Algenol A Florida company is partnering with Dow Chemical to install commercial photobioreactors at a Dow site in Texas. The planned design for the installation is shown above.
Algenol grows algae in troughs filled with saltwater that becomes saturated with carbon dioxide. Above photo from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/business/energy-environment/29biofuel.html
The algae would be exposed to sunlight, in water mixed with carbon dioxide, and would give off ethanol and oxygen. Dow wants the ethanol as a feedstock for plastic, replacing natural gas. In that sense, the ethanol-producing algae would become another processing unit in a chemical factory.
But if the process works well, Algenol thinks it could be profitably married to a different kind of plant: a coal-burning power plant, with the oxygen going into the combustion chamber.
Read this article for the details, but this is a way of making coal a cleaner fuel by adding oxygen to the fire and getting rid of CO2 when you grow the algae. We’ll see how it works out.
Biomass, the unused portions of logged trees such a branches and the tree tops, sit at the Old Town Fuel and Fiber mill to be burned to generate electricity in Old Town, Maine, June 2, 2009.
REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Germany is among the first European countries building test plants to produce commercial volumes of second generation biofuels from a wide range of biomass materials ranging from wood chips and other forest products to straw, hay, vegetable waste and low grade crops.
The oldest lure in the world, something for nothing, does offer a lucrative fuel business from basically garbage. Will these methods also generate biodiesels? Perhaps so.
Credit: deborah sherman photography: http://www.deborahsherman.com/, (studiodeb on Flickr).
A commenter on Ben’s wood-powered truck post pointed us to a similar car hack. The truck above is also powered by a wood gas generator, except this one runs on coffee grounds. The Cafe Racer is a 1975 GMC pickup that essentially burns up used coffee to create a combustible gas. The gas is filtered on its way to the engine and, Viola, a caffeine-powered truck.
This is a truck that runs on just about anything, makes biodiesel seem like a super-refined luxury fuel, doesn’t it? Interesting site which may interest our many do-it-yourselfers.