Burning Bio News

Study shows that increases in crop production technology from 1961 to 2005 have lowered GHG emissions. While emissions from factors such as fertilizer production and application have increased, the net effect of higher yields has avoided emissions of up to 161 gigatons of carbon (GtC) (590 GtCO2e) since 1961. Each dollar invested in agricultural yields is estimated to have resulted in 68 fewer kgC (249 kgCO2e) emissions relative to 1961 technology ($14.74/tC, or ∼$4/tCO2e), avoiding 3.6 GtC (13.1 GtCO2e) per year. This analysis indicates that investment in yield improvements compares favorably with other commonly proposed mitigation strategies.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced that three projects have been selected to receive up to $612 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – matched by $368 million in private funding – to demonstrate large-scale carbon capture and storage from industrial sources. The projects – located in Texas, Illinois, and Louisiana – were initially selected in October 2009 for phase one research and development grants. The selections announced today are expected to capture and store 6.5 million tons of CO2 per year- the equivalent of removing nearly one million cars off the road- and increase domestic production of oil by more than 10 million barrels per year by the end of the demonstration period in September 2015.

The U.S. ethanol industry continues to see improved efficiency, according to a new report released by USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist. Nitrogen use measured on a per bushel basis has declined by about 20% since the mid-90s. Similarly, all direct energy components have declined by about 50% since the mid-90s. Together, the nitrogen and direct energy reductions result in a 30% decline in the energy required to produce a bushel of corn. Recent energy use estimates show that the ratio of energy in ethanol to the external energy used to produce ethanol is about 1.4, even without allowing for the processing component of the byproduct credit. After fully allowing for heat used to produce byproducts, the energy ratio is between 1.9 and 2.3. If biomass is used at the plant for some of the power, the energy balance ratio increases to 2.8, even using the lower byproduct credit from the regression results.

According to the new Rabobank U.S. Farm & Ranch Survey, 72 percent of U.S. agricultural producers report that they have taken a range of measures on sustainable ag practices. “U.S producers understand that to be in the ag business for the long term means taking care of the land,” said Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory Vice President Sterling Liddell. The most significant steps are using direct seeding (64 percent), minimizing use of chemicals (42 percent), crop rotation or diversification (39 percent) and reduced energy inputs (39 percent).

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $11 million in funding over three years for research and development in the area of thermochemical conversion of biomass into advanced biofuels that are compatible with existing fueling infrastructure. The objective of this funding is to improve the conversion of non-food biomass to liquid transportation hydrocarbon fuels via pyrolysis, a process that decomposes biomass using heat in the absence of oxygen to produce a bio-oil that can be upgraded to renewable diesel, gasoline, or jet fuel. Applications for this funding opportunity are due July 9, 2010.

Siemens Energy has successfully completed the first firing of PetroAlgae Inc.’s biocrude fuel, a plant-based, micro-crop biomass material that is processed into a solid residue. The biocrude fuel was combined with pulverized coal in a pilot-scale burner with a thermal capacity of approximately 4 MMBtu/hr. The testing was performed at a test bed installed at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, and results show that the biocrude/coal fuel mixture burned well, and produced 20 percent lower nitric oxide (NOx) emissions than coal alone.

An alliance of industry, academic and government organizations, formed to commercialize technologies that will utilize concentrated solar energy to convert waste CO2 into diesel fuel. The solar reforming technology platform will be colocated next to industrial facilities that have waste CO2 streams such as coal power plants, natural gas processing facilities, ethanol plants, cement production facilities and other stationary sources of CO2. A solar reforming system is currently being demonstrated in Sacramento, CA, and demonstrations will continue both at Sandia’s facilities in New Mexico and at a power plant project site in Bakersfield, CA.

Daniel O’Brien, Kansas State Research and Robert Wisner, Iowa State University recently presented their study on Measuring Supply-Use of Distillers Grains in the United States. This report examines the projected supply and use of distillers grains in the United States during next decade and provides a preliminary examination of how expanding the proportion of ethanol allowed to be mixed in U.S. fuels from 10% (i.e., E-10), to 11% (E-11) and 15% (E-15). The authors presented extensive information including the finding that moving to E-15 will challenge the complete utilization of distillers grains locally because the local markets are already approaching saturation.

“In an effort to conserve water and provide even greater sustainability our company has achieved the status of zero liquid discharge (ZLD)”, says Patriot Renwable Fuel LLC’s President and CEO Gene Griffith (Annawan, IL). Rick Vondra, Patriot plant manager, went on to say, “the short definition for this process is that we fully utilize use all of the water that enters the plant, therefore using less overall, and the production wells are less impacted. More importantly, it means that no wastewater is discharged into the environment.”

Rutgers University professor Clinton Andrews and colleagues ran the numbers on land required to implement a renewable energy strategy. They identified clear limits on some technologies, notably biofuels, but concluded that the bigger challenges to renewable energy and land relate to siting energy facilities, particularly transmission lines. –mj: This report contains some interesting information, but the extension of supplying 100 of world energy by individual technologies is puzzling. Presenting extraneous information just because it can be calculated clouds the discussion.

A new University of Illinois at Chicago study of facilities that produce most of the nation’s ethanol found that the energy needed to make a gallon of the corn-based fuel decreased on average by about 30 percent within the past decade. Steffen Mueller, principal research economist at UIC’s Energy Resources Center, surveyed the nation’s 150 “dry mill” ethanol plants. He said his survey shows that adoption of new technologies reduces energy production needs.

Expansion of 28 locally-grown fruits and vegetables examined by Dave Swensen, Iowa State University. The states studied were Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The study showed that a significant amount of produce could be grown locally, but success depends on the development of new infrastructures in Midwest communities to advance the use of local food, locally.

Fuel from Aquatic Biomass, Santa Rosa, CA, demonstrates the ability of native water plants to scrub residual pollutants and endocrine disrupters from treated wastewater and then be harvested to produce methane in an anaerobic digester. Students from Sonoma State University diverted secondarily treated wastewater into ditches and planted natives like marsh pennywort, Azola (mosquito fern), duck weed and algae. With demonstrable scrubbing results from the aquatic biomass in place, Fuel from Aquatic Biomass now moves on to the methane production phase.

In 2009, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States saw their largest absolute and percentage decline (405 million metric tons or 7.0 percent) since the Energy Information Administration began keeping records in 1949. The slow economy played a large role, but there were also shift from high carbon fuels (coal) to lower carbon fuels (natural gas, biomass, and nuclear). The US shifted away from dirtier, primary manufacturing to cleaner, high tech industries. This latter kind of indicates that the US is just farming out the more carbon-intensive industries. Still, it looks like all the lost jobs and closures of the last two years have at least taken our US emissions levels back to about 1995 levels.

Doty Energy WindFuels (SC) will use wind power to produce electricity, transportation fuel and reduce CO2. Wind energy is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Some of the hydrogen is used in chemical process that convert CO2 and Hydrogen into Hydro-carbon fuels (ethanol, gasoline, jet fuel or diesel). The first pre-commercial WindFuels plant could be producing 50 million gallons of liquid fuels per year by 2014.

Florida-based Algenol Biofuels is partnering with a Valero Services, a subsidiary of Texan oil and gas firm Valero Energy. Valero is the oil company that bought 7 bankrupt ethanol plants. Algenol is developing a direct-to-ethanol process, which involves growing carbon dioxide-saturated, blue-green algae in bioreactors with saltwater. In June last year, Algenol also teamed up with Dow Chemical to build a demonstration plant at Dow’s site in Freeport, Texas. The facility will comprise 3,100 algae cultivating bioreactors, which are expected to produce 100,000 gallons per year of ethanol.

Revisions to a Purdue University economic analysis have cut about 10 percent of the total emissions expected from an increase in corn ethanol production. The findings, released in a report to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, show that ethanol could be a somewhat better option than previously thought for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Wally Tyner, a Purdue agricultural economist and the report’s lead author, said revisions to the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model better reflect market conditions and land productivity than a 2009 report that showed corn ethanol wouldn’t significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions over gasoline.

USDA will begin conducting the first national On-Farm Energy Production Survey this week. The most recent agriculture census counted more than 20,000 farms and ranches that were producing renewable energy via solar panels, wind turbines and methane digesters. USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is mailing the survey forms to farm and ranch operators nationwide who indicated on the 2007 Census of Agriculture that they were generating renewable energy.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced the award of $11.3 million to help develop and commercialize 25 innovative renewable energy and energy storage projects. The money will be allocated as $4.7 million for demonstration projects (5), $4.1 million for new product development (7), and $2.6 million for feasibility studies (13). These resources will leverage $11 million of private sector investment to bring total funding for these projects to $22 million.

The Department of Energy announced $106M in funding for 37 experimental projects that could radically change the ways that we think of “alternative energy.” These projects encompass 17 states. More than half of the recipients are universities. Funded via the “Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy” (ARPA-E), the projects focused on three areas: 1) Electrofuels (DOE also calls this direct solar fuel), 2) Advanced generations of batteries for energy storage, and 3) Innovative materials and processes for advanced carbon capture technologies.