Here’s another entry vying to be the next big source-crop for biofuels: algae.
Yes, green pond scum can be cultivated, harvested, and converted into fuel,
and a company called Solix Biofuels, is trying to commercialize the idea. In an
article in Popular Science, the company point out several advantages that algae has over crops such as soy, corn or canola, which make it great for growing in high-volume.
For starters, algae grows in water rather than dirt, which means it can be cultivated just about anywhere, not just on a farm. Solix plans to grow algae in long, tubular, plastic bags filled with water. They are clear, so sunlight can shine on the “crop” from every direction.
Perhaps more importantly, algae doesn’t require much in the way of nutrients. Water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide are pretty much all an algae farm needs, and the crop grows quickly. As a result, Solix says that algae can produce more fuel in less space than other plants.
The company estimates that it would take 140 billion gallons of biodiesel to satisfy the United State’s total need for petroleum-based fuel for a year, and that it would take about 3 billion acres of soybeans to produce that much gas. Canola is much more efficient, requiring just 1 billion acres. Unfortunately, there are only about 425 million acres of arable land in the county (and don’t forget we need a lot of that to grow food).
But algae only needs 95 million acres, and it doesn’t have to be 95 million acres of farmland. In fact, the best place to put an algae-growing operation is next to a power plant, where the green stuff can live on carbon-dioxide emissions. Hmmm, it uses space that nobody really wants to use for anything, and sucks up greenhouse gas emissions? What’s not to like here?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
The Cellulose Ratio
My last post made me wonder about the various crops that people are touting as the next big thing for biofuels. Though ethanol is certainly the best-known alternative to petroleum-based gas, and the one most widely used, I was pretty surprised to discover that it doesn’t really offer much of an improvement over regular gas.
According to an article I found in Plenty, the green magazine, the ratio of energy produced compared to the amount of fossil-fuel energy needed to make ethanol is just a whisker above that of gasoline. Gas comes in at about 1:1, while ethanol is about 1.5:1.
But biofuel produced from cellulose plant material, that is the fibers found in trees or various grasses, blows them away; it comes in at 10:1.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Ethanol, which gets its energy from the starch in corn or soy, is easier to make than fuel derived from cellulose because the starch breaks down easily. Cellulose is a bit more hardy, and requires additional processing steps. Still, it seems pretty obvious to me that perhaps if we’re hunting for next major fuel source, the best place to look would be the crops where we can find the most energy.
According to an article I found in Plenty, the green magazine, the ratio of energy produced compared to the amount of fossil-fuel energy needed to make ethanol is just a whisker above that of gasoline. Gas comes in at about 1:1, while ethanol is about 1.5:1.
But biofuel produced from cellulose plant material, that is the fibers found in trees or various grasses, blows them away; it comes in at 10:1.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Ethanol, which gets its energy from the starch in corn or soy, is easier to make than fuel derived from cellulose because the starch breaks down easily. Cellulose is a bit more hardy, and requires additional processing steps. Still, it seems pretty obvious to me that perhaps if we’re hunting for next major fuel source, the best place to look would be the crops where we can find the most energy.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Carbon Farms
Ever heard of miscanthus x giganteus?
I hadn’t either, until I read this articlein the San Francisco Chronicle. A bunch of alternative-energy researchers are betting that this Asian superweed will be the next big thing in biofuels.
Turns out that miscanthus is an incredible sources of cellulose, a form of carbon found in organic materials that can be converted into fuel. The tropical reeds can grow as tall as 12 feet, live for two decades or more, require little water or fertilizer, and are easy for farmers to cultivate. All of that makes it almost ideal as a potential biofuel crop.
For years, ethanol was such niche product that nobody really paid much attention to the economics of producing millions of gallons of the stuff. Indeed, the U.S. produces so much corn and soy, the two main sources of ethanol, that turning it into fuel was seen not as an energy strategy but a way of disposing of excess crops.
But now that biofuels are getting so much attention, people are starting to put some thought into what it will take to convert potentially millions of acres of farmland into, as the Chronicle put it, “carbon farms.” Think about it for a second. The U.S. has about 425 million acres of arable land, but if we start converting huge swathes of farmland to growing miscanthus, that means less produce for your table, which could drive up the price of food, which is probably one of the few things that would be even more unpopular than spiking gasoline prices.
That’s why it makes sense to start looking for the plants that will produce the best juice, that is, the ones the produce the most organic material per acre, with the least impact on the environment, and that can be refined into the most powerful form of fuel. Remember, we didn’t start making ethanol out of soy and corn because some scientist determined that they make the best gas – we just had too much of the stuff laying around. Maybe cellulose will turn out to be a more efficient source of power than the sugars in corn that are used to produce ethanol.
In fact, you can make biofuel out of almost anything. I wrote a story last year for Wiredabout a guy who had some fat liposuctioned out of his butt and converted into biodiesel, but animal fats, algae, even used restaurant grease, will all do, as long as it will explode inside the cylinder of an engine. That reaction converts the stored energy in a fuel into the mechanical energy needed to move a piston. Petroleum happens to be an efficient way to store this energy, and, until the latter part of the last century, we thought we had plenty of that laying around too.
I hadn’t either, until I read this articlein the San Francisco Chronicle. A bunch of alternative-energy researchers are betting that this Asian superweed will be the next big thing in biofuels.
Turns out that miscanthus is an incredible sources of cellulose, a form of carbon found in organic materials that can be converted into fuel. The tropical reeds can grow as tall as 12 feet, live for two decades or more, require little water or fertilizer, and are easy for farmers to cultivate. All of that makes it almost ideal as a potential biofuel crop.
For years, ethanol was such niche product that nobody really paid much attention to the economics of producing millions of gallons of the stuff. Indeed, the U.S. produces so much corn and soy, the two main sources of ethanol, that turning it into fuel was seen not as an energy strategy but a way of disposing of excess crops.
But now that biofuels are getting so much attention, people are starting to put some thought into what it will take to convert potentially millions of acres of farmland into, as the Chronicle put it, “carbon farms.” Think about it for a second. The U.S. has about 425 million acres of arable land, but if we start converting huge swathes of farmland to growing miscanthus, that means less produce for your table, which could drive up the price of food, which is probably one of the few things that would be even more unpopular than spiking gasoline prices.
That’s why it makes sense to start looking for the plants that will produce the best juice, that is, the ones the produce the most organic material per acre, with the least impact on the environment, and that can be refined into the most powerful form of fuel. Remember, we didn’t start making ethanol out of soy and corn because some scientist determined that they make the best gas – we just had too much of the stuff laying around. Maybe cellulose will turn out to be a more efficient source of power than the sugars in corn that are used to produce ethanol.
In fact, you can make biofuel out of almost anything. I wrote a story last year for Wiredabout a guy who had some fat liposuctioned out of his butt and converted into biodiesel, but animal fats, algae, even used restaurant grease, will all do, as long as it will explode inside the cylinder of an engine. That reaction converts the stored energy in a fuel into the mechanical energy needed to move a piston. Petroleum happens to be an efficient way to store this energy, and, until the latter part of the last century, we thought we had plenty of that laying around too.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Green Pioneer: Wal-Mart (really)
Yes, I know their labor practices are truly awful and their business model makes them the poster-child for all that is evil and exploitive about globalization, but I have to give some credit to Wal-Mart for their green strategy. (And yes, I have seen the terrifying documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.)
The retailer has two experimental stores, one in McKinney, Texas, and one in Aurora, Colo., that are just packed with alternative energy technology. They clearly put a lot of effort into making these buildings environmentally friendly, from the ground up.
To name just a few of the green projects: The parking lot is paved with a porous material, so rainstorm runoff won’t mix with oil and wash pollutants into the sewers. The roof is covered with solar cells, and there’s a wind turbine in the parking lot. The floors have pipes built into them that carry hot water, which helps heat the store. Used cooking oil from the deli is dumped into a furnace, which also helps heat the building. Even the smallest details have been thought through, from low-energy light bulbs to new designs on the freezer cases to hold in cold. I was impressed.
But I wasn’t totally convinced. Let’s get real; Wal-Mart is not exactly known for being touchy-feely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire purpose of this project is nothing more than making the company look good.
But it’s also possible that they are on the right track. Wal-Mart is famous for paying scrupulous attention to its costs. That’s how it’s managed to become the behemoth it is, by trying to shave even fractions of a cent off of anything and everything. And, unlike many U.S. companies, they think long-term; Wal-Mart will spend millions now to save a few pennies tomorrow, as long as they can keep saving those pennies for years to come.
And that’s exactly the kind of thinking that we need when it comes to alternative energy.
The ding factor on green power has always been the cost. Yes, the systems are expensive, and yes, almost all the costs must be paid upfront, which scares off a lot of people.
But the benefits – lower energy costs, less consumption – start from day-one. Green power has to be seen as a long-term play, with long-term benefits.
So I dropped Wal-Mart a note to find out more about their energy strategy.
A spokeswoman wrote back, with some details, though not a lot (I’ve covered Wal-Mart before; it’s a very tough company to deal with, and being forthcoming with the press is not very high on their list of priorities). She wouldn’t say how much the company had spent on the projects, but she did say that the stores were definitely spending less on energy costs, about 8 percent less at the Colorado store compared to standard sites in the same area, and that the savings were expected to be even higher in the winter.
She said that the company sees these stores as labs, to see which alternative energy ideas offered the most savings, in terms of both power and cost, and that Wal-Mart eventually hopes to use that information to develop a new prototype store by 2010 that will be 25 to 30 percent more efficient, and produce 30 percent less greenhouse gas emissions, than standard stores.
In other words, the company does indeed seem to be planning for a green future, a model that other companies might do well to emulate. Now that’s the kind of everyday savings that I can really get behind.
The retailer has two experimental stores, one in McKinney, Texas, and one in Aurora, Colo., that are just packed with alternative energy technology. They clearly put a lot of effort into making these buildings environmentally friendly, from the ground up.
To name just a few of the green projects: The parking lot is paved with a porous material, so rainstorm runoff won’t mix with oil and wash pollutants into the sewers. The roof is covered with solar cells, and there’s a wind turbine in the parking lot. The floors have pipes built into them that carry hot water, which helps heat the store. Used cooking oil from the deli is dumped into a furnace, which also helps heat the building. Even the smallest details have been thought through, from low-energy light bulbs to new designs on the freezer cases to hold in cold. I was impressed.
But I wasn’t totally convinced. Let’s get real; Wal-Mart is not exactly known for being touchy-feely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire purpose of this project is nothing more than making the company look good.
But it’s also possible that they are on the right track. Wal-Mart is famous for paying scrupulous attention to its costs. That’s how it’s managed to become the behemoth it is, by trying to shave even fractions of a cent off of anything and everything. And, unlike many U.S. companies, they think long-term; Wal-Mart will spend millions now to save a few pennies tomorrow, as long as they can keep saving those pennies for years to come.
And that’s exactly the kind of thinking that we need when it comes to alternative energy.
The ding factor on green power has always been the cost. Yes, the systems are expensive, and yes, almost all the costs must be paid upfront, which scares off a lot of people.
But the benefits – lower energy costs, less consumption – start from day-one. Green power has to be seen as a long-term play, with long-term benefits.
So I dropped Wal-Mart a note to find out more about their energy strategy.
A spokeswoman wrote back, with some details, though not a lot (I’ve covered Wal-Mart before; it’s a very tough company to deal with, and being forthcoming with the press is not very high on their list of priorities). She wouldn’t say how much the company had spent on the projects, but she did say that the stores were definitely spending less on energy costs, about 8 percent less at the Colorado store compared to standard sites in the same area, and that the savings were expected to be even higher in the winter.
She said that the company sees these stores as labs, to see which alternative energy ideas offered the most savings, in terms of both power and cost, and that Wal-Mart eventually hopes to use that information to develop a new prototype store by 2010 that will be 25 to 30 percent more efficient, and produce 30 percent less greenhouse gas emissions, than standard stores.
In other words, the company does indeed seem to be planning for a green future, a model that other companies might do well to emulate. Now that’s the kind of everyday savings that I can really get behind.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Power Mash-Up
I read a great article in The New York Times Magazine recently about a guy who built a completely energy-independent house, using solar cells, water and cans of hydrogen.
The basic idea goes like this: Mike Strizki, of New Jersey, covered the roof of a storage shed with solar panels, enough to put out about 10 kilowatts. That’s more than he needs for his home – for most of the year, the array kicks out as much as 60 percent more than he needs.
A lot of people with solar-powered homes manage to feed their excess juice back into their local utility’s energy grid, though I don’t think anyone makes very much money off this arrangement.
Here’s the really cool part of Strizki’s setup. Instead of selling his unused power to the electric company, which has a monopoly on the local market and therefore can control the rates it pays, he runs the power through something called an electrolyzer, which combines electricity and water to create hydrogen and oxygen -- basically, the electricity powers a reaction to split water into its two elements.
Strizki stores the hydrogen in a bunch of old propane tanks in his shed, and months later, when the days are shorter and his system isn’t keeping up with his home’s power needs, he simply runs the system in reverse. That is, he runs the hydrogen and air back through the electrolyzer to create water and… more electricity. In effect, he’s using hydrogen as a battery to store power for as long as he needs. It’s simple, and brilliant.
Before crowning Strizki as the energy-visionary of the century, however, I should point out that he’s not exactly breaking new ground here. Photovoltaic solar cells, of course, have bee around since the 1950s, and the electrolyzer concept dates back to the 19th century. In other words, he simply took a few great ideas that were already around and bolted them together to create a very efficient home energy system. It’s an alternative energy mash-up!
And that’s exactly the point; alternative energy is not a new concept. The basics have been around for centuries, and even many of the latest-and-greatest ideas have been available for years.
What has been missing, until very recently, has been the will to put the ideas into practice, to actually get up and use these very amazing technologies.
One of the big barriers, of course, is cost. And even Strizki concedes that his home was not much of a deal. He spent about $500,000 to develop and install. Ouch. And considering that the average homeowner pays roughly $1,800 per year on energy, that means he dropped enough on up-front costs to power his house for almost 300 years. Looks like he may have overspent a bit, there.
Well, maybe not. Consider it an R&D investment. Strizki says he can build another system just like his for about $100,000. OK, that’s still not much of a bargain. But, if he can find enough people willing to buy these systems, the price would surely drop.
How many buyers would it take to bring the price into the range of reason? And what is the price that would make the average person willing to consider getting one? I don’t know.
But I do know that a few people have to be willing to go first, and we already have one. So, who’s willing to be next? Lets see some hands. Anybody?
(“The Zero Energy Solution,” by Mark Svenvold. The New York Times Magazine, May 20, 2007)
The basic idea goes like this: Mike Strizki, of New Jersey, covered the roof of a storage shed with solar panels, enough to put out about 10 kilowatts. That’s more than he needs for his home – for most of the year, the array kicks out as much as 60 percent more than he needs.
A lot of people with solar-powered homes manage to feed their excess juice back into their local utility’s energy grid, though I don’t think anyone makes very much money off this arrangement.
Here’s the really cool part of Strizki’s setup. Instead of selling his unused power to the electric company, which has a monopoly on the local market and therefore can control the rates it pays, he runs the power through something called an electrolyzer, which combines electricity and water to create hydrogen and oxygen -- basically, the electricity powers a reaction to split water into its two elements.
Strizki stores the hydrogen in a bunch of old propane tanks in his shed, and months later, when the days are shorter and his system isn’t keeping up with his home’s power needs, he simply runs the system in reverse. That is, he runs the hydrogen and air back through the electrolyzer to create water and… more electricity. In effect, he’s using hydrogen as a battery to store power for as long as he needs. It’s simple, and brilliant.
Before crowning Strizki as the energy-visionary of the century, however, I should point out that he’s not exactly breaking new ground here. Photovoltaic solar cells, of course, have bee around since the 1950s, and the electrolyzer concept dates back to the 19th century. In other words, he simply took a few great ideas that were already around and bolted them together to create a very efficient home energy system. It’s an alternative energy mash-up!
And that’s exactly the point; alternative energy is not a new concept. The basics have been around for centuries, and even many of the latest-and-greatest ideas have been available for years.
What has been missing, until very recently, has been the will to put the ideas into practice, to actually get up and use these very amazing technologies.
One of the big barriers, of course, is cost. And even Strizki concedes that his home was not much of a deal. He spent about $500,000 to develop and install. Ouch. And considering that the average homeowner pays roughly $1,800 per year on energy, that means he dropped enough on up-front costs to power his house for almost 300 years. Looks like he may have overspent a bit, there.
Well, maybe not. Consider it an R&D investment. Strizki says he can build another system just like his for about $100,000. OK, that’s still not much of a bargain. But, if he can find enough people willing to buy these systems, the price would surely drop.
How many buyers would it take to bring the price into the range of reason? And what is the price that would make the average person willing to consider getting one? I don’t know.
But I do know that a few people have to be willing to go first, and we already have one. So, who’s willing to be next? Lets see some hands. Anybody?
(“The Zero Energy Solution,” by Mark Svenvold. The New York Times Magazine, May 20, 2007)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)