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News and Trends
http://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/General%20Report_The%20Hague_Netherlands-Germany%20EU-27_6-15-2009.pdf Global Agricultural Information Service (GAIN) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service, recently released its 2009 Biofuels Annual Report for Europe. The biofuels market in the European Union (EU) is said to be driven by consumption mandates and incentives. The EU Directive 2003/30 sets non-binding targets for biofuel consumption, but member states are left to choose the strategies (support measures, tax incentives, penalties, etc) to achieve these targets. Biodiesel dominates the EU transport-biofuels market, accounting for 72% of market share in 2008, followed by ethanol at 24%. Some highlights of the report are: (1) in the summer of 2008, the EU biodiesel market suffered further deterioration (which started in 2007) due to drops in fossil fuel prices and policy changes in Germany. However, the bioethanol market expanded and exceeded forecasts, (2) in 2010, an upward trend in both biodiesel/bioethanol production and imports is expected, as a result of higher domestic demand spurred by biofuel-use mandates, (3) by 2010, the EU is not expected to achieve Directive 2003/30 target of 5.75%, and (4) because the biofuel targets for 2020 (laid down in the EU Energy and Climate Change Package (CCP)) were finally adopted by the European Council on April 6, 2009, member states are required submit their respective national action plans by June 2010..
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2009/07/08/latest-on-aviation-biofuels-includes-reports-on-algae-camelina-and-jatropha/ At the Yale Environment 360 website, an article by David Biello ("For Greening Aviation, Are Biofuels The Right Stuff?"), presents a summary of what has been done so far in aviation biofuels development, and the practical challenges for large scale production. The article traces the successful test flights of some commercial airlines (Continental , Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand, Japan Airlines) using aviation bio-jet-fuel produced from various second generation energy feedstocks (such as oils extracted from jatropha, camelina, coconut, babbasu and microalgae). The environmental appeal of aviation biofuels is reportedly strong, because jet emissions (even if low at 3% of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning) have a chemical mix that intensifies heat-trapping (global warming) power in the upper troposphere. Preliminary results from the Air New Zealand test flight show that for jatropha-based jet fuel, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 60%, and the biofuel blend could save 1.4 metric tons of fuel in a 12-hour flight. Biello mentions that the overwhelming challenge is to produce sufficient jet biofuel to supply the annual aviation fuel demand of about 60 billion gallons. Feedstock choice and supply will be important considerations. Jatropha, camelina and algae are the non-food-based feedstocks that have been used for aviation biofuel feedstock. Of these three, jatropha and camelina may have issues related to land use competition with food crops. The use of microalgae in brackish ponds are said to have some advantages as feedstock potential. The full article can be accessed at the Yale Environment 360 website (URL above)..
http://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry/pubs/pgcc/winners/sba09.html The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Small Business Award was presented to Virent Energy Systems (a biofuel producer), for its "development of a cost-effective and energy-efficient method of turning plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuels". The production technology (called "BioForming"®) involves a combination of "aqueous phase reforming" and a synthesis reaction using a solid catalyst to eventually convert plant sugars to a fuel-grade hydrocarbon mixture (a synthetic "biogasoline" of sorts). The aqueous phase reforming process initially converts the plant sugars into a gas mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, while the solid catalyst subsequently converts the gas mixture into a hydrocarbon cocktail that is similar to those produced from a conventional petroleum refinery. According to Randy Cortright, Virent's Chief Technical Officer, the process "produces between 30 and 50 per cent more energy per acre of biomass than ethanol for any given crop. And because the hydrocarbons produced are the same as those found in fossil fuels, vehicles do not need to be modified to use the biofuel as they would if they were to run on ethanol". Related information on aqueous phase reforming process: http://www.wisbiorefine.org/proc/apr.pdf
http://www.biojetalliance.org/ The formation of World Biojet Alliance has recently been announced. The worldwide organization of professionals from industry, academe, and government aims "to promote, conduct research, coordinate communications and provide innovative solutions for advanced biofuels used in aviation". It is also envisioned to serve as an information and communications network to educate and make the public aware of the "economic and environmental benefits associated with the development, production and use of advanced biofuels".. Energy Crops and Feedstocks for Biofuels Production
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf900140e Scientists from the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada (United States) report the production of biodiesel from feather meal. Feather meal is a protein rich by-product from poultry processing which can be used as animal feed and fertilizer. With a fat content of 2% to 12% (depending of feather type), feather meal may also be used as raw material in the production of biodiesel. (Chicken feather meal has a reported 11% fat content) The researchers used a simple process of extracting the fat in hot water (70oC), and applied a conventional transesterification (fat/oil plus methanol) reaction to produce the biodiesel. According to researcher Narasimharao Kondamudi, "the laboratory process used would be applicable in the processing plant's rendering unit, removing it from the watery waste stream before it is baked and dried down into meal". The process could produce 7% to 11% biodiesel with ASTM quality specifications (cetane number and oxidation stability). The product was also comparable to biodiesel from other feedstocks. A technical paper describing the study is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (URL above).. Biofuels Processinghttp://www.biotechnologyforbiofuels.com/content/pdf/1754-6834-2-14.pdf Scientists from the Department of Chemical Engineering of Lund University (Sweden), and the Department of Applied Biotechnology and Food Science, Budapest University Technology and Economics (Hungary) reported the use of "in-house" prepared enzymes from Trichoderma atroviridae on steam-exploded wheat straw and sugarcane bagasse. Wheat straw and sugarcane bagasse are agricultural residues that are potential feedstocks for cellulose-ethanol production. Steam explosion is a pretreatment method aimed at removing the lignin from the biomass and liberates the cellulose and other polymeric carbohydrates (such as hemicellulose) for subsequent breakdown into simple sugars (glucose from cellulose and xylose from hemicellulose). This breakdown is often termed, "saccharification". Steam explosion usually involves the thermal treatment of biomass with water under pressure. Then the pressure is suddenly released, causing the biomass to break and explode, with the simultaneous removal of lignin. For the saccharification step after steam explosion, the researchers used the enzymes produced by "in-house cultivation" of mutants from the fungi Trichoderma atroviridae. Their findings showed that "when a high glucose concentration was desirable in the hydrolysis of pretreated lignocellulosic materials, enzymes derived from the mutant Trichoderma atroviride TUB F-1663 were competitive with commercial enzymes". However, the supernatants of the mutant had lower xylose yield levels than a commercial enzyme mixture when used with pretreated substrates containing high levels of xylan and xylose oligomers. The study presently appears in a provisional pdf version in the open access journal, Biotechnology for Biofuels (URL above)..
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef900273y?prevSearch=shrimp%2Bbiodiesel&searchHistoryKey= Chinese scientists from the Department of Chemistry, Hua Zhong Agriculture University, the Key Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials Science of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, and the HuBei Province South-Central University for Nationalities (all in Wuhan, China), report the use of carbonized shrimp shells as catalysts for the transesterification process for biodiesel production. Transesterification is the reaction between a plant oil and methanol to produce a mixture of methyl esters (also known as "biodiesel"). In their study, rapeseed oil was the biodiesel feedstock. The production of the catalyst initially involves the carbonization of the shrimp shells by thermal treatment in the absence of air. The charcoal-like residue is then activated by addition of a chemical (potassium fluoride) to increase the porous structure of the residues. Results showed that the optimum production conditions of the carbonized shrimp shell catalyst were: a carbonization temperature of 450°C, and activation by 25 weight percent of potassium fluoride at 250°C. Oil to biodiesel conversion efficiency using the catalyst was about 89.1% under the following conditions: temperature of 65°C, 2.5 wt % catalyst dose, a methanol/rapeseed oil molar ratio of 9:1, and a reaction time of 3 h. Complete details of the study are published in the ACS (American Chemical Society) journal, Energy and Fuels.. Biofuels Policy and Economics
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-862T The United States Government Accountability Office recently released its report on the links between water and energy (biofuels and electricity production). Water and energy are strongly linked, as large quantities of water are needed to produce increasingly large amounts of energy. However, these vital resources are severely constrained with respect to supply. Among the findings of the report are: (1) the water requirement for corn cultivation for ethanol production ranges from 7 to 321 gallons per gallon of ethanol produced; however, for the case of large-scale "next-generation biofuel-feedstock" (i.e., lignocellulosic biomass), there is little information available, (2) next-generation biofuel feedstocks "have not been grown commercially to date, and there are little data on the cumulative water, nutrient, and pesticide needs of these crops and on the amount of these crops that could be harvested as a biofuel feedstock without compromising soil and water quality", (3) the use of alternative water sources can "also lower the costs associated with obtaining and using freshwater when freshwater is expensive, but pose other challenges, including the requirement of special treatment to avoid adverse effects on cooling equipment", (4) "alternative water sources play an increasingly important role in reducing power plant reliance on freshwater, but federal data collection efforts do not systematically collect data on the use of these water sources by power plants". The full report can be accessed at the US-GAO website (URL above)..
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/renewables/doc/nreap__adoptedversion__30_june_en.pdf A template for the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) was recently released by the European Commission. The establishment of the template is required by the Renewable Energy Directive. The template serves to guide member states to outline and detail their long-term renewable energy action plans to achieve the 2020 renewable energy target (i.e. 20% of total energy needs of each member state to be powered by renewable energy). The NREAP template requires the member states to "specify national policies on enabling measures such as revising administrative procedures, building codes, information and training, energy infrastructure development and access, support schemes and flexibility measures". The template is expected to guarantee the completeness of the NREAPs, and also to ensure their comparability with each other. The template can be accessed at the Europa website (URL above).. |
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