blows! Not only is the gaseous fuel stored on top of the car, it's stored in fabric. Does the word Hindenburg mean anything to you? Really, we wonder why this technology never took off.

[Source: Modern Mechanix blog via Treehugger]

GreatPoint, a company made by three enterpreneurs from Boston (Andrew Perlman, Avi Goldberg and Aaron Mandell) has announced that they have created a cheap method to obtain natural gas from coal. Obtaining gas from coal (called syngas) is not the latest technology around: At the end of the 19th century, many cities had gas lights and Germany had syngas-powered vehicles from the '20s until the end of WWII. During the Oil crisis in the '70s, the US Government funded research, until syngas became non-competitive against oil prices.

Nevertheless, syngas is not the cleanest fuel you can burn and it's not very efficient to obtain. GreatPoint claims that their method goes even further and can transform syngas into natural gas by using catalysts (possibly potassium) which also allow to use lower temperatures for the process. Natural gas is much cleaner and it's a proven and reliable source of energy, and a lot of automakers have at least some vehicles that can burn CNG.

GreatPoint is also looking for other raw materials to obtain gas for, such as petroleum coke (a refining byproduct) and other plants, in order to gather data and test the catalyst.

For those of you who recognize the name Vinod Khosla as the Daddy Big-bucks of the ethanol scene, take note about his reasons for investing in GreatPoint: "I'm a pragmentalist, not an environmentalist. I'd love to get rid of coal, but politically it won't happen."

[Source: Forbes (sub's req'd)]

Sometimes, people just need to make the best with what they have got to work with. This is what paper mills are trying to do by burning the "black liquor" waste which is a leftover remnant of chemicals and the lignin. As part of the Kraft process (.pdf link), the leftovers are burned to create steam which turns large generators, which in turn provide electricity for the plant. In fact, enough electricity is generated that they can feed some back into the grid. This Kraft process is used for about 80% of all paper made. But what if there was a better way to generate power than by burning the black liquor for steam generators?

According to Andre Boehman, professor of fuel science at Penn State, "Black liquor is routinely burned in a recovery boiler, but it has more energy value as a synthesis gas which is then used to create other fuels." The researchers are suggesting that the black liquor instead be turned into a syngas and then into DME or dimethyl ether.

Diesel engines can be configured to run on DME, and Penn State actually has a staff shuttle which runs on the fuel. The researchers found that by adding a coal slurry to the black liquor and processing it into the DME, as opposed to using the Fischer Tropsch method, is the right way to use the waste. The researchers further say that DME is close to gasoline in efficiency, but not quite there. But, the black liquor/coal slurry process that they are suggesting would reduce greenhouse gas emissions much more than if only coal were used to make DME. Since the U.S. has so much coal available, until the country is truly weaned off our current power sources, we should clean them up as much as possible. As much as we would all love to see that coal stay in the ground, realistically we know how unlikely that is to happen. For now, let's use it as cleanly as possible.

[Source: Penn State]

The headlines for this story indicate that a team from LSU, Oak Ridge National Lab, Clemson, Conoco-Phillips and the Department of Energy are trying to make ethanol a more efficient fuel. I don't know that this is the case, as it seems that what they are trying to do is manufacture ethanol from the U.S. supplies of coal. They appear to be doing this by generating syngas from the coal and then converting the gas to ethanol. The same syngas could potentially be a source for hydrogen as well, but as the story points out, liquid fuels are easier to transport and can fuel vehicles that are already on the roads.

There are many different processes being studied to turn coal into syngas and then into some sort of fuel. This one has plenty of funding, so perhaps people in the know see potential in it. The idea of using the huge amounts of coal here in the U.S. in a way which is cleaner than what we are doing now (and what isn't) has plenty of merit. Using it to move our current fleet of E85 capable vehicles is not a bad start, but hopefully researchers find a good way to use it to generate electricity for our electric cars too.

[Source: LSU]

Researchers at the University of Minnesota are working on a new method to create syngas from biomass which can then be burned directly to make electricity or converted to many different liquid fuels that we use today. There are already processes being used to create syngas, but this particular one might be the quickest and most efficient. Using "a 700 to 800 degree Celsius porous surface" along with the (very expensive) precious metal rhodium, their process breaks down the biomass in 70 milliseconds. This quick process can either be used to create more fuels or to downsize the reactors, which could reduce or eliminate the cost of the transportation of the biomass.

This process is competing with other new methods of creating syngas, oftentimes which use bacteria to break down the biomass. We'll be keeping an eye on these technologies and our hopes up that new inexpensive and large-scale methods bring biofuels to the masses.

[Source: Technology Review]

As recently as January we reported on plasma vaporisation technology capable of turning organic waste material into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, a mixture called synthesis gas, or syn-gas, that can be used as a fuel or as a valuable feedstock in further chemical processes. The company in question then was U.S. based Integrated Environmental Technologies.

Well, it looks like they've got some competition across the pond. U.K. based Advanced Plasma Power bills their Gasplasma Process as being able to "convert a pre-treated waste feedstock into two recyclable products: a hydrogen rich synthetic or syn-gas and a vitrified material suitable for use as a replacement aggregate or building material."

The ideal situation for technology like this is to replace existing land fill sites or garbage incinerators, (used extensively in the U.K.), which are both polluting. The Gasplasma Process plants can themselves be run on syn-gas by using it in a gas engine or turbine to generate electricity, over half of which can be exported out of the plant and onto the grid. The result is a truly environmentally friendly alternative to landfill or incinerators. Advanced Plasma Power have an informative walkthrough video on their website which explains the whole process.

Analysis: These days, wherever organic material is being produced there is someone looking into how to take advantage of it. If we could be turning our garbage into energy instead of landfill though, I'm glad all that organic material is getting so much attention.

Related:

• How would you like to turn your trash into gas?
• Robert Kennedy Jr. promotes cellulosic ethanol instead of corn ethanol
• Startech's plasma conversion facility can turn garbage into hydrogen

[Source: EcoFriend]