Domestic Fuel

Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) could be the key for algae-to-biofuel operations becoming commercial-scale… that according to Thomas Byrne, president and CEO of Byrne & Company LLP, a renewable energy project developer.

This article from Biorefining Magazine says the potential is greatest in northern climates, where anaerobic digesters that use microbes to break down the organic forms of nitrogen and phosphorous into inorganic forms… usable by algae:

“The methane produced by the anaerobic microbes is burned in a generator to produce an export of electricity and also waste heat that can be utilized to raise algae year-round,” Byrne says. “Bioreactors to grow algal species are well suited to take both the inorganic forms of nitrogen and phosphorous from the digester, as well as the waste heat and carbon dioxide (CO2) from the generator, to produce ideal inputs for algal growth.”

While the idea of co-locating an algal biomass growing facility with an established CAFO is a very real possibility, Byrne notes that the amount of algae grown for commercialization on a CAFO is limited by the availability of the CO2, nitrogen and phosphorus. “The limitations are both from what the CAFO produces, and what is needed from other operations of the CAFO.” Some bioreactor technology, like that of Algaedyne’s, which uses a process that controls photosynthesis by injecting only Photosynthetic Active Radiation into the depth of algae vessels, would make the process more feasible.

Byrne will be talking about the feasibility of a CAFO and algal biomass operation at the 2011 Pacific West Biomass Conference & Trade Show, Jan. 10-12 in Seattle.

Researchers in Oklahoma have discovered the gene responsible for how dense of material a plant grows, and that discovery could open the door to more biomass for biofuels grown in the same amount of land.

This press release from the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation says making denser plants allows farmers to increase the amount of biomass without increasing their agricultural footprint:

“This is a significant breakthrough for those developing improved plants to address pressing societal needs,” said Richard Dixon, D. Phil., director of the Noble Foundation’s Plant Biology Division. “This discovery opens up new possibilities for harnessing and increasing the potential of crops by expanding their ranges of use. These plants will be part of the next generation of agriculture which not only impacts food, but many other vital industries as well.”

“In switchgrass, as the plant matures, the stem becomes hollow like bamboo,” Dixon said. “Imagine if you use this discovery to fill that hollow portion with lignin. The potential increase in biomass in these new plants could be dramatic. This technology could make plants better suited to serve as renewable energy sources or as renewable feedstocks to produce advanced composite materials that consumers depend on every day.”

Research with the University of Georgia has also shown that removing that gene can increase the cellulosic ethanol and butanol potentials of a plant. Officials say the overall discovery is a significant breakthrough that will help redefine the research.

There are a few things I have learned over the last two years of reviewing books. First, no matter how much you “dislike”, or disagree with an author, you always learn something from him or her  – always. Second, there are always two sides to every story and we all need to do a better job of learning more about both sides.

With those thoughts, now onto the real purpose of this blog: my top books of 2010.

Best Economic Book: The Economics of Food by Patrick Westhoff

Best Environmental Book: Green Gone Wrong by Heather Rogers

Best Energy Book: The End of Energy Obesity by Peter Tertzakian

Best Global Warming Conspiracy Book: Energy & Climate Wars by Peter C. Glover and Michael Economides

Most Fun to Read: No Impact Man by Colin Beavan

Best Book of 2010: The Boy who Harnessed the Wind: by William Kamkwanba

If you have an idea for a book that you would like me to review in 2011, please send me an email at altenergyblogger@hotmail.com. Happy Holidays, thanks for reading DomesticFuel and may 2011 bring you much health and happiness.

2010 was a year of ups and downs for the domestic renewable energy industry, which kept your Domestic Fuel reporters busy.

One of the ups was traffic here on Domestic Fuel. We had a total of more than 315,000 unique visitors in 2010, up 17 percent from 2009. Your reporters did 1537 posts this year, including 160 with audio interviews, podcasts and recorded press conferences. The most listened to Domestic Fuel podcast was the reaction of the various biofuels groups to the release of the RFS2 in February.

Among the top YouTube videos posted here on Domestic Fuel were the General Motors Executive speech at the National Ethanol Conference, President Obama visiting a Missouri POET plant and Green Floyd at NEC.

According to page views, the most popular stories of the year on Domestic Fuel were:

New Fuel Economy Standards may Benefit Ethanol
Sea Green Projects Accelerates Algae for Aviation
USDA Experts Say Ethanol Blend Wall is Close
Petra Solar Mounts Panels on NJ Utility Poles
Cellulosic Breakthrough Announced at Ethanol Conference
Camelina to Produce 1 billion gallons of Biodiesel by 2025
EPA Says Sugarcane Ethanol is Advanced Biofuel

Thanks to our readers, our sponsors and clients, our freelancers and other friends for making 2010 great! Best wishes to all for a healthy, happy, prosperous and blessed new year!

Two feet of snow in New York City (By the way, see the New Era Pinstripe Bowl from a frozen Yankee stadium? Imagine what might happen in the 2014 Super Bowl in the Big Apple. But I digress…) has not only made it tough on the folks in that city, but it’s also giving biodiesel makers and distributors in the area fits.

Biodiesel Magazine reports that the snow has caused travel issues for rail transport, the main method of getting biodiesel into the city:

According to Daniel Falcone, northeast wholesale manager for Ultra Green Energy Services LLC, most biodiesel entering the New York metro market is currently transported via rail.

He said the biodiesel market in New York City will continue to mature as the city works to implement its pending B2 mandate for home heating oil. This means that more biodiesel will be entering the market, and significantly more storage and blending capacity will be brought online. This should translate into a more extensive supply chain that is less susceptible to weather-related incidents.

Further south, North Carolina got a lot less snow, but the article says it hit the biodiesel industry even harder. Piedmont Biofuels faced real challenges in collecting waste grease that it turns into the green fuel.

But my friends at METRO Energy in New York did post this Facebook message at the height of the storm: “METRO wants you to know that even though you would expect to see polar bears and snowmen outside, you can also depending on seeing METRO trucks out on the road.” Maybe some just persevered a little bit more in the face of adversity. Typical of those biodiesel makers, isn’t it?

Today is the last day of 2010 and the last chance to enter and win $250 in the ZimmComm web publication survey contest this month.

Filling out the survey allows you to have a voice in what we cover here on Domestic Fuel in 2011, and the chance to start the new year with a little extra green in your pocket. After we ring in the new year, we will be taking the names of everyone who has filled out an on-line survey in the past two months and putting them all in the hat to draw one winner for the month of December. Everyone, that is, except our lucky winner from last month Jamie Wilson with the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan. She already got her $250.

Right now you have about a 1-500 chance of winning – not bad odds at all! Start out the new year right – with an extra $250 in your pocket – or at least the satisfaction of helping to make Domestic Fuel the best renewable energy news source it can be!

Domestic Fuel survey link

Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group (REG) has been named the biofuels industry’s “Commercial-Scale Technology of the Year” by Biofuels Digest.

REG’s ability to acquire refineries and feedstocks helped the company garner the award:

According to the announcement, “Renewable Energy Group was honored for its novel continuous-flow, multi-feedstock processing technology that has allowed the company to pioneer the acquisition of a wide variety of hard-to-process, low-cost feedstocks such as tallows and yellow grease.”

“Renewable Energy Group’s fully-integrated procurement, production, technology, service and marketing platform allowed us to incorporate new facilities to more efficiently produce large volumes of ASTM-specification exceeding biodiesel,” explained Brad Albin, Vice President, Manufacturing for Ames, Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group. “Our commitment to redefining quality is key in our commercial-scale biodiesel operations.”

This past year was a particularly good one for REG, as it picked six businesses including three production-stage, commercial-scale biodiesel plants and one facility under construction.

“We continue to explore additional opportunities for mergers, acquisitions, consolidations and partnerships in order to actively expand our technology and patent portfolio and meet customer demand,” said Keith Olson, Executive Director, Corporate Finance and Investment Banking for Renewable Energy Group.

Among the many other winners in the annual Biofuels Digest awards was algae-to-biofuel developer Solazyme.

As the champagne corks pop this New Year’s Eve, the ethanol industry will be celebrating more than they were a year ago.

In this edition of “The Ethanol Report,” Renewable Fuels Association president and CEO Bob Dinneen talks about the year that 2010 was for the ethanol industry. “In many ways, 2010 was a record setting year,” Dinneen says. It was record setting for production, at about 13 billion gallons, and for exports. It also was the year that ethanol ran into the blend wall, and that EPA approved at least limited use of up to 15 percent ethanol in regular gasoline. But, the high note was the extension of the blenders tax credit for ethanol during the lame duck session of Congress, a priority for the industry that now provides for a year’s worth of breathing room to move on to the next level.

Listen to the Ethanol Report here: Ethanol Report on 2010

The announcement this week out of Beijing that China’s Ministry of Commerce has launched an anti-dumping probe into the ethanol co-product distillers dried grains (DDGS) from the US came as a surprise to the U.S. Grains Council (USGC).

“The U.S. Grains Council has a 25 year history of market development and capacity building programs in China and values the U.S./China market and trade relationship,” said USGC President and CEO Tom Dorr in a statement today. “China’s investigation of U.S. DDGS imports is surprising and could be disruptive to trade. China’s unusual market and supply volatility over the last two years has resulted in new global trade flows. As trade flows change, it should perhaps not be surprising there would be an adjustment period in response to unprecedented demand.”

It was only a few weeks ago that U.S. corn growers were in China on a USGC-sponsored trade mission to promote both corn and DDGS for livestock feed in that country. According to a post about the mission on the USGC blog The Grain Board, “Many of the feed companies that the delegation met with are increasing their DDGS use in their livestock feed rations. They stated they would continue to import, dependent on price. DDGS is easily imported into China, yet it is a feed ingredient that requires a “per plant registration” which is difficult to deal with at the port.”

China is the number one market for DDGS and is expected to import nearly three million metric tons this year, up more than 500 percent compared to a year ago. It is estimated that China produces about 3.5 million tons of DDGS domestically each year.

According to a statement from the Chinese Ministry, they initially plan to look for any evidence of dumping of DDGS, both with and without solubles, between July 2009 and June 2010, but may go back as far as 2007. The investigation is expected to take 12 to 18 months to complete.

According to the National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO), the inclusion of biomass emissions (biogenic carbon emissions) in the EPA’s Clean Air Act greenhouse gas permitting program hinders growth of renewable energy. However, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is countering their argument saying that there is public data on investments in biomass showing that it is in fact growing. The irony is that both groups cite the same study from Forisk Consulting to support their claims although the study was in fact funded by NAFO.

In December 2010, Forisk Consulting released a study titled, “Economic and Regional Impact Analysis of the Treatment of Biomass Energy Under the EPA Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule.” According to NAFO, the study found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule’s current treatment of biomass energy emissions will put over 130 renewable energy projects “at risk” for cancellation or delays.

“The Tailoring Rule is a powerful deterrent to forest biomass energy investments and job opportunities,” NAFO President and CEO David P. Tenny said of the study’s findings. “We’re already seeing the economic impact of the Tailoring Rule, as renewable energy projects are delayed or stopped altogether due to regulatory uncertainty. Left unchanged, the Tailoring Rule threatens the long-term viability of the biomass energy sector which, in turn, undermines the renewable energy goals of the Administration and Congress.”

Back in September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it was considering equating biogenic carbon emissions with fossil fuel emissions under the Tailoring Rule, which requires the accounting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2). Biogenic carbon emissions are those that are naturally created during the combustion and decay of woody biomass. In the past, the EPA has always considered them carbon neutral.

However, according to EDF calculations, existing and announced wood bioenergy projects increased during the past year by nearly 35 percent–from 112 projects to 151 projects–across 11 southern states alone: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. (Only data from the southern U.S. is publicly available for the past year). According the report, the total expected demand for wood biomass increased by 10 million green tons, a 76 percent hike in wood biomass demand across the region.

“The science clearly shows that not all sources of biomass are equal in terms of their climate change impacts,” said Will McDow, manager of EDF’s Southeast Center for Conservation Incentives, and a member of both the North Carolina Forestry Technical Advisory Committee and Forestry Council. “The industry has known that EPA was planning to include biogenic emissions in permitting requirements in some way since last spring, yet this fact clearly has not dampened investors’ enthusiasm for bioenergy in 2010.”

McDow concluded, “The stakes are too high for EPA to rush to judgment in making biomass emission rules because these biomass plants will produce greenhouse gas emissions for 20 to 30 years. EPA needs to take the time to get the accounting right for biomass emissions to spur the right investments and policies our nation needs to protect forest sector jobs and the natural resources we depend upon.”

According to a new article published by a team of researchers from CalTech and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology there may be a new way to harness the energy of solar even when the sun is not shining. Led by Sossina Haile, she along with her colleagues are looking at ways to produce hydrogen and syngasses by using solar funnels.

In an article, “High-Flux Solar-Driven Thermochemical Dissociation of CO2 and H2O Using Nonstoichiometric Ceria,” published in the December 24, 2010 edition of Science magazine, the research team has developed a device that is able concentrate solar radiation and heat it up to 1,600 degrees Celsius. In simple terms, the heat that results from this process is then used to split water or carbon dioxide into hydrogen.

As described in an article in Clean Energy Authority.com, the device consists of a quartz lens that focuses the solar radiation on a reaction chamber that is internally reflective and captures most of the photons that enter and converts them to heat. The device heats up at a rate of 140 degrees Celsius a minute until it reaches about 1,250 degrees Celsius, and stabilizing at more than 1,400 degrees Celsius. Through a two-step process, the device’s catalyst ceria (cerium dioxide) converts CO2 or water into its constituent elements.

Haile said in an interview, “Ceria is a metal oxide, what that material will do when heated is it will release oxygen.…It happens at high temperatures, when we cool it back down it wants to absorb oxygen.  “The ceria replaces the oxygen by stripping it from the supplied material, carbon dioxide or water, thereby creating carbon monoxide—used for syngas, or hydrogen—which can be used directly. Either resulting fuel could be used to store the sun’s energy for use in power generation.”

The funnels can be small, but they’re not nano-sized. “It’s like a sponge it’s porous and the gasses flow through it,” Haile said. But “it’s not nano because these temperatures are too high for nano-structures.”

According to Haile, the funnels are not efficient enough for commercial use and to date, only convert around 0.7 percent to 0.8 percent of the solar energy in the funnel into fuel. With further research she hopes this will improve dramatically.

“We calculated efficiency should be between 15 percent and 19 percent. We’re working with University of Minnesota on that. Right now it’s limited by the thermal design of the reactor. We need a better thermal design,” Haile concluded.

With only two days left in 2010, I thought “The Impending World Energy Mess” was only fitting for review as we head into 2011. It is also fitting for another reason, it ties nicely into the story I brought you earlier this week, $5 Gas Prices on the Horizon. The authors, Dr. Robert L Hirsch, Dr. Roger H. Bezdek, and Robert M. Wendling, bring you decades of experience in energy from economics to oil to technologies. In the book, they lay out their premise that the most serious energy mess facing the world today is the impending decline in world oil production. It just so happens that it is taking place at the same time energy use is all an all-time high and continues to grow.

The authors write, “The warming signs include the six-year long plateauing of world oil production, the escalation of oil prices, and the analyses of a number of highly trained professionals and competent organizations.”

They authors don’t use the term “peak oil” because world oil production, they say, has been and is likely to stay on the current fluctuating world oil production plateau for a few more years before the onset of production decline.

So what’s the problem you ask? We have hoards of alternatives? According to the authors, the realities of these alternatives are that they are “very costly and insufficient to satisfy our overall energy needs, let alone our liquid fuel needs.” The energy sources they discuss are numerous including biofuels, solar, wind, nuclear, natural gas, hydrogen, electric vehicles, oil shale, coal to liquids, and more. But let’s delve into this deeper using biofuels, more specifically, corn ethanol as an example.
Read the rest of this post…

A collaborative effort has produced a yeast strain that speeds up the process of making ethanol from cellulosic materials.

Researchers at the University of Illinois, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California at Berkeley, Seoul National University and the oil company BP worked together to develop the newly engineered yeast strain that can simultaneously consume two types of sugar from plants to produce ethanol.

The sugars are glucose, a six-carbon sugar that is relatively easy to ferment; and xylose, a five-carbon sugar that has been much more difficult to utilize in ethanol production. The new strain, made by combining, optimizing and adding to earlier advances, reduces or eliminates several major inefficiencies associated with current biofuel production methods.

“Xylose is a wood sugar, a five-carbon sugar that is very abundant in lignocellulosic biomass but not in our food,” said Yong-Su Jin, a professor of food science and human nutrition at Illinois and a principal investigator on the study. “Most yeast cannot ferment xylose.” A big part of the problem with yeasts altered to take up xylose is that they will suck up all the glucose in a mixture before they will touch the xylose, Jin said. A glucose transporter on the surface of the yeast prefers to bind to glucose. “It’s like giving meat and broccoli to my kids,” he said. “They usually eat the meat first and the broccoli later.”

The research objective was to develop a way for the yeast to quickly and efficiently consume both types of sugar at once, a process called co-fermentation. According to the researchers, the new yeast strain simultaneously converts cellobiose (a precursor of glucose) and xylose to ethanol just as quickly as it can ferment either sugar alone. They say it is at least 20 percent more efficient at converting xylose to ethanol than other strains, making it “the best xylose-fermenting strain” reported in any study.

Read more from the University of Illinois here.

New equipment designed by POET has made loading distillers’ grains (DDGS) safer, faster, easier and ultimately more profitable for the company’s ethanol plants.

It’s called the Load Toad™ and it was designed to allow rail cars to be packed more densely by forcing DDGS to the sides of the rail car, a process that is usually done by hand with a shovel. By distributing the DDGS load more evenly and efficiently, POET plants have been able to pack 3%-5% more DDGS into each car.

“The Load Toad not only allows us to put more DDGS in a railcar, which increases our production efficiency, but this device also allows the commodities team to more safely load a railcar,” said Dave Hudak, general manager at POET Biorefining – Alexandria (Ind.). “We no longer have to shovel any product nor stand on the top of the car to load it. The potential for a back injury has been eliminated.”

Commodities Assistant Ryan Schroeder from POET Biorefining – Leipsic in Ohio developed the first prototype of the Load Toad as a solution to a common loading problem that led to cone-shaped pileups in the rail cars. These pileups dramatically lowered efficiency in each rail car and created a great deal physical work for staff. “It felt good knowing that not just our plant would benefit, but the commodities people at all the POET plants would benefit,” Schroeder said. The Load Toad is currently being used at POET plants, but the company is exploring opportunities to market the technology to other ethanol producers in the future.

Here’s a video of the Load Toad in action from the POET website.

It looks like agriculture has a ways to go to change public perceptions according to our latest ZimmPoll. In answer to the question, “Do you think the general consumer perception of agriculture changed in 2010?” 43% say “No it didn’t really change,” while 30% say “Yes, it got worse,” and 27% said “Yes, it improved.” Where do you fall in those categories? That’s 73% of our respondents who think it didn’t change or got worse. Sounds like we really do need some campaigns to reach out to consumers doesn’t it?

The new poll is now live and the question is, “What do you think will have the biggest influence on ag in 2011?” There are no doubt many factors that will have an influence. We’ve picked a couple. When I post the results next week you can add any others you’d like to the discussion.

Remember, you can submit your questions for us to pose and add your feedback anytime by using the comment feature.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.