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Waste to Biofuel and Chemicals Project Funded in Hawaii

http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/2013/04/waste-to-biofuel-and-chemicals-project-funded-in-hawaii.html

8 April 2013

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Waste to Biofuel and Chemicals Project Funded in HawaiiA zero waste biofuel and high protein feed program in Hilo, Hawaii has been awarded $200,000 by the state Department of Agriculture at a special open house event at the USDA Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center (PBARC).

According to the state the PBARC, together with BioTork Hawaii have invested over $1 million developing an economically sustainable zero waste conversion project, which produces biofuel and high protein animal feed from unmarketable papaya.

BioTork is a Florida based company focused on the development of microbial strains capable of producing bio-based chemical commodities such as lipids, alcohol fuels, enzymes, polymers and other valuable compounds from affordable and renewable organic feedstock.

The conversion process is claimed to take 14 days to cycle in a heterotrophic environment, meaning no sunlight is needed using organically optimised algae/fungi developed and patented by BioTork.

According to Governor Neil Abercrombie the state’s $200,000 investment will assist PBARC in moving the project to pilot scale as a prelude to commercial production.

The State of Hawaii’s Agribusiness Development Corporation (ADC) will become a venture partner to globally export the rapid conversion technology in association with PBARC and BioTork Hawaii.

“With this technology, farmers can turn agricultural waste into an additional revenue stream, and local production of biofuel can lower dependence on Hawaii’s import of fossil fuels,” commented Abercrombie.

“Aside from the benefit of producing biofuel, this technology has the ability to create another revenue stream for papaya and other tropical agriculture farmers. Local high protein feed production – another by-product of this process – can greatly benefit cattle, hog, chicken and aquaculture farms through competitive market pricing,” continued the Governor.

The state said that it also hopes to develop a long-term revenue generator as a partner exporting this technology and projected that it could create more than 1000 jobs at full scale.

Feedstocks

While papaya was chosen as the initial feedstock, it was claimed that the technology can be applied to any plant material as a carbon source. In Hawaii, other identifiable feedstocks are unmarketable sweet potato, sugar cane, mango, albizia and glycerol.

According to James Nakatani, executive director of the ADC, the development is a major breakthrough that focuses on key components hampering the sustainability efforts of other microorganism based biofuel projects.

“These obstacles include the high cost of feedstock. Approximately 70% of the cost for production is consumed in this area. Using unmarketable plant and other waste materials drastically reduces this cost driver,” he explained.

“While past lab projects have not translated into robust performances when scaled-up, BioTork’s solution promotes rapid and dynamic evolution of microorganisms that are robust even in ‘suboptimal’ conditions,” continued the executive director.

The project will use the research and development funds will be used for customising feedstock formulations to create a zero waste conversion technological library for Hawaii which it can export and sell to other states and countries.

Read More

Bacteria that Turn Waste to Energy in Microbial Fuel Cells Studied
Microorganisms which consume waste while generating electricity in a microbial fuel cell are being studied by researchers at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute.

First Waste to Biofuel Demonstration Plant for Abengoa
Abengoa has opened a demonstration facility which will process 25,000 tonnes per year of waste into 1.5 million litres of bioethanol in Salamanca, Spain.

New microbe makes fuel from CO2 in the air | MNN – Mother Nature Network

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/blogs/new-microbe-makes-fuel-from-co2-in-the-air

New microbe makes fuel from CO2 in the air

Scientists at the University of Georgia have created a microbe that converts carbon dioxide into biofuel, a discovery that might boost the battle against climate change.

Wed, Mar 27 2013 at 1:36 PM

Related Topics:

Biofuels, CO2, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Science

http://images.mnn.com/sites/default/files/coal_smokestack_3.jpg

CO2 emissions billow up from a smokestack. (Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

Carbon dioxide is a major cause of global warming, but it’s also fundamental to life on Earth. As any good toxicologist knows, “the dose makes the poison.”

And thanks to new research at the University of Georgia, we might soon have an antidote for too much CO2: a manmade version of the microbe Pyrococcus furiosus, or “rushing fireball,” that absorbs CO2 and converts it into fuel. If P. furiosus can work on a large enough scale, it might even help displace carbon-positive fossil fuels like coal and oil.

“Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do — absorb it and generate something useful,” says Michael Adams, a member of UGA’s Bioenergy Systems Research Institute and co-author of a new study detailing the magic of P. furiosus. “What this discovery means is that we can remove plants as the middleman. We can take carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and turn it into useful products like fuels and chemicals without having to go through the inefficient process of growing plants and extracting sugars from biomass.”

In photosynthesis, plants use sunlight to turn water and CO2 into energy-packed sugars, forming the base of Earth’s food web. These sugars can also be fermented into biofuels like ethanol, but as Adams points out, removing them from a plant’s cells is relatively inefficient due to the energy input required. P. furiosus, however, may offer a shortcut.

The microbe is a deep-sea “extremophile,” thriving in violent conditions that would obliterate most organisms. It feeds on carbohydrates in super-heated seawater around hydrothermal vents, but by tweaking its genetic material, Adams and his colleagues created a new kind of P. furiosus that likes cooler temperatures and eats CO2.

The researchers then used hydrogen gas to spark a chemical reaction inside the microbe, prompting it to incorporate CO2 into 3-hydroxypropionic acid, a common industrial acid that’s used to make acrylics. With further genetic manipulations, they can also create a P. furiosus variant that produces an array of other useful chemicals, including fuel. And when that biofuel is burned, the researchers note, it releases the same amount of CO2 that was used to create it. That means it’s essentially carbon-neutral, making it a cleaner alternative to fossil-based fuels like coal, crude oil and gasoline.

“This is an important first step that has great promise as an efficient and cost-effective method of producing fuels,” Adams says. “In the future we will refine the process and begin testing it on larger scales.”

Web Broadcast – 45746

http://video.webcasts.com/events/pmny001/viewer/index.jsp?eventid=45746&adid=enl

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Accelerating Biofuels: Waste Gasification to Aviation and Transport Fuels in the UK and US/Canada

May 7, 2013

10 AM EDT, 9 AM CDT, 7 AM PDT, 3 PM BST, 2 PM GMT
Numerous trial projects have been successful in converting municipal solid waste into a useable, second generation biofuel. Commercialization is now in full swing with the UK, US and Canada leading the way in these projects.

British Airways has partnered with Solena Fuels to convert 500,000 tonnes of waste into 50,000 tonnes of aviation fuel per year in the UK. Across the Atlantic, Enerkem has three commercial scale waste to fuel plants in development in the US/Canada. The company’s Quebec demonstration plant has been producing cellulosic ethanol since Spring 2012.

This webcast aims to address the regulatory drivers of waste to fuels and address the practical and technical challenges of the process, as well as provide an update to projects in the US/Canada and Europe.

The Billion-Dollar Bet On Jet Tech That’s Making Flying More Efficient

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/01/23/the-billion-dollar-bet-on-jet-tech-thats-making-flying-more-efficient/

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The Billion-Dollar Bet On Jet Tech That’s Making Flying More Efficient

This story appears in the February 11, 2013 issue of Forbes.

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UTC Chairman Louis Chênevert (Photo by: David Yellen)

United Technologies CEO Louis Chênevert took the biggest gamble of his career on something called a geared turbofan. In a modern jet airliner there are really just two ways to increase fuel economy, the most critical selling point in an era of tiny margins and volatile costs for carriers. One way is to increase combustion temperatures so fuel is burned more efficiently. But engines are already operating at levels above 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the melting point of the turbine blades that propel the plane, forcing engineers to dream up exotic cooling systems and turn to special coatings and unwieldy materials like ceramics.

The other possibility is to increase bypass, or the amount of air the fan on the front blows past the engine. The problem: Bypass fans operate most efficiently at slow speeds, while turbines like to spin fast. Reconciling the two is no easy feat.

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Dreamliner Grounding Isn’t Just Bad For Boeing David M. EwaltForbes Staff

UPS And United Technologies Bright Spots Amid Slowing Organic Growth Wallace ForbesForbes Staff

But engineers at Pratt & Whitney, UTC’s storied aeronautical division, had an idea. While UTC’s Connecticut archrival, General Electric, went with higher combustion temperatures, Chênevert, at Pratt at the time, backed a seemingly riskier solution of putting a gearbox on the front of the engine to slow down the turbine shaft and drive the fan. If it worked the new engines would cut fuel burn by more than 15% compared with competing turbojets and produce half the noise, allowing airlines to push more flights through urban airports. “Anything that’s going to burn 15% less fuel is like Christmas to the airlines,” says Philip Abbott, British publisher of Aircraft Engines . “Once this sort of thing catches on, especially in this business, it tends to boom.”

Skeptics questioned whether a gearbox was an unnecessary complication for a jet engine. The addition of the Fan Drive Gear System added only seven moving parts, but the 18-inch-diameter gearbox had to be engineered to withstand thousands of high-stress takeoffs and landings without maintenance. If it failed it would likely mean the end of the commercial jet business for Pratt & Whitney, which grew famous for the Wasp engines used in thousands of B-24 bombers during World War II and the ubiquitous JT8D jet that powered Boeing 727s and DC-9 jetliners but lately had been in decline.

Chênevert never worried. Recruited to the small-aircraft engine unit of Pratt & Whitney in 1993 before taking over the whole division in 1999, he spent several years overseeing the production of small jet turbines with gearboxes to drive helicopter blades and turboprop propellers. “I’d manufactured more gearboxes probably in the aviation industry than anybody else,” he says. He convinced then CEO George David to sign off on development costs of more than $100 million a year, small relative to UTC’s $4-billion-a-year R&D budget but hardly insignificant (upwards of $1 billion) over time.

Turns out he was right. And now his very big bet is paying off in a very big way. With 3,000 orders in the 24 months since the PurePower Geared Turbofan engine was unveiled, it is proving to be one of the most successful launches in the history of the aircraft business, expected to double Pratt’s jet engine revenues–about $12.2 billion in 2010–by 2020.

The sweetest moment came in January 2013 when Brazilian manufacturer Embraer announced it had selected the UTC engine for its next line of large regional jets, displacing incumbent General Electric’s. The geared turbofan has put Pratt in the enviable position of supplying the most power plants for the most popular airliners for the next couple of decades: single-aisle jets that will absorb much of the travel boom in emerging markets. By the end of this decade “we’re going to see volume at Pratt that we haven’t seen in 25 to 30 years,” says Chênevert, a 6-foot-6 Quebec native whose speech bears strong hints of his French-speaking upbringing.

It’s the tastiest win since Chênevert took over Hartford-based UTC when David retired in 2008. David was a tough act to follow: A Harvard grad and international yachtsman, David has captivated the press with his marital and maritime adventures (including an ugly divorce from a Swedish countess in 2009 and a near-death experience in the 2011 Fastnet regatta, when his 100-foot racing boat capsized).

Chênevert is not nearly as glamorous. He earned a degree in production management from the Université de Montréal and spent his early career overseeing assembly workers at a General Motors factory in Canada. The most exciting entry on his social calendar lately is the upcoming birth of his third grandchild.

But Chênevert has maintained David’s rigorous focus on high free-cash flow and conservative accounting. The company generated about $5.5 billion in cash (earnings before depreciation and taxes but after necessary capital expenditures) on sales of $55.8 billion in 2011 from operations, including Pratt aircraft engines and Hamilton Sundstrand controls, Otis elevators and Carrier heating and air-conditioning equipment.

He deftly sidestepped the financial crisis that nearly drove GE into insolvency, because UTC never built up a finance arm dependent upon commercial paper markets for funding. “Post ’08, the one thing people have learned is having access to commercial paper is critical when it’s choppy out there,” he says, in a subtle dig at GE Chief Jeffrey Immelt.

“He’s a very effective operating executive,” David says of his successor. “He knows how to get projects conceived, scheduled, funded and completed.”

He also maintained David’s practice of expensing the costs of developing new products against current earnings, instead of capitalizing them. That means shareholders have already absorbed the entire expense of developing the geared turbofan and can immediately begin enjoying the dividends.

The geared turbofan wasn’t Chênevert’s only challenge. While UTC has performed well in recent years–a better than 1,000% return under David from 1994 to 2008 and another 35% return under Chênevert–the company needed to diversify away from the volatile defense business and increase its international presence.

Chênevert took a big step toward that goal last year when he completed the $18.4 billion acquisition of Goodrich, the largest takeover in aerospace history. Chênevert initiated the talks with Goodrich’s then chairman Marshall Larsen and pushed the deal through, hungry for Goodrich’s jet-engine nacelles, landing gear and thrust reversers to complement aircraft engines. “A company like Goodrich only comes around once in a lifetime,” he says.

Now UTC gets less than a fifth of its revenue from military aviation, including Sikorsky helicopters and engines for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Half comes from a diversified collection of nonaviation businesses with heavy exposure to China and other growing emerging markets. (Otis recently moved its business development office from Connecticut to China, because elevator sales there dwarf the entire North American market.) And aviation is now skewed toward the commercial business, which is poised to double (measured in revenue passenger miles) over the next ten years as millions of emerging market consumers grow affluent enough to fly.

Chênevert’s next goal: extract more savings from UTC’s labor-intensive manufacturing operations. He’s already cut 25,000 jobs and taken $2 billion in charges. Operating margins, a key measure of efficiency, rose from 13.5% to 15.1% since he took over. Now he’s promising $400 million in similar “synergies” from the Goodrich acquisition. “There’s a lot to be gotten,” he says. “There’s another decade ahead.”

BA and Solena to produce sustainable jet fuel

http://www.resource.uk.com/article/UK/BA_and_Solena_produce_sustainable_
jet_fuel-2530

BA

Airline British Airways (BA) and zero-emission bioenergy company, Solena, have progressed in their goal to produce sustainable jet fuel as part of their GreenSky London partnership, with BA reportedly making the ‘largest advanced biofuel commitment ever made by an airline’.

The British airline yesterday (6 December), announced that it has invested $500 million (£311m) in the partnership’s low-carbon jet fuel production facility and will purchase jet fuel produced by the GreenSky plant over the next 10 years. The fuel will be used in all BA flights operating out of London City Airport.

President and CEO of Solena, Robert Do, said: “Our GreenSky London project will provide clean, sustainable fuels at market competitive prices that will help address British Airways’ sustainability goals.

“The British Airways off-take agreement represents the largest advanced biofuel commitment ever made by an airline and clearly demonstrates the airline’s leadership and vision in achieving its carbon emission reduction targets.”

Though construction on the GreenSky plant has not yet begun, BA has confirmed that GreenSky London has signed an exclusive option on a site for the facility and consent work for the site has begun.

Once built, the facility is expected to annually convert approximately 500,000 tonnes of residual waste into 50,000 tonnes of jet fuel, 50,000 tonnes of biodiesel, as well as bionaphtha (a blending component in petrol), and renewable power.

Included at the site will be a biomass power station capable of producing 40 megawatts of electricity per annum. Electricity that isn’t used at the plant will then be fed into the national grid. The facility is hoped to be operational by 2015.

Chief Executive of BA, Keith Williams, said: “We are delighted that the GreenSky London project is getting ever closer to fruition. With world-class technology partners now in place, we are well on our way to making sustainable aviation fuel a reality for British Airways by 2015.”

As a result of this development, 150 permanent jobs are expected to be created, in addition to 1000 construction jobs.

The production of the sustainable jet fuel will fall to Solena Fuels Corporation, which will be responsible for converting waste matter into synthesis gas through a process of high temperature gasification and Oxford Catalyst Groups/Velocys, which will then convert the cleaned gas into liquid hydrocarbons.

According to Solena, the biofuels produced by this process are expected to reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent over regular Jet A-1 fuel. Research conducted by Resource last year, however, indicated environmental groups were loath to praise the plans because of uncertainty over the provenance of the waste. Friends of the Earth campaigner Becky Slater said: “British Airways’ plans to produce aviation jet fuel from waste won’t necessarily be good for the environment, [but has] the potential to offer options for dealing with waste that cannot be avoided or recycled.”

BA’s London biofuel plant cleared for take-off

http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2229357/bas-london-biofuel-plant-cleared-for-takeoff

BusinessGreen: Sustainable Thinking

BA’s London biofuel plant cleared for take-off

Airline has secured an exclusive option on an unnamed site and started consent work

By Will Nichols

05 Dec 2012

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British Airways has secured a site for a state-of-the-art sustainable jet fuel facility in London, providing a key building block for the airline’s efforts to secure “carbon neutral growth” from 2020.

BusinessGreen revealed in September that work would begin on the company’s joint venture biofuel with Solena before the end of the year and accordingly BA announced late last week the GreenSky London initiative has signed an exclusive option on an as yet unnamed site for the facility and begun consent work.

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When complete the site should be capable of turning around 500,000 tonnes of waste that would otherwise go to landfill into 50,000 tonnes of sustainable jet fuel each year.

The process uses Solena’s high temperature gasification technology to produce a synthesis gas, which is then cleaned and converted into liquid hydrocarbons using British company Oxford Catalyst’s patented Fischer-Tropsch reactors.

BA has committed $500m to purchasing 10 years’ supply of the fuel and joins Lufthansa, KLM, Virgin and several other large carriers experimenting with alternative fuels as oil prices spike.

Jonathon Counsell, BA’s head of environment, told BusinessGreen earlier in the year that by 2015 the plant could account for two per cent of BA’s fuel and produce the green fuel at a similar price to fossil fuels.

He added that if the plant proves to be successful, the company will look to build several facilities in the UK. Dr Jeremy Tomkinson, chief executive at NNFCC, which has providing technical consultancy on the GreenSky project, said he expected many new plants to be built in the coming years.

“Biofuels are the only low carbon alternative to fossil fuels in the aviation sector and as a result GreenSky London is likely to be the first of many similar projects built in the years to come,” he said. “Every new market needs a pioneer and it is pleasing to see the UK take a leading role in its development.”

Gasification of waste creates bio jet fuel for British Airways and Lufthansa and with Maersk for replacement bunker fuels

British Airways pledges 10-year offtake agreement as GreenSky project with Solena gathers momentum

Fri 30 Nov 2012 – The British Airways and Solena GreenSky London project to build a sustainable jet biofuel facility in East London is gaining momentum, say the two partners. They won’t reveal the location but an exclusive option on a site for the facility and consent work has begun, with the aim of having it operational and in production by 2015. The airline has now confirmed its commitment to purchasing, at “market competitive” prices, the anticipated 50,000 tonnes of jet fuel produced annually by the plant for the next 10 years, which equates to around $500 million at today’s price for conventional jet kerosene. Barclays has been appointed as advisor to explore the optimal funding through export credit agencies and the consortium providing the facility’s key technology functions has also been announced. British Airways expects enough sustainable fuel be produced to power two per cent of its fleet departing from London Airports.

“We are delighted that the GreenSky London project is getting ever closer to fruition,” said Keith Williams, the Chief Executive of British Airways, which is aiming to reduce its net carbon emissions by 50% by 2050. “With world-class technology partners now in place, we are well on our way to making sustainable aviation fuel a reality by 2015.”

Around 500,000 tonnes of municipal waste normally sent to landfills will be converted annually into 50,000 tonnes of biodiesel, bionaphtha and renewable power at the facility as well as the 16 million gallons of jet fuel. Solena Fuels Corporation will provide the proprietary high-temperature gasification process that converts the waste into synthetic gas and the overall Integrated Biomass Gasification to Liquids (IBGTL) solution.

The Fischer-Tropsch reactors and catalyst that will convert the cleaned synthetic gas into liquid hydrocarbons, such as diesel and jet fuel, will be supplied by Oxford Catalysts. Marketed under the brand name Velocys, the company says its systems are significantly smaller than those using conventional technology, enabling modular plants that can be deployed more cost-effectively in remote locations and on smaller scales than is possible with competing systems. Fluor Corporation, which has extensive international experience in project execution and biofuel projects, is providing engineering services to support Solena and has started the pre-front end engineering and design for the project.

On the financing, a Competitive Letter of Interest has been obtained from one of the export credit agencies, including associated term funding. More than 150 jobs are expected to be created to operate the facility, with 1,000 workers involved during the construction.

An independent life-cycle assessment by UK-based North Energy Associates of the Solena jet biofuel showed that greenhouse gas savings exceeded both the 60% requirement of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and the 50% minimum of the methodology established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB).

“Our GreenSky London project will provide clean, sustainable fuels at market competitive prices that will help address British Airways’ sustainability goals,” said Dr Robert Do, CEO of Solena. “The British Airways offtake agreement represents the largest advanced biofuel commitment ever made by an airline and clearly demonstrates the airline’s leadership and vision in achieving its carbon emission reduction targets.”

http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=1627

Solena Fuels News – see links below

November 30, 2012

British Airways pledges 10-year off-take agreement as GreenSky project with Solena gathers momentum

November 30, 2012

British Airways Press Release – GreenSky London

October 23, 2012

Airline Weekly – Waiting for a Breakthrough

September 28, 2012

Lufthansa turns to algae and municipal solid waste in quest for new sources of sustainable jet biofuel

September 18, 2012

Lufthansa and Solena sign biofuels MoU

September 12, 2012

Announcement of Solena Berlin

August 17, 2012

BA High Life – Q&A with British Airways CEO, Keith Williams

August 16, 2012

Dr. Robert Do, President & CEO of Solena Fuels Corporation  appointed CO-Chair of the ACORE Transportation Initiative

Pioneers in the Sustainable Aviation and Marine Fuels Market

Using our proprietary technology, Solena Fuels has developed a synthetic fuels solution and business model that addresses the historical challenges faced by the biofuels market. Solena’s synthetic fuel is a “drop-in” fuel that allows airlines and shipping companies to utilize a sustainable energy source without any changes to their engines or infrastructure. Our proprietary technology allows us to use a wide variety of heterogeneous waste feedstocks that do not compete with crops or use water. We partner with the end users of our fuel to develop a facility that allows them to sustainably operate their business.

The aviation and shipping industries consume large amounts of fuel that has traditionally been refined from fossil-based sources – predominately crude oil. The consumption of these fossil fuels is unsustainable, harms the environment and makes it difficult for airlines and shipping companies to operate their businesses. Various market drivers such as the inclusion of airlines into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (beginning in 2012) and shipping companies incurring sulfur emission restrictions while coming into ports has accelerated the need for our solution. Solena Fuels is committed to helping its partners operate in a sustainable manner by producing a synthetic, drop-in, carbon neutral, low-sulphur fuel from waste biomass.

Additional Information

To contact Solena Fuels with any questions or inquiries, please email our CFO, Brian Miloski, at miloski@solenafuels.com

A world first for bio jet fuel

http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/news/a-world-first-for-bio-jet-fuel-1.1420381

Until now bio-fuel flights have been restricted to a 50-percent blend with petroleum as the technology was largely unproven.

Related Stories

Paris – The world’s first flight powered entirely by bio jet fuel has raised hopes for cleaner air travel and upped the prospects of a boon for farmers whose oilseed crops could supplant kerosene.

A Dassault Falcon 20 twin engine jet took off from the Canadian capital Ottawa last month to test the new jet fuel, made from 100 percent oilseed, for engine performance and emissions, aiming to make sky journeys less polluting.

Several engineers were on board, monitoring the engines’ performance and fuel burn, making a round trip to Montreal and back in 90 minutes.

Two companies – Applied Research Associates and Agrisoma Biosciences – have partnered with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) to develop a “sustainable source of renewable energy” for the commercial airline industry.

A second aircraft, a Canadair CT-133 jet tailed the Falcon’s October 29 flight, collecting emissions data from the lead plane’s engines for analysis.

Until now bio-fuel flights have been restricted to a 50-percent blend with petroleum as the technology was largely unproven.

Several commercial aircraft during the Rio climate summit in June used much-touted bio jet fuels mixed with traditional petroleum jet fuel.

But the October 29 flight was the first time a jet aircraft was powered by 100 percent, un-blended, renewable jet fuel that meets petroleum jet fuel specifications, the NRC said in a statement.

“To date, all powered flight has relied on fossil fuel. This flight changes everything: we have witnessed petroleum free aviation,” said Agrisoma president Steven Fabijanski.

Engine tests at NRC’s Ottawa laboratories prior to last month’s flight proved that regular jet fuel could be swapped with the experimental oilseed variety without modifying an aircraft’s engines or fuel tanks.

And after landing back in Ottawa, Canadian test pilot Paul Kissman told AFP he couldn’t detect any difference in the engine performance using the oilseed fuel compared to petroleum-based jet fuel.

“For us it was the same,” he said, adding that further analysis of the test data would show whether the new bio-fuel had any adverse effects on the engines themselves or whether reduced aviation emissions expectations were met.

The fuel was made from brassica carinata, commonly known as Ethiopian mustard, a crop that is well suited for growing in semi-arid regions.

The Canadian government hopes this initiative will launch a new bio jet fuel industry that becomes a boon to growers.

More than 40 farmers in Canada’s mid-western prairies were contracted to grow over 6,000 acres of the oilseed crop that was turned into bio jet fuel by Agrisoma and Applied Research.

To the untrained eye the transparent liquid bio fuel appears identical to petroleum-based jet fuel.

“It turns into essentially drop-in fuel that looks and acts identical to conventional jet fuel,” explained Fabijanski, adding that increased oilseed production to make the fuel would not adversely impact food farming.

“The farmers that we use to grow this seed are farmers that have land that is not particularly good for food production. By growing this seed you actually enhance or improve the land for eventual food production,” he said.

The cost of production for commercial use has yet to be calculated. But Chuck Red of Applied Research Associates insisted it would be “cost competitive” with petroleum-based fuel, when in full production.

“Through this initiative, we provide a sustainable option for reducing aviation emissions,” he said, adding that the fuel could be commercially available within a few years.

The only question remaining is whether the fuel actually lowers emissions, including those linked to global warming; NRC scientists are now poring over the data and hope to deliver an answer within weeks. – AFP

Natural gas eyed as fuel for trains

6:09 p.m., Sunday, October 14, 2012

Natural gas eyed as fuel for trains

Zain Shauk
Houston Chronicle
The Canadian National Railway is experimenting with natural gas as a train fuel, which involves adding a liquefied natural gas tank behind the locomotive. The switch from diesel could save money.

Houston — On a 300-mile stretch of railroad in the plains of eastern Alberta, a test train chugs across the landscape burning a fuel that once made sense only to environmentalists.

It runs on natural gas. And today, that makes sense to business leaders whose top priority is cutting costs.

Over the past two weeks, train industry executives and others have been talking more about natural gas, as meetings in Houston and the Chicago area highlighted bubbling interest in a fuel that could slash one of railways’ top costs.

Representatives from major railroad companies and related manufacturers met in private at a Houston hotel conference room last month to talk about how to push forward what could be the next great shift in train technology – a cataclysmic transition similar to the move decades ago from coal to diesel power.

Although rail companies have been coy in public about the potential of natural gas for locomotives, citing nascent technology and few real-world examples of gas-powered trains, they are exploring the option aggressively.

“The interest level, as you would assume, is very high,” said Doug Longman, a researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago who was at a recent meeting on the subject and has worked on various diesel engine technology projects over the past 30 years. “The railroads would really like to be able to use natural gas in their locomotives. It’s a cost issue.”

Diesel’s costs

Union Pacific, the nation’s largest publicly traded railroad operator, says diesel pushed its fuel and utilities costs to $3.6 billion last year, accounting for 26 percent of its overall expenses, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In 2001, fuel and utilities costs were 13 percent of the company’s expenses and in 1999, they were 9 percent of all costs, according to SEC filings.

That increase, a result of climbing diesel prices, has led railroads to invest in software and engine upgrades that can shave gallons off of their total fuel usage, said Keith Schoonmaker, an analyst for Morningstar.

“Slight improvements do mean big savings for sure, but I don’t know what kind of cost savings would be available for natural gas,” Schoonmaker said.

Railroad companies seem to believe natural gas prices are going to remain low and stable because of booming production of gas from shale plays, giving it a consistent price edge over diesel – which now sells for $1 to $2 more per gallon than an equivalent amount of natural gas.

With industry leaders Union Pacific and privately held BNSF Railway each consuming around 1 billion gallons of diesel annually, even a difference of a few cents per gallon can mean tens of millions of dollars in savings.

But fuel costs aren’t the only consideration.

To make the switch to natural gas, a railroad would have to modify its diesel-electric locomotives, a process that today costs $600,000 to $1 million, said Normand Pellerin, assistant vice president for environment and sustainability for Canadian National Railways, which is running the test train in Alberta.

The conversion cost is expected to fall with increased application and interest from companies, Pellerin said.

Schoonmaker said a new locomotive costs about $2 million.

Caterpillar and natural gas engine manufacturer Westport have announced plans to develop and sell natural gas-powered engines for locomotives, although they haven’t announced timetables for those products.

“It has to be something that the whole industry is going to be moving on to, but our projection is that, yes, it will be eventually moving on to gas,” Pellerin said. “That’s because we don’t see how diesel prices will come down over the years. It’s all about pricing.”

Logistics

But it also involves the process of actually moving and storing liquefied natural gas so that trains can refuel along the tens of thousands of miles of railroad in the United States.

The idea is to reinvent a relic of a bygone era: Tender cars, once used to carry coal and wood behind steam-powered locomotives, could soon come into production in the form of large tanks for liquefied natural gas.

Gas has intrigued train companies for decades as a possible alternative to diesel, but until recently costs have been too high or too volatile to inspire the kind of groundswell of support and investment needed to push the industry forward.

BNSF tested natural gas as a fuel for locomotives about 20 years ago, in an outdoor experiment at a rail yard. BNSF spokesman Steven Forsberg declined to comment about the test except to say that “the same issues and questions are involved in the current evaluations.”

Other companies were also wary of expressing too much optimism about natural gas.

“While this presents near-term opportunities for the transportation companies, there are significant challenges that need to be addressed before Union Pacific could run trains on natural gas,” said spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza-Williams.

Although natural gas is a fossil fuel that contributes to emissions, many environmentalists have long supported it as a cleaner-burning bridge fuel toward renewable energy sources. Over the past year, however, concerns about methane leaked from production and storage operations have brought opposition to the fuel as a potentially more environmentally damaging than diesel and gasoline. Methane, the dominant component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas.

That makes the benefits of using natural gas in locomotives a little hazier, said Drew Nelson, clean energy project manager for the Environmental Defense Fund.

“From an air quality perspective, the science suggests that natural gas has significant benefits compared with other fossil fuels, but from a climate perspective more research is needed,” he said.

Zain Shauk is a Houston Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: zain.shauk@chron.com

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Hong Kong Announces New Incentive Scheme for OGVs Using Cleaner Fuel

http://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=17312

Published on September 18, 2012 at 6:09 AM

By Gary Thomas

The use of cleaner fuel while berthing in the waters of Hong Kong will make ocean-going vessels (OGVs) entitled to a 50% reduction in port facility and light dues. The initiative focusing on the eligibility of OGVs is effective from September 26, 2012. This is a three-year incentive program.

A one-off registration of vessels with the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) is mandatory for every proprietor, operator or his agent of OGVs who wish to participate in the program. Registration has started on September 17, following which eligible OGVs are entitled to apply for a reduction in port facility and light dues, under the scheme with the Marine Department (MD) from September 26, for each port call to Hong Kong.

According to Hong Kong Secretary for the Environment, Wong Kam-sing, for better air quality, the government in Hong Kong has started deploying a package of 22 measures for diverse major polluting sources. Introduction of incentive scheme will promote reduction in marine emissions. This incentive program has also enabled OGVs to have improved efficiency as the port facility and light dues will be reduced to half by replacing fuel for bunker oil with sulfur content of not higher than 0.5 % for generators during berthing in Hong Kong waters. The incentive program will aid in lowering vessel emissions, thus ensuring enhanced air quality along the port area.

Hong Kong Financial Secretary has reported in his 2012-13 budget speech about this initiative to reduce the port facility and light dues by half which are charged on low-sulfur fuel-based OGVs while docking in Hong Kong waters.

Around 32,500 calls to Hong Kong were recorded in 2011, based on port facility and light dues owing to their US$5.5 per 100 T of tonnage for each port call to Hong Kong.

Source: http://www.hketotoronto.gov.hk/