One of the cost of production problems that holds algae back as a major biomatter resource is an efficient cost-effective method of harvesting and removing the water from the algae for it to be processed.

Algae have the potential to be a very efficient biofuel producer.  The one cell plant produces oil that can be processed to create a useful biofuel.  Biofuels made from plant material are considered important alternatives to fossil fuels.  The carbohydrate portion can be used food or to make more fuel.

The SU team’s new technique builds on previous research in which microbubbles were used to improve the way algae is cultivated.  The early work used the microbubble technology to improve algae production methods, allowing producers to grow crops more rapidly and more densely and earned Zimmerman and the team the Moulton Medal, from the Institute of Chemical Engineers.  The research paper is published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering.

Professor Zimmerman outlines the story saying, “We thought we had solved the major barrier to biofuel companies processing algae to use as fuel when we used microbubbles to grow the algae more densely. It turned out, however, that algae biofuels still couldn’t be produced economically, because of the difficulty in harvesting and dewatering the algae. We had to develop a solution to this problem and once again, microbubbles provided a solution.”

Microbubble Algae Separation at the University of Sheffield. Click image for the largest view.

Microbubbles have been used for flotation before: water purification companies use the process to float out impurities, but it hasn’t been done in this context, partly because the previous methods have been very expensive.

The new system developed by Zimmerman´s team uses as little as one tenth of a percent of the energy to produce the microbubbles.  Additionally, the cost of installing the Sheffield microbubble system is predicted to be much less than existing flotation systems.

Zimmerman explains the technology saying, “What we’ve found is that we can separate the microalgae from the water or harvest it using microbubbles that are created by a fluidic oscillator. A fluidic oscillator switches flows rapidly from one outlet to another, using feedback to do so with no moving parts. It is like an opening and closing mechanical valve that results in pulsing flow. Our bubbles are made under laminar flow and we use practically no more energy than is required to make the interface of the bubble.”

As a result of the low energy input, the bubbles rise very slowly, which is crucial as it means the algae particles can attach themselves to the bubbles more easily. Two chemicals added to the liquid in the process, a flocculant and a coagulant to help the algae bond to the rising microbubbles.

“The idea is to create a surface on the algae particles that is hydrophobic so the microbubbles are attracted to it,” said Zimmerman. When the bubbles and the particles reach the surface, the flocculant and the coaggulant keep the algae in a fixed layer. The blanket of algae can then be skimmed off the surface with something such as a belt skimmer. “In the lab, we use a knife.”

Zimmerman explained that the process is much cheaper than attempting to make microbubbles through an industrial process known as dissolved air flotation, which generates bubbles that are too turbulent to harvest algae.

Next up for the technology is to develop a pilot plant to test the system at an industrial scale.  Professor Zimmerman is already working with Tata Steel at their site in Scunthorpe, where Tata Steel is recovering and using CO2 from their flue-gas stacks.  Zimmerman and Tata plan to continue the partnership to test the new system.

The SU team’s technology may have other soon to be used attributes.  Lakes that have a build-up of nutrients causing algal blooms to form called eutrophication, often attributed to agricultural fertilizers entering water bodies, need the algae harvested and removed instead of left to die and decompose.

The SU team is already in talks with Ken Shu, a scientific adviser to the Chinese government, to set up pilot-scale trials on remediating algal blooms in eutrophied lakes in China.

Zimmerman explains, “China has demographic drinking-water problems. They’re running out because the lakes that used to be used for drinking water are all eutrophied with algal blooms.”

It looks good in the lab.  A lot of ideas have came and went in trying to capture the algae cells in a low cost harvest.  Algae, naturally, are pretty good at keeping themselves separate with each basking in the sunlight. It’s a significant attribute that makes the very high productivity possible as well as makes the harvest problematic.

Lets hope the Brits have it nailed down now.

Petrobras, the Brazilian based petroleum firm is reported to have qualified and approved a new technology to convert natural gas to synthetic crude oil.  The Petrobras’ CENPES Research and Development Centre completed its trials of the CompactGTL unit prompting Nicholas Gay, chief executive of CompactGTL to say, “The [Petrobras] test program has produced some extremely positive results and has shown the plant can be robust, with the operational availability (the percent of time a unit would operate) expected of large scale commercial facilities. We can now progress our plans in conjunction with clients throughout the world to develop commercial scale modular gas to liquid plants.”

CompactGTL offers a modular GTL solution for a variety of natural gas to liquids conversion needs.  The modular design and the implicit lower investment cost suggest the vast resource of non-marketable natural gas could become sources of crude oil.  That allows a pressure free containment and no temperature input that could then bring the liquid and more energy dense syncrude resources to market.

CompactGTL technology features proprietary catalysts and reactor designs derived from plate and fin heat exchanger manufacturing techniques. Modular plant design, incorporating multiple reactors in parallel, provides a flexible, operable solution to accommodate gas feed variation and decline over the life of the oilfield.  The firm is suggesting reactors can be relocated.  No huge installation needs to be built.

At the heart of the process are two banks of modular reactor blocks. Using an advanced derivative of plate and fin heat exchanger technology, these reactors allow the precise control of heat and gas flow over proprietary metal-supported structured catalysts, located in a regular array of thousands of closely spaced channels.  It’s looking like a factory mass production plan instead of custom built installations.

The first stage CompactGTL reactor uses Steam Methane Reforming to convert natural gas into syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The syngas is fed into the second reactor where it is converted via the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process into synthetic crude oil, water and a ‘tail gas’ composed of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and light hydrocarbon gases.

At this first introductory point it looks as though the CompactGTL needs only the natural gas and water source as inputs with a start source for the heat.  As the graphic shows, the steam cycles and the FT reactor refuels the first reformer reactor.

A key engineering advantage is the close relationship between the two reactors providing efficient management of the overall system.  The two reactions are tuned to work together to maximize efficiency and minimize waste streams depending upon the specific application and location of the plant. The water produced in the Fischer-Tropsch reaction can be treated to remove impurities and recycled back into the steam reforming process.

CompactGTLs proprietary catalysts and the shared activities of the two reactors is planned to offer a self-contained plant operating a stable process that won’t need an oxygen supply.

Al Fin has pointed out that CompactGTL isn’t alone in the soon to explode market.  Mr. Fin also noted the Oxford Catalyst and the Velocys microchannel technology as candidates worthy of close watching. As those two firms reach milestones in their paths we’ll have a look.

To recap, natural gas is a wonderful fuel, but is doesn’t transport easily or cheaply over great distances.  Moving down pipelines with customers each few hundred feet works great.  Big resources can justify large investments in pipelines to get to a market.  But in much of the world and in remote or deep water locations the gas is just shut in, burned off for no use other than safety, or worst of all just vented into the atmosphere to the justified horror of the global warming folks.

Jeremy Coller, the investor behind the CompactGTL effort understands the impact a breakthrough on the investment needed to get natural gas to market said, “With this approval from Petrobras the company has passed a critical milestone, demonstrating its leadership in an area with the potential to be a game-changer for oil and gas exploration.”

Its looks like a game-changer, indeed.

Hydrates are a water ice and usually a natural gas compound that have been explored by researchers as a source of alternative fuel or storage medium for CO2.  The PNNL researchers note at first discovery the hydrogen storage value approaches the goal of a Department of Energy standard and could make hydrogen hydrates practical and affordable for storage.

Using computer analysis of the ice and gas compound reveals key details of its structure and researchers have accurately quantified the molecular-scale interactions between the gases of either hydrogen or methane, also known as natural gas – and the water molecules that the form cages around them.

The research team’s results from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory were published in Chemical Physics Letters online December 22, 2011.

While hydrogen is the most interesting use of hydrates, PNNL chemist Sotiris Xantheas the lead author said, the results could also provide insight into the process of replacing methane with carbon dioxide in the naturally abundant “water-based reservoirs.”

Here’s the marvel revealed in the research as put by Xantheas, “Current thinking is that you need large amounts of energy to push the methane out, which destroys the scaffold in the process. But the computer modeling shows that there is an alternative low energy pathway. All you need to do is break a single hydrogen bond between water molecules forming the cage – the methane comes out, and then the hydrate reseals itself.”  This revelation has major implications on natural gas recovery.

Previously Xantheas and the colleagues used computer algorithms and models to examine the water-based, ice-like scaffold that holds the gas. Water molecules form individual cages made with 20 or 24 molecules. Multiple cages join together in large lattices. But those scaffolds were empty in the earlier analysis.

To find out how fuels can be accommodated inside the water cages, Xantheas and colleague Soohaeng Yoo Willow built computer models of the cages with either hydrogen gas – in which two hydrogen atoms are bound together – or methane gas, a small molecule made with one carbon and four hydrogen atoms.

In the hydrogen hydrates, the idea that could potentially be used as materials for hydrogen fuel storage, a small hollow cage made from 20 water molecules could hold up to a maximum of five hydrogen molecules and a larger cage made from 24 water molecules could hold up to seven.

The maximum storage capacity equates to about 10 weight-percent, or the percentage of hydrogen by mass in the chunks of ice.

However packing hydrogen in that tight puts undue strain on the system.  But it nearly doubles the DOE’s goal for hydrogen storage above a 5.5 weight-percent.

Now the story gets intuitive, innovative and just clever.  Experimentally, hydrogen storage researchers typically measure much less storage capacities. The computer model showed them why: The hydrogen molecules tended to leak out of the cages, reducing the amount of hydrogen that could be stored.

The PNNL team found that adding a methane molecule to the larger cages in the pure hydrogen hydrate prevented the hydrogen gas from leaking out. The computer model showed the researchers that they could store the hydrogen at high pressure and practical temperatures, and release it by reducing the pressure, which melts it.

Understanding how the gas interacts and moves through the cages can help chemists or engineers store gas and remove it at will.

Willow and Xantheas’ computer simulations showed that hydrogen molecules could migrate through the cages by passing between the figurative bars of the water cages. However there’s a problem to work out, the cages also had gates: Sometimes a low-energy bond between two water molecules broke, causing a water molecule to swing open and let the hydrogen molecule drift out. The “gate” closed right after the molecule passed through to reform the lattice.

With methane hydrates, some fuel producers want to remove the gas safely to use it.  So, Willow and Xantheas tested how methane could migrate through the cages.

The water cages are only big enough to comfortably hold one methane molecule, so the chemists stuffed two methane molecules inside and watched what happened. Quickly, one of the water molecules forming the cage swung open like a gate, allowing one methane molecule to escape. The gate then slammed shut as the remaining molecule scooted into the middle of the cage.

Xantheas explains, “This process is important because it can happen with natural gas. It shows how methane can move in the natural world. We hope this analysis will help with the technical issues that need to be addressed with gas hydrate research and development.”

The team’s work is still all in the computer, but the insight should allow a broad spectrum of researchers a blueprint for experimentation and the beginning steps of processes and engineering.  The best news is the storage rate is very high and the temperatures are in an easy to access zone with common refrigeration and low energy requirements to do the warm up.  The engineering challenge to today is substantial, but some very good minds are going to light up with this news.

It’s no surprise that the technology is already international, starting in the U.S. its already going to work in Canada, Argentina, Russia, Mexico, Poland, the Middle East and more.

The leaders of the new boom that can be expected over time to be used in millions of wells worldwide are the major petroleum service companies, Halliburton, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.

The “super fracking” as its becoming named is based on three basic improvements.  The first is Schlumberger’s “HIWAY” idea that is an innovation in the material forced into the rock. (The linked page has a good animation to explain the process in detail.)  The new idea is to add fibers to the mix of hard small grains used to hold open the cracks.  The fiber is being seen as a major production improver.  Much more flow for a longer period is the result. That flow, called conductivity, has been the problem of wildcatters for 150 years.  The petroleum is there, but it won’t come out.  How much more the fiber offers has investors in oil reserves pouring over 100+ years of history.

Schlumberger's Flow-Channel Fracturing Illustrated

The second idea called “RapidFrac” comes from Halliburton with a set of highly developed specialized pipe fittings that go into a newly drill hole.  (This page also has a high quality animated video, though quite a large file.) Much like valves, these sections of the pipe when activated open passages to the rock.  With two types, a set of one type in a row can be used to work a section to specifications learned from the drilling results and geophysics.  The second type then is an isolator to keep the work specific to the set before moving on to the next set.  It’s a very sophisticated means to crack a vast volume of petroleum reserve rock.

Halliburtons RapidFrac System Illustrated. The explanation is part of the jpg, click the image to see the largest view.

Halliburton’s new technology also has a second benefit, the accurate and limited groups require about half the water and much less time.  Where time is money this level of conservation and efficiency really adds up.  It also should cut back on the fears – stuffing half as much water down is going to reduce the amount of risk – and the targeted zones will be much easier to study.  For the local folks it means half the traffic per job, too.

The fracking business is made up of the two huge companies and a veritable army of others making well completion a very competitive business.

The pipe placed down a well is getting more sophisticated, and the valve idea isn’t unique to Halliburton.  The current technology is sending balls down the pipe that stop where the diameter is too small. Of late the balls dropped in are made of plastic that can be drilled out when the frack pressure work is done.  The third idea is Baker Hughes has developed disintegrating frack balls (No company info yet.).  This solves the need to have a drilling rig return to the well, and spend several days drilling and fishing out the perhaps a many as 20 or even 30 balls dropped in to do the frack in stages.

The controlled “explosive” (its more of a really fast burn) blast technology to get through the pipe and into the rock isn’t laying about – here Baker Hughes has a fourth idea, developing and testing “super cracks,” a method of blasting deeper into dense rock to create wider channels in order to funnel more oil and gas. The aim for the technology, branded “DirectConnect,”(pdf file link)  is to concentrate fracking power to target oil or gas buried deeper in the formation.

Baker Hughes FracPoint MP sleeve with DirectConnect ports Illustrated. Use the brochure link for a more complete explanation. Click image for a larger view.

Perhaps the best news is the new technologies are reducing costs in a big way. Investor stock trackers have noticed and estimates like the one from JPMorgan Chase projects drops from $2.5 million per well down to an astonishing $750,000 – a drop of 70% – money that will get reinvested in more drilling and production.

Many are surprised at the massive gains in the U.S. production of petroleum, with finished products making the U.S. a net exporter again.  The innovation, daring, risk assumption, testing and prices for oil have gotten the door open and the oil bidness has pressed right on through with American ingenuity and character.  The new technologies will soon be major U.S. exports – cutting back on the world’s marginal last barrel risk and suppressing prices back to reason.

A year of high prices and past years of wild swings in oil prices may seem a trauma, but the industries’ reaction to the trauma has made the supply much more secure for a longer time.

Earlier a team discovered that bisabolane, a member of the terpene class of chemical compounds holds high promise as a biosynthetic alternative to No.2 diesel fuel that generated keen interest in the green energy community and the trucking industry. This team identified bisabolane as a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace No.2 diesel, today’s standard fuel for diesel engines, with a renewable alternative that’s produced in the United States.

Using the tools of synthetic biology, the researchers engineered strains of bacteria and yeast to produce bisabolene from simple sugars, which was then hydrogenated into bisabolane. While showing much promise, the yields of bisabolene have to be improved for microbial-based production of bisabolane fuel to be commercially viable.

Now a second team led by bioengineers Paul Adams and Jay Keasling, solved the protein crystal structure of an enzyme in the Grand fir (Abies grandis) called “Abies grandis α-bisabolene synthase” (AgBIS) that synthesizes bisabolene, the immediate terpene precursor to bisabolane.  But when AgBIS is engineered into microbes, the enzyme results in a bottleneck that hampers the conversion by the microbes of simple sugars into bisabolene.  The opportunity suddenly became a problem.

AgBIZ Enzyme. Click image for more info.

Adams, a leading authority on x-ray crystallography, explains what the team has figured out saying, “Our high resolution structure of AgBIS should make it possible to design changes in the enzyme that will enable microbes to make bisabolene faster. It should also enable us to engineer out inhibition effects that slow throughput, and perhaps also engineer the enzyme to produce other kinds of fuels similar to bisabolane.”

The paper “Structure of a Three-Domain Sesquiterpene Synthase: A Prospective Target for Advanced Biofuels Production.” About AgBIS has been published at the Cell Press journal Structure.

Pamela Peralta-Yahya, a lead member of the earlier JBEI team as well as the current team discusses the situation saying, “The inefficient terpene synthase enzyme is one of the bottlenecks in the metabolic pathway used by the engineered microbes. Knowing the AgBIS crystal structure will guide us in engineering it for improved catalytic efficiency and stability, which should bring our bisabolene yields closer to economic competitiveness.”

Ryan McAndrew a co-lead author explains Peralta-Yahya and her colleagues determined that the AgBIS enzyme consists of three helical domains, the first three-domain structure ever found in a synthase of sesquiterpenes – terpene compounds that contain 15 carbon atoms. The discovery of this unique structure holds importance on several fronts.

McAndrew continues, “That we found the structure of AgBIS to be more similar to diterpene (20 carbon terpene compounds) synthases not only provides us with insight into the function of these less well characterized enzymes, it also provides us with clues to the evolutionary heritage as the archetypal three-domain terpenoid synthases became two-domain sesquiterpene synthases in plants. Furthering our knowledge of the structures and functions of terpenoid synthases may prove to have abundant practical applications aside from advanced biofuels because these enzymes produce a wide variety of specialized chemicals.”

The look into AgBIS was made possible by the protein crystallography capabilities of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) for synchrotron radiation, and the first of the world’s third generation light sources.  The JBEI team used three of the five protein crystallography beamlines operated by the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB).  Adams, who headed the BCSB from 2004 to 2011, tells us, “We needed to use multiple beamlines because we collected data on several crystals – the protein by itself, and the protein with different inhibitors/cofactors.”

That’s a lot of unfamiliar chemistry terms in one post.  To summarize, the JBEI teams have found AgBIS will convert sugars to the heavier chemicals in the 15-carbon atom range – which is where development needs to be for diesel and other products of that molecular size.  But when AgBIS was engineered in the activity came up short, and the question ‘why?”, now has a visual means of understanding and that offers a much clearer means to manipulate the structure and likely, redevelop a new enzyme that could be very productive indeed.

It’s still way, way early in the research.  Having a leading candidate for engineering bio organisms to join in making the products in the 15 carbon atom and up range is very enticing news.  The ability to make these fuels over just extracting them from plants offers massive growth potential.

Now a division of DuPont, Pioneer has entered into a deal with NexSteppe for collaboration in developing

Sweet Sorghum At An Oklahoma State U. Test Plot. Click image for the largest view.

sorghum varieties.  The expectation for expert observers is the collaboration is meant to bring a new high-yield crop to growers, or hybridize a crop that has worked spectacularly well elsewhere to work in localized conditions.

Sweet sorghum is a versatile crop.  It may be destined as a rotation crop, or used in place of cover crops to bring in a second economically valued harvest.  Sweet sorghum hybrids could be high biomass hybrids in order to create additional feedstock options for biofuels, biopower and biobased products.

The deal is Pioneer has made an equity investment in NexSteppe and will provide knowledge, resources and advanced technologies to help NexSteppe accelerate the breeding and commercialization of new hybrids of these crops in the United States and Brazil.  That’s a deal in Iowa.

In Illinois U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s Plants Engineered to Replace Oil program has awarded a $5.7 million dollar contract to Chromatin, Inc.

The U.S. DOE contract is to fund a three-year program to develop new varieties of sweet sorghum for use as an energy-rich, low cost feedstock for transportation fuels. Chromatin is working to develop non-food varieties of sorghum that have higher energy content to produce low-cost and renewable transportation fuel, high value chemicals and a high-BTU source of bio-oil. Sweet sorghum can produce very high biomass yields with less water and fewer chemical inputs than major food crops and is grown on land that is not devoted to food production.

Hybrid sweet sorghum is expected to produce both sugar and higher yields of biomass.  Forecasts propose it can be planted on dry marginal pastureland, and because it has has a short growing season it should suitable for crop rotation with other crops, perhaps wheat an other dry land grains.

Native sorghum is naturally drought and heat-tolerant and has the ability to grow in marginal rainfall areas with high temperatures where it is difficult to grow other crops.  From central Texas up through Oklahoma where a drought is underway sweet sorghum may offer a better cash income than pasture and could double up the income from wheat.

You may have noticed that the Pioneer/NexSteppe deal is also looking to Brazil. Sweet sorghum can be used as a complement to sugarcane in existing Brazilian sugar to ethanol mills, and as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and other bio-based products produced from sugars.

DuPont has another motive as well, its Industrial Biosciences business, operates and develops industrial processes that use sugar as a feedstock.

Just last month NexSteppe announced it had raised $14 million in its second round of funding. The company said then that it would use the proceeds from the round to scale up its sweet sorghum, high biomass sorghum and switchgrass breeding programs, and to advance its first products toward commercialization.

The food vs. fuel debate gas died down for now.  The U.S. is exporting ethanol to eager customers as those markets learn that ethanol is a top-flight gasoline extender.  The tired arguments run by the liars that figure have pretty much collapsed by real world numbers whose figures show ethanol added to gasoline is becoming a world wide phenomena.

A worldwide ethanol additive at 10% could eventually shave 4 to 5 million barrels a day from crude oil demand.  It also a number than can grow.

Soon there will be little doubt that the infrastructure for fueling ethanol fuel cells is in place ready for the technology.

Meanwhile, sweet sorghum has better tolerance for more marginal land than corn, and a far wider growing region than sugar cane, which is only tropical.  The ethanol market is getting another crop that should take out the feedstock worry of unavailable, unaffordable unsustainable or unreliable.

E-10 to E-85 are about to become worldwide choices for transport fuel.

It isn’t possible for people to join in the world of trade, increasing incomes and raising living standards to the developed world’s condition without getting through the food gathering and preparation needed at far more productive time scales.  Increasing human population is making the food issue even more complex, and much of the forests of the less developed world are disappearing and the result is soil destruction.  Tree growth can’t compensate fast enough.

Bamboo. Click image for the largest view.

Bamboo just might.

Bamboo is a plant not often associated with Africa because it’s being not exploited.  But it grows there as well as in Asia, and it can be used as an alternative source of energy.  China, the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) and a partnership among African nations and communities are working to substitute bamboo charcoal and firewood for forest wood. The European Union and the Common Fund for Commodities are funding the initiative. The market is huge, 80 percent of the rural population in sub-Saharan Africa depend naturally occurring fuel sources for their energy needs.

Dr. J. CoosjeHoogendoorn, Director General of INBAR says, “Bamboo, the perfect biomass grass, grows naturally across Africa and presents a viable, cleaner and sustainable alternative to wood fuel. Without such an alternative, wood charcoal would remain the primary household energy source for decades to come with disastrous consequences.”

Initial successes with bamboo charcoal in Ghana and Ethiopia, which have put bamboo biomass at the center of renewable energy policies, are spurring interest in countries across the continent and prompting calls for greater investment in bamboo-based charcoal production as a ‘green biofuel’ that could fight deforestation and soil degradation.

INBAR’s bamboo as sustainable biomass energy initiative is the first to transfer bamboo charcoal technologies from China to sub-Saharan Africa to produce sustainable ‘green biofuels’ using locally available bamboo resources.

Roughly it takes seven to 10 tons of raw wood to produce one ton of wood charcoal, making wood fuel collection an important driver of deforestation on a continent of nearly one billion people, who have few alternative fuel sources.

Professor Karanja M. Njoroge, Executive Director, Green Belt Movement points out, “Bamboo grows naturally across Africa’s diverse landscapes, but unlike trees, it regrows after harvest and lends itself very well for energy plantations on degraded lands. We should put it to good use to provide clean energy for the continent.”  Sub-Saharan Africa has over 2.75 million hectares of bamboo forest, equivalent to roughly 4 per cent of the continent’s total forest cover.

MelakuTadesse, National Coordinator for Climate Change Unit at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture explains the route to sustaining a bamboo fuel system, “With further investment and policy reform, community kiln technologies could be up-scaled to reach thousands of communities in Ethiopia.”

The resource is there; bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on the planet and produces large amounts of biomass, making it an ideal energy source. Tropical bamboos can be harvested after three years, compared to the two to six decades needed to generate a timber forest.
The entire bamboo plant, including the stem, branch and its rhizome, can be used to produce charcoal, making it highly resource-efficient, with limited waste. Its high heating value also makes it an efficient fuel.

The charcoal production is like any other, the controlled burning of bamboo in kilns, whether traditional, metal, or brick.

The partnership is looking at technology adapted to produce larger quantities of charcoal to serve a larger number of rural and urban communities as well as to produce bamboo charcoal briquettes that are ideal for cooking because it burns longer, produces less smoke and air pollution than ‘natural’ charcoal.

China, a global leader in the production and use of bamboo charcoal, where the business sector is worth an estimated  $1 billion a year and employs over 60,000 people in more than 1,000 businesses is bringing industrial partners, including the Nanjing Forestry University and Wenzhao Bamboo Charcoal Company who are helping to adapt equipment like brick kilns, grinders and briquette machines, and hand tools, for bamboo charcoal and briquette production using the local materials.

The idea brings energy production, jobs and sales to customers.  In addition to charcoal, bamboo offers many new opportunities for income generation.  It is being processed into a vast range of wood products, from floorboards to furniture and from charcoal to edible shoots.

In Ghana where the first stage of the idea is underway, 300 micro small enterprises in the program area have been established with over 2,000 growers cultivating bamboo as well as charcoal production and some 7,000 low-income local households are expected to use bamboo charcoal as cooking fuel by the close of the project year in 2014.  A total of 505 metric tons of bamboo charcoal have been produced for October and November of 2011.

That has led and supports efforts of cultivating bamboo, having seen the planting of 11,733 seedlings out of 14,880 seedlings propagated from 15 different species selected across the globe.

Ghana is motivated – bamboo technology is a welcome concept because the rate of forest depletion shows the country has lost about 6.6 million hectares of forest cover since the beginning of the last century and has the highest rate of deforestation of 2.19% globally – a disaster in the making.

Bamboo could be an African turning point, the partnership envisions leaders, policy-makers, private sector, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, religious and traditional authorities as well as civil society organizations leading the crusade towards saving the forests and the environment from destruction and end its ability to support the human population.

It’s all really hopeful in a continent where human life remains so challenged, politically adrift and at the mercy of nature’s competitive onslaughts on life. It time for Africans to help themselves much more and a technology transfer from China may just do the trick.

We wish them luck and success and a Thank You to the Chinese.

With one hundred and fifty years of buildup the petroleum business has only a few free leaders left.  Most of the world’s petroleum supply is controlled by governments, a fact lost on the media and press, which in turn misleads billions of people.  Oil prices, marginal barrels, and energy invested vs. energy returned are all symptoms of a partially controlled and partially market driven system that has become a way to barely keep enough product available.

So whom will the consumer trust?  Is it a Saudi sheik, a Russian oligarch, a U.S. bureaucrat or a company working in a free economy answering to millions of stockholders, employees and customers?  All these know that press and media types will watch and report something or other, nearly certain to be badly biased, but the news in some fashion will get out. That might be enough to keep the clutching and grasping government ideas at bay for a bit longer.  Oddly, and contrary to sentiment, your interest is the same as the free independent oil company.  That doesn’t mean your future is bound to them though.

For now and the immediate future the smartest folks are watching what is known as “Big Oil”.  Your humble writer knows he needs them and obviously tends to root for those who provide and support the developed world’s lifestyle.  Rah. That said:

ExxonMobil is the largest Big Oil firm.  It also enjoys a reputation of being engineering oriented.  Other firms, such as Chevron have a more personal sense and community base.  These are forms of corporate culture, if you will.  By any measure the competitiveness is very much there – all the Big Oil companies mean to get you to be their customer.

So when a firm like ExxonMobil offers a blog by a vice president it’s worth some notice and the occasional stopping by.  All the while knowing these guys mean to sell petroleum products and keep doing that until another business model overtakes the industry.  They will not fail to use all lawful means to do just that – they owe it to the stockholders, employees and customers after all.

The blog is nearly two years old now, and is honestly, light on content. But there are some gems. It’s also a good start, now if we get them to post some information on the news and press releases from the R&D departments . . . Maybe even some useful information on where such an important part of the economy is looking into the future. Now that would be a blog!

Still, vice president Mr. Ken Cohen is going to be fully careful, run what’s written by the lawyers, and not break any rules.  But here’s a bit of business sense from out in the wild, never ask a lawyer’s approval, to pass on something or give over the gate keys.  Make ‘em earn their pay like everybody else – “approval not required, see that it gets done legally”.

So how after two years did ExxonMobil get a bit of attention?  A headline that sets up an energy density comparison between various energy sources, “How many gallons of gasoline would it take to charge an iPhone?”  Answer, a gallon would charge an iPhone daily for nearly twenty years.  Not bad, but the gem comes a bit farther in with, “A typical car’s gasoline tank contains less than 100 pounds of gasoline but can power a 3,000 pound car for 400 miles at 60 miles per hour.”  An astute observation.

When you look at the gem statement in the context, another attempt to maim ethanol as a fuel, the lawyers were likely consulted, but there is little sign any competent engineers were.  Is it any wonder people are so suspicious of Big Oil?

For now, though the illustration approximates reality, albeit years old, and its so stated if you read closely.  But one day an ethanol fuel cell may use 100 pounds of ethanol and power a lighter vehicle five times further at equivalent speeds.

Come on ExxonMobil and Mr. Cohen.  The firm projects and invests on ten-year plans or longer, there is a corporate culture of engineering and scientific status that leads the world. It was a good blog post until the swing at ethanol popped up.  We expect much more and far better of you and soon.

Coal to Liquid Artistic Graphic. Image Credit: SRI International.

Simply put, SRI has a method to make use of the dense proportion of carbon in coal and reform it with high content of hydrogen in natural gas to make liquid hydrocarbon products.  For the U.S. that has major energy security implications.

SRI’s promising new way to produce liquid transportation fuels from coal does not consume water or generating carbon dioxide.  The hydrogen that water provides in other processes is substituted by the natural gas.  With the energy requirement for hydrogen splitting from the water absent and the combustion of the coal the process reduces the CO2 produced.

The natural gas for water substitution also reduces the need to add energy to drive the gasification reaction, and results in the use of a smaller gasifier. In conventional coal to liquids approaches, energy is supplied by burning a portion of the coal feed, which then produces carbon dioxide. SRI’s approach makes it economical to use carbon neutral electricity, such as nuclear, hydro, or solar as a source of additional energy.

SRI Coal to Liquid Fuel Process Flow Diagram. Click image for the largest view. Image Credt: SRI International.

The new SRI process uses the hydrogen in the natural gas to convert coal making an uprated hydrogen rich syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen). The coal first decomposes into volatiles and char while CH4 is converted into CO/H2 mixtures; the char is converted into CO/H2 mixtures via steam gasification on longer time scales.  The syngas is first converted into methanol that can then be efficiently processed to make the desired transportation fuels.

Based on data from their bench-scale tests, SRI engineers estimate that the capital cost for a full-scale plant using the new process would be less than half that of a conventional coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant that uses the familiar and common process called Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS). FTS produces only a small fraction of the hydrocarbons needed for fuel and requires extensive recycling.

SRI CTL Compared to FTS. Click image for the largest view. Image Credit:SRI International.

SRI has performed a series of analyses to examine the environmental impact of the technology under several scenarios. Conventional diesel comes in at 389 gCO2/mile, conventional FTS coal-to-liquids diesel at 830 gCO2/mile; and the SRI synthetic fuel at 326 gCO2/mile when using carbon-neutral electricity power. Based on their analyses, if diesel were produced using biogas as the natural gas source for the methane, the resulting emissions would be 190 gCO2/mile and the product would qualify as an alternative fuel under the revised Renewable Fuels Standard of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The Act requires alternative fuels to meet a standard of 50-percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to other fuels.  That will get the attention of the coal folks.

Ripudaman Malhotra, associate director of SRI’s Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory presented the process at the 28th Annual International Pittsburgh Coal Conference pointing out the SRI process converts all the carbon to product, reduces capital cost, has adjustable syngas ratios to produce CO + 2H2, ideal for methanol; and uses efficient COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) technology for the methanol to JP-8 conversion.

SRI estimates the efficiency of its CTL plant at 67% – significantly higher than traditional CTL plants, mostly because it is converting 100% of the carbon feed into product and it utilizes electricity generated off-site. Accounting for the heat rate of generating that electricity from a traditional coal plant would still result in a plant efficiency of 47%.

But those efficiencies are a bit misleading – The cost per gallon for the SRI diesel fuel product is calculated at $2.81.  That’s still higher than FTS at $2.14, where virtually all the energy comes from raw coal and a great share of the carbon is lost to CO2 in making the fuel and lots of energy goes to getting the hydrogen from water.

If the goal is low investment, downsized installations with low emissions and full use of the raw materials the SRI process is quite attractive.  That plus the process itself offers more than the middle distillates of diesel and jet fuel.  There’s crude methanol, gasoline, propylene, and propane as well – plus some mineral ash.

The SRI process likely has commercial legs.  Whether or not a facility is built will consider the raw materials cost along with the investment.  Another question comes to mind when looking over the process flow diagram.  Would any of the concepts here transition to the oil shale deposits of the western U.S.?

Aalto's Sample of Wood Chips for Butanol Production. Click image for the largest view.

Butanol is particularly suitable as a transport fuel because it is not water-soluble and has higher energy content than ethanol.  Moreover there is pressure building in the European Union as new fuel requirements state fuel must contain 10 percent biofuel by 2020.

A clear benefit of butanol is that a significantly large percentage – more than 20 percent of butanol, can be added to fuel without having to make any changes to existing combustion engines. The nitrogen and carbon emissions from a fuel mix including more than 20 per cent butanol are significantly lower than with fossil fuels. For one point of comparison, the incomplete combustion of ethanol in an engine produces volatile compounds that increase odor nuisances in the environment. Estimates indicate that combining a butanol and pulp plant into a modern biorefinery would provide significant synergy benefits in terms of energy use and biofuel production.

The significant new breakthrough in the study is to successfully combine modern wood pulp handling – and new biotechnology. Finland’s advanced forest industry provides particularly good opportunities to develop this type of bioprocesses.

Wood biomass is made up of three primary substances, the cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. Of these three, cellulose and hemicellulose can be used as a source of nutrition for microbes in a bioprocess. Along with cellulose, the Kraft process that is currently used in pulping produces black liquor, which can already be used as a source of energy. But black liquor is not suitable for feeding microbes. In the Aalto study, the pulping process was altered so that, in addition to cellulose, the other sugars remain unharmed and can therefore be used as raw material for microbes.

The most commonly used raw materials in bio based butanol production so far have been starch and cane sugar. In contrast to this, the starting point in the Aalto University study was to use only the lignocellulose, otherwise known as wood biomass, which does not compete with food production.  The publication of the results are in Bioresouce Technology.

When wood biomass is boiled in a mixture of water, alcohol and sulfur dioxide, all parts of the wood – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin – are separated into clean fractions. The cellulose can be used to make paper, nanocellulose or other products, while the hemicellulose is efficient microbe raw material for chemical production. The Finns’ new advantage of this new process is that no parts of the wood sugar are lost or wasted.

The published estimates indicate that combining a butanol process and a pulp plant into a modern biorefinery would provide significant synergy benefits in terms of energy use and biofuel production.  The program at Aalto University is developing new skills based on national strengths and related to the refining of biomass. The overall aim of the project is to increase the refining value of forest residues that cannot be utilized in, for example, the pulp process.

The lab results for the process successfully used batch and continuous production of acetone, butanol and ethanol (ABE).  Initially, batch experiments were performed using spent liquor to check the suitability for production of ABE. Maximum concentration of total ABE was found to be 8.79 g/l using 4-fold diluted liquor supplemented with 35 g/l of glucose.  In completing the course of testing the team returned to batch processing for the highest yields.

The Finn effort looks to have good results that may be applied wherever forests are harvested, especially where paper is made.  Butanol is the alcohol most desirable for a drop in gasoline replacement – producers won’t need to look far for customers/

The next step is to come out of the lab for a little real outside world testing.  There’s a large stock of black liquor from papermaking that could use a high value process to extract the value in a better way.  It looks like the Finn team might have it.